BobbyRiddle

There's one very important thing I'd want to know before I make an recommendations; do you have a monitor, mouse and keyboard that you could use for this PC? I ask because if you don't have these it could quite drastically reduce what you can afford to spend on the PC itself.

 

I can also give you some good advice that applies no matter what. The first is don't skimp on the power supply, seriously make sure you get a good one if you don't you'll almost certainly regret it in the long run. Secondly made sure you get a Solid State Drive for your OS as a minimum but ideally get a bigger one you can install a few games on too. You will probably want a regular hard drive along side the SSD for document storage etc.

I mentioned a while back that the console would be sold at a loss if it was priced under $400.

It was.

The price in Japan was around $400 converted from yen at the time of pricing announcement.

The gamepad doesn't even cost $100 to manufacture. It's an item that Nintendo will profit handsomely from at retail when people are buying a second. Most console owners will want a second eventually. So the initial loss being eaten by nintendo now will be mitigated by peripheral sales and games. And in a year or so, it won't be a loss anymore.

The CPU and gpu are taking up the lions share of the money.

It's a really great system and a true next gen machine. It's not "overpowered," but it's a bruiser.

Nintendo knew they had to do 3 things.

1) offer true next gen hardware.

2) offer this hardware at an impossible, mass market price.

3) avoid the 3DS pricing disaster.

Theyve accomplished all 3 with great deals, planning, and timing.

Nintendo traditionally makes a profit from the hardware at the outset. But in some cases, it's just not possible. So they amortize their hardware costs over multiple years, projecting the pricing decrease. By a year or so, they'll begin to profit off the hardware in addition to the ridiculous amounts of money from games and peripheral sales. By the end of the generation, they'll be making money hand over fist on hardware alone.

Yes, it's being sold at a loss - right now. But that won't last long. And it was a smart move.

You can make a decent PC for 400. Optimize that for games and you have a high end console. This makes me happy because the ps720 will most likely sell at a loss as well. Just means there will be more power under the hood.

The 360 cost $470 to manufacture and was released at 300-400 just for comparison.

A $400 PC won't even come close to a consoles capabilities. And that $400 is inflated for gaming purposes since so much of the hardware has to be generalized. It's not purpose designed for games outside of the gpu.

With a console. There has been work done to create a custom, purpose built, lean, mean CPU. Then the gpu is also enhanced. In the case of the wii u, the two are almost integrated further increasing performance.

There is no $400 pc you can cobble together to compete with this. The tech doesn't exist. Not even if you had an expensive powermac and apple still used IBM processors.

Look at it like a car.

A $400 pc is a 4,500 lb 1970s Oldsmobile with a 400 horsepower big block v8.

A new $400 console is a 2013 mustang boss 302 with a 444 horsepower small block v8.

You have a purpose built machine that striPs away the excess bulk, the nonsense, the generic features, and your left with an integrated package that puts it all together to perform. In the case of the boss 302, to dominate the track. In the case of the console, to dominate games.

No $400 PC is going to compare to next gen consoles (wii u, ps4, Xbox) for a good while.