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by drzaiusapelord 4354 days ago

> $400.00 PC from your service could rival or beat a console.

I recently got the itch to buy the Xbox One. I had the 360 before it with the Kinect and it was a passable party game machine, but I usually game on an old-ish desktop that maybe I've invested $600 in over the past four years. i5, 7000 series AMD card, 8gb ram, etc. Seems to handle any modern game I can throw at it.

With a copy of Watchdogs that Xbox turned out to be almost $700. Um, sure Watchdogs was fun, but having both just feels extraneous at this point and if I wasn't beyond my return date I'd just get rid of it. Just the price of games alone is rough. With Steam I can usually find a deal, but for console games I'm expected to usually pay full price, usually with the understanding that I'm also subsidizing my console's low price. How is $700 with one game low? You can almost make two mid-range gaming PCs with that if you're frugal enough.

That said, I'm sure it'll be great for multiplayer and kinect games, but with powerful PC hardware being so cheap, it does feel like a rip-off as console prices haven't really fallen in line with PC prices.

On the plus side, it has impressive fit and polish, the media tv stuff is nice, xbox live is well done, and even though the kinect is optional now I really hope they continue to develop games for it, preferable another Star Wars game on the new hardware. I'm hoping I get 5 years out of this system to depreciate the big one-time cost.

I'm just surprised there isn't a competitive $199 console out there. Even if it was semi-disposable (say every 24 months a new model with faster innards) it would still be worth it. I can get a Nexus 7 for that much. Its incredible I can't get a dedicated gaming machine (sans display, sans batter, etc) for around that much. Consoles are starting to feel like those old Texas Instruments calculators that cost the same amount and have the same exact features as the ones sold 20+ years ago.

3 comments

cdr 4354 days ago

You can get a last gen console (XB360, PS3) for what, $100 or less used/refurbished or $200 or less new? If someone never had that console, it's comparable with a lower end PC playing "last gen" PC games. And a good deal of console exclusives that never get ported to PC.

Buying a new console < 1 year after release is the equivalent of buying a new $1K+ gaming PC with a top-of-the-line video card.

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girvo 4354 days ago

I bought a used Xbox 360E, which is a really nice console, for $140AUD in almost unused condition. I felt that while there are stacks of games that are coming out that I want to play (Titanfall!) the simple fact is most of those games are also released on the 360. So, I saved hundreds of dollars for an experience that is good enough for me. I'll buy an Xbox One in 12 months time, when the price has come down and a games library has built up for it.

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vacri 4354 days ago

Gaming segments are weird. Console gamers generally pay 'full price', PC gamers generally want to pay half that, and mobile gamers have trouble with the concept of shelling out double digits.

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moe 4353 days ago

and mobile gamers have trouble with the concept of shelling out double digits.

They make up for it by pouring insane amounts into pay-to-play sinkholes such as Clash of Clans.

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adricnet 4354 days ago

> I'm just surprised there isn't a competitive $199 console out there.

Well, there's the Ouya, which is a nice little platform. You can get one an second controller and most of the games available for that price point :)

Specs and SDKs at https://www.ouya.tv/develop/

hth, adric

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jsmthrowaway 4354 days ago