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Comment by alexgmcm | Hacker News Reader

As a counterpoint I got an Xbox Series X because the cost of building a decent gaming computer has become ridiculous.

Just the GPU would cost me as much as the whole console and as my desktop PC has an ancient motherboard, RAM, CPU etc. I'd have to replace everything.

The Game Pass has been a pretty good deal so far, but I agree that having to pay just for online multiplayer is ridiculous and of course they could jack up the Game Pass price tomorrow and I'd have little recourse.

Quick Resume and being able to play on the sofa is decent as well when I don't have much time.

The main thing I miss is all the smaller games like Valheim etc. especially since AAA games have become less appealing as they just seem like time-sinks aimed to optimise "engagement".

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For me the cost of gaming on PC is just whatever I need to add on top of a standard workstation, which is mostly just a bumped up graphics card. Only late last year did I finally upgrade the bones of a PC I've been running since 2009, which is a hell of a cycle.

If you're chasing top performance and regular upgrade cycles I agree, it can be a pit of (up to) infinity monies.

The current situation with GPU prices and coin mining etc does make things especially tricky right now if you're not already set up with a gaming rig from the past ~5 years.

Yeah, my PC is from 2015 (and it wasn't state of the art then..) so it's quite a pain to replace.

Also I have an Ultrawide monitor which perhaps isn't the best for gaming, but is far superior for work.

To be fair we're in one of the worst chip shortages in a long time, GPUs are supposed to be like 3-600 for low to early high range. Still one of the most expensive parts for sure but right now is especially atypical.

>To be fair we're in one of the worst chip shortages in a long time, GPUs are supposed to be like 3-600 for low to early high range.

What's your point exactly? The recently released PS5 and Xbox Series X had launch prices of $400-$500 in the U.S.

So, even without the chip shortage, GP's point about the GPU alone costing more than a console still stands.

You don't need a beefy rig to play games. The majority of developers are already struggling to produce art assets that can put a strain on top-tier hardware. The PS5 launch was dominated by two games: Demon's Souls, a jaw-droppingly beautiful game that made great use of the hardware, and Bugsnax, whose graphics looked like it could have been a Gamecube game (don't take this as a denigration). The hyped PC game of the past two weeks has been Valheim (having the fifth most-simultaneous players of any Steam game ever), whose graphics compare favorably to Tribes 2, a game from 2001. A select number of AAA studios have the resources to invest in pushing the graphical envelope; everyone else can get by just fine on five year-old hardware.

And, of course, the Demon Souls game you touted as the graphically impressive one, originally played well on a PS3.

The new version makes full use of the GPU on the PS5, visually it's far more impressive. Not having played either I have no idea whether the gameplay differs between the two!

Valheim is very poorly optimised right now, graphics aside. I am not sure how well it works on older hardware but on my RTX2060 and corresponding CPU I get frame drops all the time and global locks when it decides to save the world state in combat or I walk towards somewhere new. I'd imagine it's worse on an older computer, it'll run but it might not be as enjoyable at sub-30-FPS.

Hardware creep inevitabily leads to optimisation decisions about how much effort to spend getting things to run well.

I do agree that PC hardware tends to last around 5 years now though unless you run the latest AAA games, and there is a wealth of older games. Just the stuff I missed since 2000 would be enough to keep me busy for at least a decade.

i5-4XXX + R7 260X (a very bad and old card) works well at 1080p low settings. 3800X + 1080Ti gets you 58 fps at 4k.

YMMV but be sure to put the window in fullscreen, that helps with the frame drops.

I play sufficiently modern games virtualized (VFIO) on an i5-2500. If FullHD is fine for you, old hardware is still extremely good.

1. You don't need a $300 GPU to play modern games on a gaming PC. 2. Sony and Microsoft subsidize the cost of the hardware. They lose money on every console that goes out the door and make their cash on online passes, accessories and individual games. After a couple years the cost to produce goes down and they start to make some margin on them.

This is the way they've been doing it for several console generations now.

I have a memory of reading that the strategy Nintendo have used from the n64 days, was always make a slight loss on each console but make big profit on games and developer licences, so that they start making profit after the third or fourth game sold per console

Edit: looked for proof but for the life of me I can't find evidence amongst all the results for articles and blog posts reminiscing about old games and consoles!

