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The answer is yes*. Your up front costs are going to be higher than purchasing a console, but you make it back pretty quickly. I would peg a competent gaming platform at $700. There are plenty of build guides for that price cap on sites like pcpartpicker, and you can even find some deals on eBay for top of the line stuff that people with deep pockets are dropping because the latest and greatest came out, but I'm just going to leave that price as a given. In that budget you should have absolutely no issues having a game up and running at better rates than a console. So you drop $50 on a new controller to use So already you're $350 over your console budget, which kind of sucks, but you'll make it back pretty quickly for the following reasons: 1) No fee to use online services. No Xbox live, PSN, or any of that, just what your ISP charges. Conservatively, a savings of $60/year. 2) Sales are incredibly frequent. For instance, last night I purchased Final Fantasy XIII & XIII-2 for $19. The current cost of just Final Fantasy XIII for the 360 is $30: http://m.gamestop.com/catalog/product/75085. Not every sale is that extreme, or even always on games you want, but when it happens it's like stumbling on a gold mine. Incremental upgrades: instead of having to purchase a new console every generation, you can just get little upgrades that will consistently be better not only than what you had, but still at so called "potato smasher" levels when the next generation rolls around. For instance, I spent $700 about five years ago for a gaming rig, and current consoles, despite having similar specs, are still lagging behind in quality. Even if I had bought the same games at launch day prices, I would have made my money back in those five years without a single upgrade just from not having to pay for an online service, and saved money over the life cycle of a console ($400 + ($60*10) - $700*= 300). My rig still runs quite competently, but I've decided it's time to upgrade my rig. Furthermore, there are loads of free games out there, and you can emulate favorites from long ago that aren't in print anymore. You can also get free mods that simply extend the life of games you already have. People are still contributing to Skyrim years after its release and there is some awesome stuff out there. Next, if you do anything remotely hardware intensive on your computer for work, it's worth the saved time to spend a little extra every once in a while to keep your system running smoothly. Having those boot times dropped to nearly nothing with an SSD is worth it for a lot of people. Lastly, if you use your personal computer for work, then every expenditure on it is tax deductible. Running an online business or putting up flash games (I guess it's HTML5 now) that bring you even a little bit of income can be claimed. TL;DR just the missing online fees over the life cycle of a console brings your costs down dramatically. Hopefully that's helpful. Fuckery: Also permanent backwards compatibility
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Jun 19, 2015 00:05
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 22:48 |
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