Where are the NEW games?

[John Crichton]

Says the guy arguing in an internet forum. You already have a monitor.

Pointlessly pointing out that we are on the internet doesn't mean that there are more monitors out there than TVs. Nor does it reduce the entry price of gaming for PCs versus consoles which is the whole point of the conversation.

 

[Felon]

Pointlessly pointing out that we are on the internet doesn't mean that there are more monitors out there than TVs. Nor does it reduce the entry price of gaming for PCs versus consoles which is the whole point of the conversation.

What makes it especially pointless is that I established that even with the monitor taken out of the consideration, the price point on a good gaming PC is still over $1000. I linked to an example of one. All blithely ignored just to keep harping on a pointless point.

 

[Kaodi]

What makes it especially pointless is that I established that even with the monitor taken out of the consideration, the price point on a good gaming PC is still over $1000. I linked to an example of one. All blithely ignored just to keep harping on a pointless point.

Why is it that trying to disarm particular assumptions in an argument that do not disarm the entire argument seen as pointless?

Another question: Is it not something of an assumption that a console actually fits the same definition of "good gaming rig" that is being applied to PCs? Games on console are necessarily scaled down to the consoles capabilities, so everything that would make it troublesome for a PC has been taken out. Why not strictly compare the price of a console to a PC that can outperform a console on equal settings?

 

[Banshee16]

People are tired of being on a never-ending upgrade treadmill. My four-year-old PC can't even be upgraded, since it lacks PCI Express and a SATA drive controller. So, if I want a decent gaming rig, I gotta decide to sink a minimum $1200 on that investment, and know in doing so that in a couple of years it will be an outmoded piece of junk. Or I can pay about $3000 for a sweet Alienware/Maingear/Falcon NW PC that will stave off miserable obsolesence by another year. Mind you, everything else I do with a computer doesn't take more than a $500 PC can offer.

So, console it is.

I don't think this paradigm is the same as it was before. PCs, and the games that work on them, don't rely on requirements in the same way that they did back in like....1992.

It's definitely possible to play games that a PC might seem unequipped for, as long as you have enough RAM, among other things. I played DragonAge on a PC that didn't meet the requirements for CPU clock speed, and it worked fine until the very last battle, and then all I had to do was drop the graphics a bit.

My new PC definitely is by no means a super machine...taxes in, I spent about $1100, and that's in Canada, where equipment tends to be overpriced. But it still rates a 7.5 out of 7.9 on the Windows 7 benchmarks, seems to run anything I throw at it, and is not cutting edge at all. It's got a $150 video card, instead of the top of the line $600 ones they put in gaming rigs. Really, the only reason I upgraded from my last one is that the heatsink died, and because it was so old, I'd have had to get the replacement used, shipped from a guy in Australia who seemed to be selling it on Ebay. I figured at that point, it wasn't worth the trouble.

I think they calculate minimum and recommended specs very differently than they used to. Back in the days of Wing Commander etc. if you didn't meet the minimum requirements, you literally couldn't play the game...at all. I haven't really run into that lately.

I think about the only thing I could have done extra to test this thesis would have been to purchase Crysis and try it on my old PC..but with no heat sink, that's not really possible.

Banshee

 

[Felon]

Why is it that trying to disarm particular assumptions in an argument that do not disarm the entire argument seen as pointless?

It was suggested that the inclusion of a monitor was skewing the price of a gaming PC. It wasn't. There was nothing to "disarm". On top of that, nobody was doing a particularly good job of disarming each other.

Another question: Is it not something of an assumption that a console actually fits the same definition of "good gaming rig" that is being applied to PCs? Games on console are necessarily scaled down to the consoles capabilities, so everything that would make it troublesome for a PC has been taken out. Why not strictly compare the price of a console to a PC that can outperform a console on equal settings?

OK, I'll bite. How exactly do you do that? Is somebody out there providing that metric?

I think it's a little more realistic to accept that if someone's trying to buy a decent gaming rig, then they want something decent in its own category.

 

[Kaodi]

OK, I'll bite. How exactly do you do that? Is somebody out there providing that metric?

I think it's a little more realistic to accept that if someone's trying to buy a decent gaming rig, then they want something decent in its own category.

I will admit that I am not entirely clear at the moment. Were I rolling in dough, I would be tempted to try it out myself; but alas, I am not.

