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Ever since Phil Spencer took charge of the Xbox division and made crucial changes to the console and its pricing, the sales gap between the PS4 and Xbox One has been closing up. Microsoft has also had its fair share of exclusives launch this year with the Halo Master Chief Collection, Titanfall and the highly rated Sunset Overdrive.
Speaking at the UBS Global Technology Conference, EA CFO, Blake Jorgensen said that the Xbox One is catching up quickly:
“Clearly Sony has jumped out to a lead with a great console and I think a great pricing strategy but Microsoft is catching up quickly. Pricing actions that are taking place, particularly during this Christmas season, driven by Microsoft, around reduction plus a lot of bundled software, I think will continue to pull the consumer into the new consoles”.
Microsoft recently passed the 10 million units sold mark while the PS4 still maintains the edge, having shipped 13.5 million consoles. However, it is obvious from these numbers that the 3-1 ratio no longer remains and Microsoft has managed to turn things around over the course of the year.
For now the PS4 is still the top dog this generation but the competition from Microsoft can only lead to better deals for the consumer, which is always a good thing. Retailers like Game UK and even Argos have launched some pretty competitive bundles for both consoles this holiday season.
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KitGuru Says: Microsoft is catching up fast but I hope the company continues to take its recent consumer first approach. Have any of you guys got an Xbox One or PS4 yet? Are you thinking of grabbing a holiday bundle before Christmas?
Wasn’t 10 milion shipped? They say only that, never said buyed from customers
For £349 at Amazon you can get an Xbox One with Forza 2 and two top current games (e.g. FIFA 15 and Halo). The PS4 for the same £349 only includes one top game. Given the extra games are worth around £60 and make the package a decent starting point it is no surprise that the sales have picked up.
On release you would have been a mug to get the Xbox One, now it is a much harder choice. As a big Uncharted fan I am more than happy with my PS4 choice I made on release. If I was buying today though I would be very tempted by the Xbox.
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I love the xbox one new controller. it looks so damn sexy, i feels like i want to protect it from everyone and not to give others to touch it plus the new material is amazing it’s dust resist and sweat resist but the negative point is new material gets scratches really quick whether you use a cotton (not a condom) or not still it scratch when you cleaning it :
Got both. The Xbox One I bought on day one and the PS4 I got after a lucky prize contest when buying a new TV. I only used the PS4 for the Last of Us Remastered game and hardly ever switch it on anymore. The XBOne I keep using fairly often, daily now with the Halo Master Chief Collection. I prefer, in general, to play in the One than the PS4, which I’ll probably just use for its exclusive titles. Whenever it gets any.
Sold to retailers so that websites like kitguru can get confused and send the wrong impression.
I just need it to be smaller then I’ll probably get it.
I was thinking of replacing my 360 controller with a One controller before it was released. Then I tried it out at my friend’s house and the analogue sticks are tiny and feel really unresponsive (of course, this could just have been the One – I am a PC gamer after all, so I’m not used to unresponsive console type experiences), the weighting of the controller was off, and the buttons all felt sticky and weird, but the major problem was the bumpers. I actually can’t use them at all because I have large man hands so when I try to click them it just gets stuck and doesn’t click. So, all in all, in comparison with the great 360 controllers the One controllers were a *huge* disappointment.
You do get a worse machine with the X1 though, and you have to factor that in. If you don’t mind playing in consistent 720p 30FPS, then that’s fine, but if you want a better chance of 1080p 30FPS or 720p 60FPS then the ps4 remains the only choice in console terms. Of course, even a low end gaming PC will play 1080p 60FPS, but most console gamers won’t consider them.
It is a lower powered machine, but the developers seem to have got the hang out of running the games at a slightly lower resolution to balance it. Basically it is not much difference in the real world now they have got going (spoken as a PS4/PC/WiiU gamer).
With the PC’s even a low end gaming machine will cost more than £350 with windows and 3 decent games. Also by the end of the console lifespan there is no way it will run the multiplatform games that are being released at a reasonable quality. For now it will definitely give you better graphics for not much more money, but a much more costly investment to keep up and running.
No offence James, but if you’re buying a console because it has “a better chance” of running slightly higher frame rate or resolution (especially when it isn’t even consistent when it does) then there really is no point in buying either console at all, IMO…
Personally, I’m refusing to buy either of the latest consoles until they stop support for the last gen and that being said probably won’t buy either at all…
I’m waiting for the slim version for both consoles…
I would generally agree – personally, I don’t see the point in buying a console at all, and I’ve never had someone articulate an argument that’s convinced me there are actually any good reasons beyond misinformation about the consoles/PC.
