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.
Within any given tier of gaming hardware*, the main advantage of consoles is not price, but simplicity: They’re convenient and easy. They consume very little extra space (no dedicated monitor/speakers/keyboard/mouse) and require practically no technical knowledge or setup/tuning/troubleshooting effort.
But PC gamers get value for their efforts. The vastly larger pool of games and greater variety in hardware options are part of that value, but there is also the total cost of ownership: PC games tend to go on sale for lower prices, and hardware upgrades can be done incrementally (ship of theseus style). Over the course of 10 years or so, that translates to either more fun or more money left to spend on other things.
Perhaps this decade’s painful rise in hardware costs is making more people willing to put in a bit of effort in exchange for a gaming PC’s better long-term value compared to a console.
*(I mention hardware tiers because it doesn’t make sense to compare a Nintendo Wii to a high-end Radeon or GeForce PC, of course.)
don’t forget that PC doesn’t charge you a subscription to play online
*doesn’t charge you an extra subscription to be able to play games online. obviously games themselves may make their own choice on whether to charge you to play them online.