I can accept the distinction of "something decent in its own category," but this brings us back to the question of what it means to compare a PC to a console. I mean, I can say, "A Playstation 3 is a better gaming machine than a Nintendo DS," but if I am currently in a car, or on a train, or an airplane, the context makes this in a way a factually incorrect statement, because how good a gaming machine is must necessarily be tied to how well it fits your current needs. Do PCs and consoles live in the same context?

 

[John Crichton]

I will admit that I am not entirely clear at the moment. Were I rolling in dough, I would be tempted to try it out myself; but alas, I am not.

I can accept the distinction of "something decent in its own category," but this brings us back to the question of what it means to compare a PC to a console. I mean, I can say, "A Playstation 3 is a better gaming machine than a Nintendo DS," but if I am currently in a car, or on a train, or an airplane, the context makes this in a way a factually incorrect statement, because how good a gaming machine is must necessarily be tied to how well it fits your current needs. Do PCs and consoles live in the same context?

Um.

What does that have to do with anything we're talking about?

 

[Kaodi]

Um.

What does that have to do with anything we're talking about?

What does most of this thread have to do with what the OP is about?

But is it not implicit in Felon having stated before that due to the prohibitive costs of a good gaming PC that he was stickig to consoles? Does that not warrant a question that, no matter how backwards it may have sounded, is more or less just asking whether this is *purely* a question of cost: like, " I could not afford a Formula 1 Race Car, so I guess I will just travel by Camarro, " ; OR is it saying that a Camarro is *better* overall than a Formula 1 Race Car?

 

[John Crichton]

What does most of this thread have to do with what the OP is about?

But is it not implicit in Felon having stated before that due to the prohibitive costs of a good gaming PC that he was stickig to consoles? Does that not warrant a question that, no matter how backwards it may have sounded, is more or less just asking whether this is *purely* a question of cost: like, " I could not afford a Formula 1 Race Car, so I guess I will just travel by Camarro, " ; OR is it saying that a Camarro is *better* overall than a Formula 1 Race Car?

I wasn't referring to the OP.

Sounds like you are getting way down the line of thought to the point where it needs it's own thread. Just sayin'.

 

[Felon]

But is it not implicit in Felon having stated before that due to the prohibitive costs of a good gaming PC that he was stickig to consoles? Does that not warrant a question that, no matter how backwards it may have sounded, is more or less just asking whether this is *purely* a question of cost: like, " I could not afford a Formula 1 Race Car, so I guess I will just travel by Camarro, " ; OR is it saying that a Camarro is *better* overall than a Formula 1 Race Car?

Well, you can get a PS3 for $400 now, and a 360 for $350. That sum of money will get you a media-center style PC, not something any manufacture will tout as being a game rig (well, maybe the more shameless ones...). It costs $100-200 just for a decent graphics card, and that's classified as a "budget" class model card. So, using either of your distinctions, the deck is stacked against the PC in terms of performance.

There is no universally-acknowledged point of demarcation that identifies where a PC has surpassed a console. Comparing hardware alone doesn't do it, because a game taxes a console in a different way than a PC with equivalent hardware. After all, the PC is performing lots of other background processes. Ultimately, the distinction is made based on individual games. Thus, you can't gauge framerates-per-second across-the-board as you would gauge KPH or gas mileage in comparing a Formula 1 with a Camaro.

What reviewers tend to do when comparing one PC to another is compare a range of benchmarks based on a handful of games. To use the car analogy, they rate the performance on select stretches of popular roads. Suffice to say, not many reviewers are attempting meaningful comparisons based on benchmarks for Plants vs. Zombies or Peggle, and likewise it would be tough to find someone running benchmarks for Crysis on a $350 PC. The range where someone is testing a game like Dragon Age is going to be on a machine that closes in on $1000.

The chief exception would be MMO's (notably WoW of course), which are sufficiently optimized for low-end computers that some reviewers do try to benchmark how well it will work on a cheap-o PC or even a netbook. But of course, those comparisons aren't germaine to consoles (where MMO's are for all intents and purposes unavailable).

So, to try to bottom-line: you can't identify a price point where a given PC macthes a console's performance, but for a modern, cross-platform game with reasonable demands, you can bet it's more than $350.

Feel free to google and let me know if you find anything enlightening.