The shocking truth about the price of consoles.

[michaelmk86]

A pc with a GTX580(£230) & i5 2500k(£160) etc will cost £750, a console will cost £250, but the problem is that this pc perform about 10 times better on games and it doesn't cost 10 times more, only 3 times more. So it is very obvious that the consoles are overpraised at this price. It should cost around £75. (£750/10)


We did some test to see how much better will perform on games, we take a few random multiplats, crysis 2 for example:

the main graphics settings of crysis 2

high settings
very high settings
extreme settings
ultra settings

Consoles run crysis 2 with 1152x720(1024x720 for ps3) and mostly high settings(lowest available settings on pc) and 20-30fps(lets say avg 26fps)
We are going to find how many times a GTX580 perform compared to consoles in a real scenario, NOT some theoretical power.

A pc with a GTX580 gets on crysis 2 - 58fps with 1920x1200, extreme settings(+high rez texture pack) (GPU usage around 100%)
now step by step will continue to lower our settings, resolution, limit the fps to get to console settings.


GTX580 - 1920x1200, extreme settings(+high rez texture pack), 58fps(no lock) (GPU usage around 100%)
GTX580 - 1920x1200, extreme settings(+high rez texture pack), 30fps(lock) (GPU usage around 50%)
GTX580 - 1920x1200, high settings, 30fps(lock) (GPU usage around 27%)
GTX580 - 1280x720, high settings, 30fps(lock) (GPU usage around 14%)
GTX580 - 1024x768, high settings, 30fps(lock) (GPU usage around 12%)

so with console settings our GPU only use 12% of his power and still getting better fps so we can predict(using common sense) with a lock at 26fps(we cannot actually lock to 26 because V-Sync only allow 30fps or 60fps) that the GPU usage will be around 10%.

conclusion: at console settings the GPU only use 10% of his power so we can safely say that the GTX580 perform abound 10 times better than consoles. (also in other games we found similar results)

 

[usbgtx550]

These current consoles are at the end of their lifetime so this is to be expected. Next gen consoles are expected to play games at 60fps on a 1080p resolution. It is speculated to cost around $500. All of the sudden it becomes much more competitive.

 

[casualcolors]

These current consoles are at the end of their lifetime so this is to be expected. Next gen consoles are expected to play games at 60fps on a 1080p resolution. It is speculated to cost around $500. All of the sudden it becomes much more competitive.

To be fair, I can make a Macbook Air play a game at 60 fps at 1080p. The reason console games used to default to 30 fps isn't strictly a hardware limitation issue, but goes back further in the history of consoles. Without touching on all of that (which is largely unrelated to what you want to discuss), it's not just about getting 60 fps on 1080p. It's about what settings you can achieve while maintaining the first two conditions. In that regard, PC's will for the foreseeable future have a significant edge. Additionally, one of the prime reasons to have gone console in the past (used games) is likely to become a diminished reality in the next generation, where consoles are destined to have large onboard HDD's and where console game developers and publishers want to begin exploring digital distribution and individual unit licensing as THE* mode of revenue generation.

The reality is that the reasons to go console in the next generation are as murky as the details we have on their actual hardware. The line between PC gaming and Console gaming is potentially getting more blurred, but it seems that consoles are incurring a lot of the downsides of PC gaming (licensing, DRM) in the next generation without gaining the number one advantage that PC's have always had (the ability to constantly install the latest hardware and keep resetting the performance curve in your favor). I think the main point to contest during the next generation will be price vs performance in a very direct way. Not just in the general "300 dollars is less than 1000 dollars hurrr" mentality that exists between gamers of both platforms today. With the increasing similarities in PC and Console gaming coming in the next generation, people will have to consider the performance delta between PC's and the new consoles starting from Day 1 of the consoles' respective releases. At that point, you'll likely see people applying the same logic that they do now between budget and higher end gaming PC's. Some people can only afford a 500 dollar gaming rig, and as such that is what they buy. Other people can afford more, and may not be happy about it but will gladly pay twice the cost for five times the performance. Welcome to the new gripe between consoles and PC's, but at the very least hopefully we can resign ourselves to waiting until the consoles are actually released before we start clamoring to bitch and moan about this issue 😉 .