[icu]

I completely agree. In the past I dropped a ton of money on gaming rig hardware that aged like milk. With a console you get the advantage of exclusives, majority of PC game releases, and a longer upgrade cycle versus a gaming rig. If you own a PS5, you got the PS VR2 coming out soon at a decent price point. If you own an Xbox, add in the amazing value of the Xbox Games Pass and I just don't see the need to be subsidising Hardware Manufacturers' bottom lines anymore.

[capableweb]

I have a desktop PC that I sometimes use for gaming, everything from demanding simulators (like Flight Simulator and X-Plane) to grand strategy games and other more mainstream games. Last GPU I bought was a 2080ti that still is my GPU, and I bought that something like 3 years ago. I can still game mainstream games on very high settings without issues. So not sure why your setup aged like milk but mine didn't...

[Loughla]

On my home machine, I'm running SLI'd GTX480's. They still do 99.9% of the gaming I want to do. I have only found ray tracing (which I don't like anyway) and for some reason water reflections to cause problems. But I can still run most games on high or better settings.

I don't know why OP's setup would age like milk. As long as you keep them clean, games haven't really advanced that much in the last few years, in terms of graphics requirements.

Also, if anyone has advice on building a new machine, I'm listening. I've been out of the game so long that I don't even know where to start, and have children that want towers built.

[fomine3]

I assume you use a FHD monitor. It's completely fine but some people upgraded to higher resolution.

[izacus]

Yeah, it's kinda bizarre - I've been running GTX970 for 5 years and it still runs things acceptably today (although I've replaced it with 3080 at launch).

It really didn't last any less time than PS4 or any other console.

[seanp2k2]

Consoles are subsidized and benefit from quantity. PC gaming has always been more expensive and benefitted from more cutting-edge technology. I love that consoles make gaming more accessible to more people, especially now with online multiplayer, which was once reserved for PC gamers. Even phones can do VR now, but PC is still the highest resolution, best texture quality, most detail, etc. Driving games in particular, with a Fanatec wheel, IEMs, Index or Vive Pro 2, and TOTL GPU + CPU are pretty damn spectacular, but the fact that you can get something 50-70% as good for ~1/5th the cost with a console is impressive.

[paulmd]

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/325504-sony-finally-turns...

ps5 hardware is sold at a profit (they hit profitability within 6-9 months of launch) and while microsoft claimed to a court that their hardware was subsidized as a justification for refusing to open the platform to alternate stores (so, somewhat self-interested of course), if you believe the production costs are fundamentally similar to PS5 then this is most likely "hollywood accounting".

It's real easy to have the xbox division license their branding from a parent company and if we set that at $100 a console then oops, there went all the profit.

It's not the PS3 days anymore where sony is losing 30% of the value of the console on the initial sale (and actually that wasn't the case for the other vendors even back in the PS3 days). Consoles are sold at a slight profit these days.

That said, having a "big APU" where everything shares a single bank of RAM and a single cooler/etc is a massive cost advantage. There is a lot of redundant cooling and memory in an ATX/PCIe spec PC and it all adds up. A console is one product with one assembly/testing line and one cooling/fan system and one set of memory. Clearly there is a market for "console-style PCs" which apply similar cost-optimizations, with a similar model to Steam Deck. Just so far there's nobody who's been willing to do the up-front cost and yet will choose not to lock down the resulting platform - Valve is somewhat unique on that front.