“PC gamers” often snicker about how “console gamers” pay for things that they get for free. They also tout that PC games usually sell for less than console games. After hearing these claims a few million times, I decided to dive into the numbers and see who is really paying more over the life-cycle of their gaming system of choice. Warning: there is actually some real financial analysis going on here. I’m just trying to get the facts straight. FYI, if you only care about the results, skip to the verdict.
The Scenarios
I decided to look at three different gaming configurations, an Xbox 360, a “typical” gaming PC, and the gaming PC setup as a home theater PC (HTPC). The main difference between the gaming PC and the HTPC is the display and sound. The gaming PC has a 22″ widescreen monitor with computer surround sound speakers. The HTPC has a 46″ 1080P LCD display, and a component 5.1 home theater speaker setup. The Xbox 360 setup has the same 46″ LCD display and speakers as the HTPC.
The Assumptions
- The gaming PC must be replaced every three years (just the PC not the display or sound)
- The gaming PC gets $250 of misc. upgrades by year two
- The gaming PC is being purchased instead of a basic computer that would have been purchased anyway
- The console PC requires a larger/better television than what would have been purchased anyway
- The console life cycle is six years
- For all scenarios four full-priced games, and one discount game (50%) were purchased each year
- The console gamer purchases three additional controllers
- The console gamer goes through four dozen batteries per year
- The console gamer pays for an Xbox Live Gold membership
- 23% (mean of Dell’s consumer financing rates 15-30%) discount rate used to calculate the NPV
The Method
I am using a finance technique known as net present value (NPV). It is a method for accounting for the time value of money. Basically a dollar today is worth more than a dollar three years from now (or any other later date). It should be noted that using NPV favors the PC rig because it discounts the future costs of upgrading/replacing the system which you don’t have to do with the Xbox 360.
The Verdict
In the scenarios I have laid out, the basic PC gaming setup is more expensive. It is somewhat close though; only 12% higher. Think about that though, a 46″ 1080P LCD TV, full home-theater setup, an Xbox 360, 6 years of Xbox Live, four controllers, and the two included games costs less than a good (but not amazing) gaming PC on a relatively paltry 22″ display.
If you compare the 360 to the HTPC it gets bad real quick: 38% more. If you assume that you already have the TV/monitor and sound that you’ll be using for your gaming, the PC solutions are a whopping 71% more. Here’s the breakdown in dollar figures:
Total NPV
Xbox 360: $3,152
Gaming PC: $3,523
HTPC: $4,349
NPV without display and sound
Xbox 360: $1,837
Gaming PC: $3,149
HTPC: $3,149
The Point?
The only point of this is to show the PC gaming is in fact more expensive. If you enjoy PC gaming, so be it. Just know that it costs more. For the record, I was actually surprised how well PC gaming did in this comparison. For my dollar, I’ll take the integrated approach of the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live though, not to mention that I don’t have to install my games and troubleshoot them to make them work (if you can make them work).
*If you would like to check out my spreadsheet for this, here’s the link. It has all of the specs for the PC, and links to every product and component used.
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here in the UK,
New PC games sell for anywhere between £15 and £25
New Console Games sell for £40 – £45
if you buy 10 thats £250 for the PC games and £400 for the Console games.
A playstation 3 will cost you £300
A higher end 8800GT graphics card will cost you £150.
It will play all the current games including crysis, Call of duty 4 etc at full at a resoultion of 1680 X 1050. In three years it may not be so great but it would still be usable.
Im not sure why you say the 8800 GT isnt that good because its one of the best value for money cards you can get and has the performance of some of the even higher end cards. since the xbox 360 graphics card is a few years old, its more liekly that its graphical performace would actually be inferior to a 8800GT. but hey, thats just a guess lol.
2GB RAM of ram will cost you £30
Some of your items in your new PC are kind of uneccessary and its seems like your deliberately trying to spend money on the really high end parts and parts that you dont need.
aslo your assumptions are a bit extreme. you don’t need to replace the pc every three years. im not sure what the $250 worth of upgrades are.
and the PS2 is still one of the top selling systems because its so cheap and still has great games being realeased on it lol.
[...] Paul’s latest comparison between PC and console gaming has created quite the firestorm. His financial analysis shows that console gaming is, in fact, [...]
Computer gaming is not for everyone. Every time someone gets a weird error sigh (so common with computers :/) that they go to google and type the error sigh. I had to do that several times to play games. I own a gamecube (for resident evil games and an xbox 360 to play resident evil 5 and some others. The only reason i own a computer is to do my work and play some games. Since more computers are used for business and not for gaming, then the pc cannot be considered a gaming platform.
