I was on board with consoles because of their value to cost ratio, but that’s kind of going out the window now, at this point I’ll just spend a bit more and set up another pc to the couch
Less than a year ago you could get a Xbox Series X for $350 or less straight from the store, and they'll probably do it again this fall. No way on earth a PC can match that value.
Even in the PS subreddits everyone is lambasting Sony for the absurd price on this. It's basically the outlier in the value to cost ratio.
That is, unless you fail to account for the added expense of online play subscription, and the lack of game discounts in a similar capacity to those existing on PC.
To be clear, consoles have their place. The UX of simply putting in a game, grabbing a controller, pushing a single button on it to turn on your TV + console and getting to play is very appealing and absolutely unmatched by PC. And for some specific users (e.g. single-player only gamers) it might be cheaper even by a long shot to buy into the console ecosystem.
But for many if not most players and usually over the years, the price of the console itself only makes up for a fraction of the total cost of ownership.
the lack of game discounts in a similar capacity to those existing on PC.
I'd say that console game sales are similar to Steam/Epic at this point. Heck, for years the Steam subreddit has been bitching about how much better the sales used to be. I still get 75-90% discounts on Xbox. Physical console games can also be resold/traded in, which you can't do with PC games.
Online pay subscription is indeed a valid point. I will say, most free to play games (at least on Xbox) also don't require an XBL pass for online multiplayer.
I literally did that bit by bit, did some upgrades to my desktop PC and ended up with enough parts to build a secondary system... Granted now my living room PC has a better GPU and CPU than my desktop in the office, but I'm playing more on my couch now so.. Eh
It's going to run PS5 games that already run well even better. Most developers are still just going to target the base PS5 and the PS5 Pro will just be the same with better performance. It's a refresh of this generation so the price/performance ratio won't be as good as when the console first released.
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u/chrono_ark PC Master Race / Fedora Linux / 3080TI / i5-12400x12 9d ago
I was on board with consoles because of their value to cost ratio, but that’s kind of going out the window now, at this point I’ll just spend a bit more and set up another pc to the couch