This is a nice collection of myths about PC gaming.
A low end gaming machine can be had for the same price as an XB1 currently, and it will marginally outperform it on most games, and will last much longer (with much higher quality components), and be much quieter. I know this because I build PCs on the side for people – and that is including a small build cost that goes to me. If you self-build then you can build a slightly better machine for even cheaper than the XB1/PS4. That isn’t taking into account the fact that a PC is massively more versatile in function than a console. And then there’s myth #2: Games are *insanely* cheap on the PC – I currently have a collection of 75+ extra games that I’ve collected over the past 6 months to gift to people, on top of my current game library of 300+ games on steam. I worked it out and I’ve spend an average of £2.46 on games – and I have all the AAA titles from the past few years. I picked up Tomb Raider for £1.60 a few months ago and Far Cry 3 about 6 months about for £2, for instance. A week or two ago I snapped up 5 free copies on Metro 2033, and 3 of Insurgency. Another myth (#3) about upgrading: you can choose when to upgrade. If you just upgrade with the consoles, and buy console level hardware each time, then the performance will continue to be on a level with consoles. If you *choose* to upgrade in between console cycles then you are *choosing* to spend money to get a better performing PC. But FYI, the amount you save on games buying for the PC compared to the at least £40 cost of console games, by the way, would fund several hardware upgrades over that time.
You are challenging the wrong person on the facts as I have been building gaming and office PCs for over 20 years now and know my stuff. I am also a keen gamer on all formats with no bias.
Looking at your first claimed myth, me saying a quality low end gaming machine + three new games will cost more than £350 including windows. Here is roughly what I would suggest is a bare minimum budget gaming machine (that will likely struggle to do 1080P on the latest games already):
4 core AMD CPU – £50
Mobo – £30
4GB RAM – £30
Low End Gaming GPU, say a 1GB ATI 260 – £60
500GB HDD – £30
Windows – £70
Case with Cheapo PSU – £30
Keyboard and Mouse – £15
Gaming Controller – £30
2 brand new games and a one year old one (that is what the deal is) – £25 x 2 + £10 = 60
Total excluding build costs – £405
For that you have an fairly noisy and basic looking box that will game arguably slightly better than the consoles at the present moment in time.
Looking at your third claimed myth however; history proves time and time again that a budget or even a high spec PC will struggle to be relevant and play current titles towards the end of a console lifespan. The equivalent machine I would have built someone when the 360 was a year old in 2006 would have been a pre-core-2-duo Celeron or skt 754 Sempron (single cores) with 1GB DDR RAM and an Nvidia 7600GS AGP with 256MB RAM. Try playing COD Advanced Warfare on it and see how far you get. At the time that was seen as above console level hardware, the 360 for instance had a IBM CPU (3 core but much less power per mhz), 512MB RAM for GPU and CPU (with a 10MB GPU buffer) and a cut down version of the x1800 GPU. As such your claim that upgrades are optional is simply not true.
Not quite sure where you got myth 2 from in my post as I don’t claim anything about PC game prices. You are right that the games are cheaper for PCs, but you cannot compare getting Far Cry and Tomb Raider cheap in a sale to the FIFA 15, Halo Masterchief Collection and Forza GOTY Edition included in the Xbox deal I mentioned. Buying the latest games on the PC costs £25 – £35, buying a top year old game with all the additional content costs at least £10 unless you strike lucky with a sale.
A couple of years back there was no competition for the Steam sales from the consoles, but now the likes of PS+ and Games for Gold mean there is plenty for those who want to play slightly older games for next to nothing. For instance both Far Cry 3 and Tomb Raider were on PS+ a while back. You get 2 games a month minimum for each of 3 PS consoles for £30 a year (41.6p a game for those with all three consoles), hardly expensive.
Anyway, get yer PC Blinker Vison of and you might appreciate that there are benefits to all gaming routes 😉
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/platoandfriends%40gmail.com/saved/FPgCmG
£340. Better case, better CPU, better RAM (since it has no share), more and faster storage (XB1 is 5400RPM, 500gb, this is 7200, 750gb), *much* better GPU, nice windowed gaming case, and great 80+ bronze branded PSU. No need for keys/mouse since everyone has one – and if they don’t you’re only looking at £2 from Asda or somewhere. No need for Windows 7 since SteamOS is free, and we’re talking a gaming machine here so SteamOS is comparable to the consoles.