Computers>Console
The computer I built from scratch has a 6 month old video card, core 2 duo, 3.5 gig ram, and alot of other good stuff. It costed me less then 600 dollars, I can run just about ANY game at 60 frames/sec. The ONLY game that i cant run so well is Crysis. And the ONLY console game that has better graphics then I have on my PC is Gran Turismo 5. The only game I have that comes close to GT5 is GRID (graphic wise). But if GT5 was on PC it would be cool. And im running on a card better then the consoles have, but its old, Imagine the quality with a 4870 x2, the fastest card on the market. (but thats a luxary to upgrade, not a required expense)
you forget the simple fact you need a pc anyways so theres 500 USD you need to spend ANYWAYS
i think you forget you need a pc for more than just gaming..
1: work center
2: media center
3: you can connect it to multiple tv’s and run video off you pc unto them
4: gaming
5: education needs
6: internet browsing
7: data storage
….i can go on forever
one more thing if you buy a gaming rig and use it for work
TAX RIGHT OFF MWHAHAHA
You’ve got the NPV discount rate wrong. You just have to take the interest rate you can earn by putting your money on a savings account…
It goes like this:
100 dollar today is just worth 100 dollar.
if a bank gives you 2% interest per year and you put the 100 dollar in the bank you will have 100 dollar plus 2 dollar (2% on the 100) which adds up to 102 dollar
That’s what the NPV method is about. A 25% interest rate or whatever it was is a ridiculous high amount! If not you should definitely tell which bank or shares you have your money on
Raid 1 in a gaming rig? Try understanding what something is BEFORE claiming something needs it.
Raid 1 is mirroring, it is for live data security. It actually means a quite small performance drop in writes (depending how decent your raid card is, and I am betting this moron was using the mobo raid.) It also wastes half of your physical disc space. Low end servers use raid 1, not gaming rigs.
Only the most expensive and powerful gaming PCs use raid, and that is raid0 (striping, meaning much faster read speeds.) Raid should not be in this comparison at all, as any gaming rig expensive enough to include raid will be so far beyond the Xbox360′s performance that it would be like comparing a push bike with a saturn 5 rocket.
The rest of this comparison is balls too, but the raid part made me chuckle.
What was the author thinking? LOL LOL LOL
All I can say is this.. I bought a LAPTOP Dell XPS M1530 with a GeForce 8600M for $600 and had it for 4 years before it broke (I have had in Afghanistan with me where it acquired a decent amount of dust and drops and everything else) and I was still able to play COD4:MW at best settings!!! So your “facts” that I need to upgrade stuff every years or so and that life of a pc is short is totally bogus. Only hard core gamers who think that they need to replace crap as son as possible do that. You can easily have the same equipment for 4-5 years, and then all you really need to change is graphic card
Its kinda stupid to use a specific scenario and then claim that PC gaming is more expensive. there are plenty of scenario’s where PC gaming is cheaper.
when i got my first PC, i graduated highschool and had a $1k budget from parents for a computer for college. with that money, i built a computer now over 2 years old and haven’t had to sink any extra money into it yet. The extra cost of owning a Gaming PC over a regular one has been zero. I still have no problem running new games that come out. And in another year or two when i eventually upgrade my gaming PC, not only will i not have to buy a new monitor, keyboard, or mouse; but i won’t have to buy a case or a psu either; those objects cost me roughly $400 of the $1k i spent on my gaming pc; so it should only cost me $600 when i upgrade.
also, 4 gamers per year is fairly conservative imo… i am a fairly casual gamer compared to a lot of people i know, and i probably get at least 5 games a year. a lot of people get like 10 or more.
There’s also the question of how much gaming would you do on your pc if you primarily gamed on your console? you would probably at the very least play some flash games if not MMO’s. inwhich case, you would most likely also spend money on upgrading your pc occasionally.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with the troll masses that hold regular demonstrations at your doorstep. Your premises are sketchy at best
For me, PC gaming is simple adding a USD$70 graphics card to my regular PC (HD4670). The HD4670 is roughly as powerful as the GPU of the XBOX 360.
Anyway, there seems to be a general consensus that the XBOX and PC are worlds apart. But actually, the XBOX 360 is basically a cheap but streamlined PC with a cutdown OS. You can approximate it as a X1900 + duo core CPU + shared 512MB.
But note the structure of the processor is different in its execution and structure to traditional CPUs.
( => http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/06/xbox360-2.ars)