Nintendo is the exception where the hardware are *not* sold at loss, but rather alight profit.

See https://www.google.com/amp/s/venturebeat.com/2016/10/26/nint...

People will say "you don't need a $500 card to play PC games", but they'll never acknowledge the caveat that a budget card won't run games anywhere near as nice as a PS5/XSX.

At even $600 a GPU will last you longer than the quality of a similar gaming device like that. I guarantee the games on the console begin to look dated and lose out on features much sooner than building your rig.

If a console is $500 and lasts 3 years your $600 gpu, and overall build (mine is about $1200 new but has features that I splurged on for work and could be 300 cheaper for just gaming) will last at least double if not a little more than double that time. At least that's been my experience.

I would say looking at lifetime value building your own rig is much more cost effective and has a much higher lifetime on graphical features that are added.

As an example my 1070 that I only replaced this year and only because I felt like it was easily still getting me 80+ fps in modern games and supporting new features like DLSS.

I could have easily kept using it and been fine for a few more years with new features and updates all the time.

What $600 GPU is going to look like a PS5 though? The new consoles run games at 60fps/120hz on top of the line screens, that's a lot of performance for a budget PC.

why would a console last 3 years (barring failure obv.)? Typical generation is 5-7 years.

Generation yes but I don't remember a whole lot of fidelity updates occurring to my xbox 360 or my xbox one past the first couple years is what I was trying to say. Where as my NVIDIA cards get regular tweaks and improvements for much longer. I'm mainly a PC gamer though so I could be wrong here.

Game developers love consoles, because the hardware is known for the whole generation.

Whatever tricks your NVidia card can pull, aren't reflected on someone's else GPU card, let alone everything else on the computer.

I don't know if I care what game developers like, I do care what's better for consumers like myself though. Unless you're saying that devs being able to pull more tricks result in either better graphical fidelity or performance for the consumer, otherwise I don't really think what you said contradicts my point.

Anyone is free to chose what they think is best for themselves, game consoles culture is not the same as PCs.

Additionally, game development culture is definitely not in line with the FOSS culture that is usually discussed in sites like HN.

No, no it wouldn't. A 600 dollar GPU these days is a 3060ti which is rather unfortunate.

The Xbox Series X and PS5 are phenomenal pieces of hardware that are pushing the limits of consumer goods. Both support 4k 120hz and HDMI 2.1, free sync and much more.

Instant on, fast resume, keyboard/mouse, controllers, they're a hell of a bargain.

The Xbox One is older than the 1070 and cost much less and still is supported to this day.

Are those running max setting 4k 120hz? Because a 3060ti even now under the rather ridiculous prices can handle that at medium on a lot of games. I'm legitimately asking, I'll probably pick up a PS5 when the world is more sane so I haven't looked into the latest generation just comparing my experience with the previous generation of consoles vs my pc.

Yes...

I have the Xbox Series X and just got a LG OLED 55" tv and it's all running at 120hz with freesync, HDR and looks beautiful.

I have a regular 3060 i scored from newegg and it can't keep up with with the XSX does... my 3060 cost 499 and my XSX cost 499...

PS5/XSX is extreme value right now... and to be honest, the 0% pay 31/month deal is stupid easy and affordable to jump in - much easier than paying scalping rates or hoping for lotto slots from vendors just to buy a video card.

I got a PS5 through playstation direct as well when they do their lottos, but i'm a fan of gamepass so i sold the ps5 to a friend at retail cost.

>the cost of building a decent gaming computer has become ridiculous

I don't know, I have a GTX 980ti and an overclocked Sandybridge Core i7 2600k in my gaming computer, both bought many years ago, and I haven't had any problem playing new games. I'm sure there may be some stuff it would struggle with but Doom Eternal, the latest Deus Ex, Far Cry 5, etc. play perfectly well as far as I can tell.

There's some cards which lasted a while (1080 Ti, or the Titan cards, probably the high end 3x series and AMD's equivalent), but consoles are made obsolete pretty regularly. It's more worthwhile if you haven't already bought a work/life non-gaming PC though or need to upgrade that. If you don't have a good TV for the console, that might be an additional cost.

Can't beat the ergonomics of chilling on your couch with a controller, but you could set that up with a PC if you really wanted to.

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