Well you see, the total generation survival rate of the Xbox 360 (for the original fat one) is approximately 60% according to a survey of a variety of sources. The PS3's (again, original fat one) fares better with a survival rate of like 75 percent.

Surprisingly, all my gaming hardware survived, the only one that "perished in the line of duty" was my PSP 3000, that died in the washing machine. So it was luck, and not hardware quality.

I understand the thinking, usually after 3 years, you get a new hardware revision for the consoles, and usually a 100$ price drop. And its true, 30% of all xboxes lived to see their 4th birthday.

However, lets redo the math with this as a consideration:

playstation 3 launch was in 2006, by the time the slim came out (aka, the new model that had a high survival rate), it was 2010.

The slim was 200$ cheaper, and according to my own data working at an electronics store, it costs 100$ to get your playstation (or xbox, we had a flat rate) fixed of major damage.

Now the new generation of consoles comes out on 2013. Thus if you buy the slim model, you would get 3 years of service time out of it. The old fat one would get you 7 years of service time (math is almost the same with the 360, so I'll do it once)

So the fat one is 599 at launch, and the slim launched at 399.


If you are lucky, and your console did not break. It would cost you 599/7 years is 23 cents per day. If you are unlucky, and you needed to get it fixed once, it would have cost you 27 cents (699/ 7 years) per day.

If you bought the slim, you would have gotten 3 years of service out of it. Its actually 36 cents a day!


Now I get that gaming habits are different, and for me, i usually phase my old devices out of service after games slowly start drying up.

However, in my experience, the "cheap" PS3 slim SKU is actually amazing as a media player, and thus it would vastly outlive the "console generation". While my little brother is watching the Toronto Blue Jays get beat up on the main TV, I'll just go to a secondary TV, pop on the PS3 slim that i got on sale, and turn on MLB TV. Its a great little machine for that use, and I can anticipate using it like that for a long time.

PS: So a thing that I like about the new consoles is actually how little power they consume. Both of them consume 100 something watts under full load. This might actually encourage me to phase out my old fat consoles that consume a ton of power, and even make my use my 1000 watt monster PC a bit less. I mean, considering that the average person spends like what, 4 hours a day in front of the boob tube? if I save 800 watts for 4 hours per day, for 7 years, it does add up.

Its not an argument man, just long form debate!:up:

I was not arguing, just stating it is silly to buy an un-upgradable console. IMHO of course.

These things are always overpriced upon release, just trying to save some people some money, give it 6 months, unless that human drive to be "first" kicks in, or you got money to kill.

Kinda jealous of ya, as SH3 stopped working for me when I installed windows 7.

Don't think that I'm trying to pick a fight, I just like to do math and analysis (I know, I'm the only one)

But honestly, no offence to you, your use case is very, very peculiar. In fact, your still worried about a game released in in 2005!

But assume you are an average gamer, not too hardcore, and mostly into the average stuff that most players are into. You probably don't have perfect vision, and you sit a reasonable distance from the TV. All you want, is to be able to enjoy the games your friends like, the popular stuff mainly.


Now in this case, I did the math. Gaming PCs are a horrible deal.

It is true, you can upgrade your PC, something that you cannot do with a console. However, it is a physical impossibility to stretch your PC into a whole generation.

Assume you spent a decent amount on a good PC in the beginning of the generation. You would have a Pentium D, Intel 965 chipset, and an ATI x1000 series or Nvidia 7000 line graphics card.

I cannot stretch that to work the whole generation. Buying a computer is a must if you want to enjoy new releases every year.

Why? First of all, your CPU would start to feel inadequate around 2008. Physics and AI would really tax your CPU, and with the proliferation of these programming techniques around 2008, a 2006 pentium D would struggle to even run quite a few of these games.

You can upgrade, into a Core 2 Duo. Its approximately 100 - 200 to keep up. If you don't, come 2010, and your computer will no longer be able to play the modern releases at any settings.

Around 2009, your graphics will start to feel inadequate. No card in 2006 supported Direct X 10, but as direct x 10 start to roll out, you would start to see performance drop. Games around this era would be completely unplayable on a lower end graphics card from 2006, and only playable on low on the top end cards from back in 2006.

Around 2010, the first direct X 10 exclusives start appearing, in order to enjoy them, you MUST upgrade your graphics. Than, you would find that your motherboard and PSU would really limit your upgrade potential. But lets assume you find a card friendly to your older system.

2010 is also the time when programs start dropping XP support (its 9 years old at this point). You would have to upgrade your OS if you want to enjoy mainline releases. Unfortunately, you would probably have to upgrade a lot of components in your computer to get it to work, as vista changed the drive model.

