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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MoogleEmpMog" data-source="post: 3426996" data-attributes="member: 22882">Generally speaking, I'd say 'vastly undercutting on price' is a *very* competitive strategy. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  It seems to be working out pretty well for the big N so far, anyway.  The cost of consoles historically has capped out around $300.  That the X-Box 360 and PS3 greatly exceeded this at launch is indicative of a very... interesting... business decision to embrace HDTV before that technology is mature, and in Sony's case to push Blu-Ray as well.  Since Nintendo seems to be selling much, much better in this generation and the room for major graphical upgrades over the PS3 and X-Box 360 is very slim, the next gen consoles released five years from now will probably be... about $300.  Their prices rose because they (over?)reached on component costs.  Keep in mind both Sony and MS lost money on each console sold at launch, and Sony still is. OK, so it's only $500 and thus more expensive than anything but a PS3 (and would be $1500 at least with a Blu-Ray player for your PC, BTW).  Double the PS2's price.  So, obviously, cheaper.IIRC, the GameCube launched at $200, the PS2 and original 'Box at $250; all three had a $50 price drop near the end of the first year, bringing the total to around $550.  I'll admit the PS2 and X-Box may have debuted at $300 briefly, which would throw this off; still, if you waited to buy each until it had at least two killer apps, they would all have been in the range I'm talking about.It totally would!Except it's patently untrue.A midlist, unupgraded PC from 2001 could handle any modern software other than high-end graphic development and gaming prior to the introduction of Vista, and can continue to do so if you don't "upgrade" to Vista - which you would have little reason to do at this point unless you're using it for games.To be fair, if you DON'T HAVE A PC AT ALL... how are you on the internet? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Seriously though, it *used* to be cheaper to buy both a console and a non-gaming PC than it was to buy a gaming PC, and I do agree that's no longer the case.If not a few more pixels or graphics, what do you mean?  I haven't seen a genuinely innovative PC game since Ultima Online or, generously, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena.  Half-Life would be the only other candidtate, and that pretty much brought back something PC games (admittedly in other genres) had been doing and stopped, and what console games had been doing all along.Perhaps it's gotten easier of late?  I've always struggled with installing internal hardware: hard drives, CD drives, etc.. to be fair, I haven't really tried it since the days when 'CD-ROM drives' were something you had to buy separately and upgrade to. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Whereas in my opinion, TBS is nearly dead on the PC.  Civ 4, GalCiv2 and Heroes 5 (which is basically a graphical update to Heroes 3 and still inferior to it in other respects <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> ) in the last, what, three, four years?  Am I missing any - because if I am, I'd love to get them.  Whereas the PS2 puts out a good 2-3 of these every year (the Nippon Ichi TRPGs and usually at least one or two others).I play virtually no 'twitch games' and it's for that reason, not price, that I originally STOPPED BUYING PC GAMES.  When TBS, turn-based RPG and point-and-click adventure games pretty much dried up, I pretty much moved to the consoles, where turn-based games were still *very* common and remain so to this day.  To be fair, Final Fantasy 12 represents a very disturbing trend away from that tradition.MMORPGs and RTSes (and FPSes - the quintessential twitch games) are indeed the PC's strengths, in the sense of being basically all that's put out for it.  And Diablo- and Baldur's Gate-clones, although even those seem thin on the ground these days.Perhaps.Certainly that's what Sony and Microsoft have been touting and promising for the last two console generations.  So far... it hasn't happened.  Sort of.  A modern console does pretty much everything but the work (for which you have a glorified, $500-$1000 word processing machine - but it also does spreadsheets!)... people just don't seem to use them for that.  I mean, the PS2, for example, is a more than servicable DVD and CD player, plays both PS1 and PS2 games, surfs the web (IIRC) and is hooked up to your TV.  Around a hundred million PS2s have been sold - and yet, they don't seem to be put to this use very often.</blockquote>

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