@Xristophoros: I'm gonna play devil's advocate for PC for once.
1. Most consoles cost the price of a single top of the line GPU which is all you need for good PC gaming assuming you already own a PC. IE PS4 and XB1 cost the same as a GTX 1070 (which is far more powerful 6teraflops and 4K)
2. All console games require an install to play, if you buy digital you must download 50gb of data, plus you must download day one patch to play online, and the games are buggy as hell on day one release. I.E Witcher 3 on PS4 corrupted my saves many times, forced me to redo entire areas.
3. Get a long HDMI Cable, problem solved.
4. Are you talking about DRM? You mean custom OS that cannot install any homebrew. Who the hell wants that?
5. Not anymore, there are now 2 architectures for each console, splitting the end user from the haves and the have nots. The days of tweaking the code to perfection to get a game like Uncharted to run well, and the days of WItcher 3 patches to improve framerates is gone after two tiers of consoles get introduced. Unified architecture, the single most useful feature for the console is now officially GONE.
6. I will give you this one, you can technically only buy one or two big games for console each year and continue to trade them on craigslist until you've played them all. So, yes that is a benefit. The flipside is PCs have no DRM, which means if you know how, you can play most of your PC games for free "wink wink".
7. I've Never built a PC that didn't work. And all PC parts are covered by warrantee just like consoles.
8. I give you this one, but you can hide your PC from view easily.
9. Not anymore, they've now shortened the life span on all consoles by half. There goes the no hassle and no upgrades policy.
This is my first time ever defending the PC, so I'm new at this. I usually speak on the console side, but they are pissing me off nowadays.
@pongley: Yes, now that you've removed the unified architecture that forced developers to tweak the code to perfection to ensure a single end user experience, think Witcher 3. There is no reason to own a console at all.
Just get a PC, no DRM and cheaper games, same games.
@ray1102: You're right, Sony and MS will feel it when they release their next major console gen. When PS5 and XB2 comes out they will be surprised by how many people wait for the better one to come out before adopting.
Every action has consequences, although not immediately apparent.
@MoreThot: OP is right, we've more or less hit a peak on Moore's Law, Silicon technology is stagnant. The only way to get more power from PC is by swarming i.e adding more and more cores.
The magical higher clocked CPUs don't exist, its all based on swarming now. Whenever a technology resorts to swarming, then you know that technology is more or less dead.
Its like Sli GPUs, if you stick enough GPUs together you will eventually get improvements without burning your house down.
@csward: Yes but the 58.7 million shows that there is a market, of course not everyone will upgrade at once, but they will migrate once their 3DS stops getting new games.
Or are you suggesting that 58 million people will all just quit handheld gaming forever after 3DS.
@Richardthe3rd: There is no justification anymore, really. Almost all AAA games have become cross-platform thanks for MS and there desire to bridge PC gaming. And PC games have less DRM and can be bought through discounts suppliers for cheaper.
So, no there is really no justification for consoles existence anymore. The only justification, which was unified architecture, and future proof hardware is now gone.
@oflow: Difference is PC's have no DRM, and you can get most games from discount brokers at a fraction of the cost of retail. Console have DRM and you must pay MSRP on all games with a marked up price to give room for MS and Sony to take their royalty cut. That's the reason.
Why pay MS and Sony a royalty fee at all when their hardware is being outdated at the same rate as PC? You won't, you'll just get a PC instead.
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