For a long time, the common wisdom was that game consoles would usurp PC gaming, leaving it a niche hobby, ignored by the greater gaming community. And indeed, for a long time consoles were the most popular way to play mainstream games. But recently, especially since the release of the current generation of consoles, the very opposite seems to be coming true. PC gaming has been expanding while consoles falter.
Looking forward to the next Xbox and PlayStation consoles, analysts are predicting $900 as the low end of possible pricing–and that number is seeming more and more optimistic. That’s a lot of money to spend for a dedicated machine that, for most console owners, is just used for playing Call of Duty or the latest football game. Consoles are becoming too expensive for all but the most dedicated gamers to justify–especially when gamers in their teens and early 20s have grown up in a world where a console is no longer needed to play the vast majority of games.
The limiting factor is in significant part memory and to a lesser degree storage, and while in some cases, there are options for PCs — like using scavenged DDR4 DIMMs — that aren’t available for consoles, PC prices have also generally been hit by the same factors that have driven up console prices.