By 2011 - 2012, digital distribution has completely taken hold, and as game downloads have seriously ballooned, you would probably need a new hard drive. In which case, you would probably need an upgrade again.

by 2013, games start requiring more than 4 gb ram (the upper limit of the intel 965), it is impossible for you to get more than 4gb, and no matter how hard you try, you cannot stretch it into working.


If all you play is silent hunter 3, than all you need is a 299 computer. However, if you intend to enjoy popular new releases every year, it is physically impossible to stretch 1 single PC through a console generation.

And remember, consoles are cheap, under 500$. What kind of PC can you get for less than 500? Its improbable that the super cheap Acers can even survive more than 4 years without problems (i'm willing to guess less than 50%). (whereas at the 4 year mark, more than 70% of xbox 360s survived, more than 80% of PS3s survived).


I game on PCs and Consoles, but understand the limitations of both. PC gaming is expensive as hell. Just to play mainstream games every single year, it would cost you a TCO of 60 cents a day (throughout a generation, and the bare minimum), whereas console TCO is less than 30 cents a day (look at the math I did above, even assuming your console breaks once, its STILL cheaper than 30 cents a day)

There are many people who run SH3 just fine on Win7. Check the SH3 forums.

Yet you're going out of your way to prove that you're right. I tried to explain that there is no right or wrong, just personal preference.

Unfortunately SH3 is still far and away the best submarine simulator available, if you want to experience a variety of u-boats in a full-war experience. Almost nine years and nothing has matched it yet. On the other hand I also play AOD and SH1, which date to 1994 and 1996 respectively.

I, on the other hand, don't consider myself a gamer at all. I'm a hardcore history buff, and with a couple of exceptions I stick to games/sims that represent the history I love. I play flight simulators and ship simulators, and the occasional racing sim. That's it.


All the above is true. I started feeling inadequate about the times you mentioned, not because of new games, but because mods for SH3 started outstripping my PC's abilities. My technology is also old so I can't even upgrade.

Not true. To play SH3 the way I want to requires the latest greatest PC I can buy, except for the part where I can't buy it. On the other hand my PC is mainly for work and research, and in that it is far more than I actually need. My ancient Atari 520ST did all the same work I'm doing now, just none of the online stuff.

My point was that to me it's fruitless to argue about which is better. Neither one suits everybody's needs, and depending on what you want out of a system one is certainly better than the other.

Just to clarify one thing, it wasn't you I was accusing of turning it into an argument. :sunny:

Pretty much a Fan Boy thing as I see it.

I had very very good experiences with the Xbox 360 Elite 120GB that I got in 2006. It survived 7 years and it would keep on going if there wasn't such a bad electrical storm.

Only one RROD in its lifetime. I've heard of people having problems with them...but even my friends...none of them have ever had any issues and they've had them just as long or just under how long I had my Elite.

Now, I have an Arcade "Fat" model with the Elite HDD and wiring hooked up. It's an old 2005-06 model and it runs great.

I've just never had very many bad experiences with Xbox...my original Xbox still even works! :yeah:

You're probably right. Don't listen to me anyway. I'm just being a curmudgeon.

My original Playstation I bought in '96 still works. :sunny:

I actually thought about getting one....I found a store who sells them and a bunch of games. :hmmm:

Be advised that there is at least one known manufacturing issue with some of the new consoles, related to erratic wiring of the HDMI contact. Google "blue pulse of death". It seems to effect 0.4% of the produced consoles so far. Sony is aware of it.

Possible there is more technical problems as well. Later rebuilds of the console in question sometimes led to less noise, less warmth, less power consumption, less unreliability with any given component.

I would not buy right now, not this early.

But I do not plan to buy a console at all. I found that for my simulation and game interests I need a PC.

PM me an address and I'll send you one for free. I haven't taken it out of the drawer in several years, and don't even have a TV to use it with. Also all the games I have.

:salute: Thanks for responding to my comments, and for doing more maths.

I think I've still got my original Playstation from '96 too, don't think it reads the disks any more though but it served me well from -29°C to +40°C, and it'd been thoroughly abused in tents and hotels on ops and exercises in UK fields, German airfields, Italy, Kosovo, Bahrain, Oman, by roughly 80 different people. :sunny:

I remember when I was younger and used to play 'tents' a lot.

Need to find a Fry meme that says 'Not sure if Jim is being serious or rude?' :hmm2:

Believe me...it was a serious business.