This comes with the Never Settle bundle, so 3 free AAA new games (including choices like Star Citizen which isn’t even out yet but includes Alpha/Beta access, and Alien Isolation). Remember that this is £10 cheaper, comes with better games (since SC is the biggest PC game in over a decade – compared to yearly iterations like CoD), and will perform *much* better than the XB1.
I’m not going to bother too much with the claim ‘history proves time and time again that a budget or even a high spec PC will struggle to be relevant and play current titles towards the end of a console lifespan.’ Partly because this just isn’t true – your idea of equivalent hardware is laughable and you haven’t actually done the maths. Beyond this, there is a key difference between last and this gen – i.e., the consoles don’t use weird hardware. The ps3 in particular used such weird hardware that porting from ps3 to PC left the PC port a mess. It basically meant that over time as the devs got used to the hardware in these the performance difference became more stark between the ps3 in particular (but also the 360) and the PC. This time around they basically use standard PC hardware (beyond the shared ram and esram buffer), and so the performance is pretty comparable unless the devs purposefully screw it up. Even in software terms the XB1 is basically running a gimped 8.1, which will transition to 10, so the optimisations often just cross over directly. The only problem is VRAM for the PC, and that will even itself out over the next year one way or another. That’s why MS and Sony have attempted to pull so many exclusives, and are paying through the roof for it – because devs know they could easily release for the PC because porting is much easier this time around – but MS also know that they can’t rely on better efficiency so the PC versions will often look better even with comparable hardware (partly because their UIs are such hogs). It’s a compound financial issue, which you just haven’t considered. The money you say in not having to buy £40+ games and not having to pay for a subscription to access the internet, and not having to pay for crap overpriced hardware can go to upgrades.
PS+ and Games for Gold are a totally different ball game. In order to use both, you have to buy their hardware and sign up to a subscription service, for a start. PS is particularly bad for that, because you have to buy multiple hardware of theirs – so the only way to compare is to add on the price of the multiples of hardware (which I know you won’t want to do). Steam is incomparable in that there is no subscription. If you like, you can just wait for humble bundles to come around and pay the minimum $1 (64p) each time and get the basic games; usually around 4 games, and these are often just slightly older AAA games. The current deal for the Jumble Bundle is you can pay 63p and you’ll get Tesla Effect, Always Sometimes Monsters, 4 copies of Insurgency, and Full Moto Rampage. This is a typical bundle – you also frequently get big publishers on HB, and you’ll get 3/4/5 AAA games. So, no need for a subscription which ties you in and costs you lots without any power, and with no flexibility for those with no cash, and you get much cheaper, and just as good (sometimes better) games.
This isn’t even considering the myriad of advantages on the PC.
OK, by your claim you have saved £10. Firstly that requires buying your hardware from 6 places with the postage for only 2 included, saving more than gone. You are then ignoring the OS required to play the games you are including in your calc and instead assuming that an unreleased OS that has unknown support or even release date is suitable for most people (it is a long way from that). You are also ignoring an input device on the basis that people already have them. You may have them but not everyone has them, they also are unlikely to be quality gaming input devices. To go like for like the Steam OS that you are keen on has a recommended controller and I guarantee you that won’t be free when they finally release it (my guess is £40+ including a receiver).
The games bundle is simply not the equivalent, the best options which you suggested are an unreleased title and a title that has already been heavily discounted. Neither of these are physical retail copies of full price games like Halo and FIFA, both of which have resale value after playing.
Not bothering with my claim about history is basically admission that you don’t know what you are talking about with reference to the hardware of that era, or the previous two eras where the same process has played out. At the equivalent time last gen (end of 2006) Core 2 Duo was brand new and the cheapest model cost over £150 for the processor alone and motherboards started at £100. As such if you wanted a machine for similar money to a console you had to build one based on the previous sockets of the time. The spec I have given would be the basis of a roughly £400 machine, not a high budget at the time but not laughable either. If you notice there is a similarity in that the consoles have a higher count of lower power processors this time too with Octa Core compared to the four we have both included in our setups. I agree the hardware is more similar this time round which may help maters a bit. However the fact will remain that the console games will be far better optimised and PC game developers will continue to assume PC gamers are willing to pay for brute force to run games well, like they always have.
Your maths on the PS+ is also madness. You do get the most benefit from the subscription if you own their three current pieces of hardware but clearly there is no requirement to own more than one. At least 24 games for your PS4 for 30 is hardly expensive and you will have the hardware if you have bought it, just like you need to buy PC hardware to get the deals available for a PC. As I said the PC is still cheaper for games overall, but the consoles have come back a long way in recent times and offer good value.
