If you were thinking rational, you wouldn't talk about an old $400 pc outperforming next gen consoles in games. Enough said.
And let's not forget once again the volume discounts, sweetheart loyalty deals, custom fab, and purposes architecture.
It adds up to a good deal more than you'd like to think. And it's being sold at a loss. Btw, the gamepad is expensive but it's not crazy expensive to manufacture. Nintendos selling it high because that's a way to profit big while taking losses on the console package.
And even a current $400 pc won't have the power architecture edram setup either. Not will it have the gpu on the same area. (btw, you forgot to include the motherboard price, the case, power supply, blu-ray drive, network adapter, keyboard, mouse (or wireless gaming controller), etc. your price quickly inflates. And you don't even have an OS yet. The cost keeps rising...
And it will lose a good bit of its power to pc OS matters and hardware overhead.
Now think about it. If YOU are able to buy capable parts so cheaply, imagine what Nintendo has been able to procure its parts at, with a potential of 100 million units sold. And it's still sold at a loss. You can look at ports of last gen games to do your justifications of you want, but don't be shocked when something truly impressive shows up around the corner. Nintendo has made a very healthy system. Even gearbox has mentioned the wii u will likely have the best looking version of the game. That includes pc. Batman also seems to be better looking on wii u. And those are just ports.
The next gen consoles will hold their own. Plus, the gaming experience will be better in many instances since the code is tailored and optimized for that exact hardware. No random slowdown even with blazing CPU and gpu. No weird little glitches, etc. (unless it's a fallout or skyrim game), the games just work like they're supposed to (most of the time). There's a reason for that.
You can build a pc for games if you want. But in two years, you'll HAVE to upgrade in order to play the next hottest game at full settings to get the optimal experience. With a console, you get the full experience every time.
In the years ahead, PC will have some games that can look better due to its upgradable nature. But developers will always up the hardware requirements because they have to code for common denominators amongst a huge variety of hardware.
But the consoles will be close in performance down the road. Like they've always been. And when the pc has completelly outshined them, the race will repeat itself yet again with a new generation. - barring any paradigm shifts in how people get their game on by then.
Edited by Socalmuscle, 26 October 2012 - 12:58 AM.
