this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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166
Chips aren’t improving like they used to, and it’s killing game console price cuts (arstechnica.com)
submitted 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) by j4p@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world
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"These price increases have multiple intertwining causes, some direct and some less so: inflation, pandemic-era supply crunches, the unpredictable trade policies of the Trump administration, and a gradual shift among console makers away from selling hardware at a loss or breaking even in the hopes that game sales will subsidize the hardware. And you never want to rule out good old shareholder-prioritizing corporate greed.

But one major factor, both in the price increases and in the reduction in drastic “slim”-style redesigns, is technical: the death of Moore’s Law and a noticeable slowdown in the rate at which processors and graphics chips can improve."

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, GPU prices are kinda ridiculous, but a 7600 is probably good enough to match console quality (essentially the same as the 6650XT, so get whatever is cheaper), and I see those going for $330. It should be more like $250, so maybe you can find it closer to that amount when there's a sale. Add $500-600 for mobo, CPU, PSU, RAM storage, and a crappy case, and you have a decent gaming rig. Maybe I'm short by $100 or so, but that should be somewhere in the ballpark.

So $900-1000 for a PC. That's about double a console, extra if you need keyboard, monitor, etc. Let's say that's $500. So now we're 3x a console.

Entry cost is certainly higher, so what do you get in return?

  • deeper catalogue
  • large discounts on older games (anything older than a year or so)
  • emulation and other PC tasks
  • can upgrade piecemeal - next console gen, just need a new CPU + GPU, and if you go AMD, you can probably skip a gen on your mobo + RAM
  • can repurpose old PC once you rebuild it (my old PC is my NAS)
  • generally no need to pay a sub for multiplayer

Depending on how many and what types of games you play, it may or may not be cheaper. I play a ton of indies and rarely play AAA new releases, so a console would be a lot more expensive for me. I also have hundreds of games, and probably play 40 or so in a given year (last year was 50 IIRC). If I save just $10 per game, it would be the same price as a console after 2 years, but I save far more since I wait for sales. Also, I'll have a PC anyway, so technically I should only count the extra stuff I buy for playing games, as in my GPU.

[–] Skyline969@lemmy.ca 0 points 6 hours ago

You do make some decent points, but the console has one major aspect that PC simply does not have: convenience. I install a game and I’m playing it. No settings to tweak, no need to make sure my drivers are up to date, no need to make sure other programs I’m running are interfering with the game, none of that. If I get a game for my console I know it absolutely will work, with the exception of a simply shitty game which happens on PC too.

The other thing I wanted to touch on was the cheap games. That’s just as relevant on console nowadays. For example, I’ve been slowly buying the Yakuza games for $10-$15 each. That’s the exact same discounts I’ve seen on Steam.

For backwards compatibility, it depends on your console. Xbox is quite impressive - if you have an Xbox Series X you can play any game ever released for any Xbox all the way back to the original. Just stick in the disc. With PlayStation, it’s just PS4 games that the PS5 is backwards compatible with. Sony needs to do better. And with Nintendo… lol.

Yeah, with a PC you can do other things than gaming. For most of that you can get a cheap laptop. There are definitely edge cases where a powerful PC is needed such as development, CAD, AI, etc. But on average a gaming-spec PC is not necessary. I’m saying that as a developer and systems administrator for the past 14 years.