Quote:
Originally Posted by soopaman2
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.
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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)