Clearly there is no convincing you that anything but a PC is a good option. You said before that no one has articulated an argument that has convinced you that there are actually any good reasons for a console beyond misinformation about the consoles/PC. It would not be possible to do so as you do not view things from both sides, only from the view you want which seemingly included large amounts of misinformation on PCs. You have in no way convinced me you can build a better gaming PC for less money than a console. Also I am keen to know what the myriad of advantages are in a PC if using an unreleased gaming based OS, with no input device and using a large, power guzzling box with noisy hardware? How do you make a profit and how do your customers find Steam OS? I love my PC and the gaming on it, but it cost much more than any console I have owned and I have to invest in it to keep it running the latest games. Come back in six years and re-read your comments, reckon you may learn something. Peace out 🙂
Just because you aren’t a wise consumer doesn’t mean you can be sanctimonious and assume, based on insanely faulty logic and your own inexperience/knowledge, that I am wrong.
That build took me five minutes – I didn’t really put any time into it because it was just meant to be an example. I could easily come up with the same sort of gear for the same sort of price, and the market isn’t even that good at the moment for PC parts, so it can only get better. Either way, given that it’s better *in* *every* *way*, paying some postage isn’t the end of the world even if you did have to pay it (which you wouldn’t, because I’d spend more than 5 minutes building it).
The entire first paragraph isn’t really worth considering because you can’t just selectively demand that people buy higher quality more expensive items. SteamOS beta is already out – you can already download it – and it works just fine. If you’re not comfortable with that then another version of Linux is perfectly fine for gaming these days – it’s not as well supported as Windows, but you’re still able to play the majority of games just fine. You certainly have a much larger game selection on either console. You really don’t have any ground for arguing you ‘have to’ buy Windows – the only reason you’re arguing this is to try to make the build more expensive. I already said that keys and mouse cost around £2 from supermarkets or ebay, and even the cheapest ones are fine – especially compared to the XB1 controller which is actually unusable if you have adult male sized hands. Again you’re just doing your best to invent reasons why there is an issue, like most fanatics when they reach the end of their ability to argue. I could equally demand that you have to have a package with the Kinect (which would set you back another £50 at least), because that’s the intended input device. Given that using keys/mouse over a controller loses you no functions while having no kinect loses you a whole bunch of native features then I’d be well within my rights to do so, but I haven’t because we’re talking about the cheapest, best, gaming machine. In other words, it just doesn’t work that way, and it’s unbelievable that you think it does.
Your remark about Star Citizen not being the equal of Halo is the most revealing. Frankly, there is *absolutely no way* you properly game on a PC, based purely on this comment.
Star Citizen is one of the most anticipated games ever released, and the resale of accounts is a thriving business. Alpha and Beta accounts with the ships included as bonuses like this are worth well above £50, and go as high as £100+. There is not another game on the market, or planned for release in the near future that even rivals it. Frankly, a package on the XB1 that included FIFA 15, CoD AW, The Masterchief Collection, and a handful of other games *still* wouldn’t come to equal Star Citizen on its own. This is a game that has people playing on it who’ve spent more than £15,000 just to help the development; it earned nearly as much as the funding for the Oculus Rift itself on Kickstarter, and since then they’ve had even more pledges on their website than they had on the KS. It’s just that good. However, I didn’t say that in the beginning, because I thought I’d be conservative and avoid the debate. To claim that a shitty sub-HD rerelease of already existing games and an annual cash-cow stuttery mess that plays like crap (i.e. FIFA 15) is in any way equal to a new highly rated and reviewed original action horror (Alien), and early access and a full account with unique items for what is very likely to be the best game of the century *and* a choice of another game, or alternate games to those – to suggest they are in any way equal is just insanity. If you really think that then there is simply no reason in there whatsoever.
You have just repeated yourself in your comment about hardware, and you haven’t offered any evidence or reason to justify the claim of better optimisation. You haven’t considered any of my points really, e.g. that optimisation for the XB1 is effectively optimisation for Windows.
It is true that for console gamers PS+ and games for Gold can offer good value, when you compare it with their normal £50-60 prices. But they are like clubcard points – they’re aimed specifically at getting you to buy other products; they’re gateway products. You have to be really careful not to end up spending far more cash, and even then you’re *still* paying a subscription service, and you’re *still* relying on the benevolent masters to deliver what you want, because it’s their way or the highway. You have no choice, and you have no financial backup. Either way, this simply is not the equivalent of day one games being half the price on PC (they sell for £25-30 on steam and 3rd party distributors vs the £50-60 cost on the ps4/XB1), and older games being vastly discounted. As for used games, there is simply no market even if it were possible. Games are so cheap that the effort and risk involved with purchasing used games isn’t worth it, and with Steam Family and Friends sharing, you can play any game on your friend’s libraries anyway. None of us PC gamers really like using DRM, but steam has given us so many features and positives that we don’t complain much. And it’s not just steam on the PC remember – you get deals on Origin (a free weekly game, if I remember correctly), and Greenmangaming do frequent sales, and you’ve got the Humble Bundle, and more. So, in sum, ps+ and games for Gold are a (well-calculated) move forward for MS and Sony, but they aren’t at all comparable with the PC equivalents.
