Don't forget however, that although total costs for the PC are definitely greater, with the PC you can upgrade each individual part legally, so it's really much more of a staggered price. I've got the same processor in my PC that I got three years ago and I can still run Fallout 3 at 1920x1200 at near max settings, though I do have a newer graphics card.

Consoles long had the advantage of being more cooperative than PC's in terms of compatibility and reliability. Now that consoles are pushing towards essentially being PC's, you're gonna keep the compatibility gains, but really start to equal out on the reliability issue. (what is the current hardware failure rate on 360's, PS3's?--yeah, it's high, I was surprised, too.) Now that these units all have hard drives and hot graphics cards, they're gonna start burning out way quicker than the old Nintendo's did. Hell, my old Nintendo still works, even though I still have to fiddle with clicking it into the right spot for an hour. So really it has become a compatibility, control and mod contest. Don't tell me that you can pay for mods online or that you that you can hack your 360 to mod-tweak it. If you like MODS you need to go PC. If you like the mouse control, then you go PC. (sure you can buy dongles online but the average 360 owner won't know about it). If you like gampepad, then you can really go either way. Mouse, Mods, Better graphics (with more money):= PC Compatibility, no computer=Console I'd like to add that with the blurring of PC's and consoles, it's going to be hard to have a good argument for very long as to why consoles and PC's can't network play each other. (Shadowrun figured that out) -TK