As for similar hardware, you’re not really making any point that I can discern.
You accuse me of being sanctimonious and incorrect but then don’t back your claims with facts and continue to avoid looking at the glaring holes in what you are claiming. Show me the PC build for less than the cost of a console that gives you a builders profit and better quality experience? You said you had already built them for customers so how can it be a bad time for PC hardware when you have done it when the hardware was more expensive in the past? Likewise list the latest AAA game releases that work on Steam OS or Linux? What proportion of retail games are available on Linux and how long after other platforms do you normally wait for the release? My guess is in reality you use Windows as otherwise you would know how few games are available for Linux. I would also be impressed if you showed me the fantastic build you would have done for under £400 in 2007 that would have stood the test of time? Maybe link to the £2 keyboard and mouse you want to use? Or show me the people who are loving that £2 set as a gaming input device, or even a positive review of the set? For reference here is the first pad review for the Xbox One pad I found: http://www.engadget.com/products/microsoft/xbox/one/wireless-controller/ , here is the PS4 pad review from the same site: http://www.engadget.com/products/sony/dualshock/4/
With regard Star Citizen, I am not saying whether it is a better or worse game as it has not been released so it is all guesswork. People having invested heavily in it does not guarantee quality, nothing does other than a large number of people having played the final version and confirming it is top notch. For my fair comparison I am saying that if someone went for retail, windows PC copies of FIFA 15 and say Farcry 4 (a similar costing FPS on the Xbox 1) they would add to the cost of the build. Obviously taste and choice in games varies, but there is a simple fact on both machines that retail copies of actual popular releases cost more than codes for an underselling game (alien) and an unreleased game (Starcitizen). If you can’t see that point of view then tak games out of the equation and make a decent PC with top games available and a quality way of controlling them for the £270 you can buy an Xbox One without games: http://www.247electronics.co.uk/xbox-one-console.html
With regards Kinect it is well documented that MS have made it a background item, the removal of it is a significant factor in my initial statement that the Xbox One now represents decent value. Saying that it needs to be included as I have suggested a gaming PC should have a £15 keyboard and mouse and a £30 pad is nuts, might as well say a PC needs an Oculus Rift included and a £100 Corsair keyboard. You can play every release on the PS4 with just a pad and every decent release on the Xbox one with a pad. On the PC games are heavily optimised for both options, I would want a good mouse and keyboard for some, a pad for others and I think anyone who has played action games like FIFA or Devli May Cry with a keyboard or a strategy games with a pad would be in strong agreement. The need for both is why Valve have designed their Steam Controller which tries to be the best of both worlds.
If you want more info on the optimisation argument have a little look online. Console optimisation is generally better than PC optimisation because they have access to lower level graphics APIs than are available on the PC. They are also in complete knowledge of the exact hardware in each and every console so they can code it to take advantages of the strong points and work around the weak points. The PC code has to be more general and in the is not commonly anywhere near as direct in talking to the hardware (though Mantle and the new Direct X have the potential to improve this). There is a potential that the similarities will reduce the gap in performance from the same hardware this time, but at present this is unproven. It will never negate it completely however owing to the inefficiency of coding for a general platform over specific hardware. Again, come back to this thread in 6 years and compare the recommended requirements for the current games with the hardware you can currently buy for console prices, I promise you even the over budget spec you have given will struggle to meet minimum specs on games that are running on the current consoles.
With the cost of games again I would point out that I have agreed that PC games are cheaper, that is even if you get the resellable retail versions, nevermind the locked downloads you are suggesting. However I am yet to pay significantly more than £40 for a PS4 game on release as I shop around, the gap is not the double price you are suggesting. I can also confirm I have not been duped into buying anything by PS+, how full retail and indie games are a gateway product is beyond me. Writing off the entire used games market is also a bit strange. MS tried to do the same before releasing the Xbox One and they had to change their entire policy as it caused a massive backlash. Many gamers like the fact they have a physical product to do with as they please, are you saying they are all wrong? You regularly see people buying the latest games and playing them through within a month so they can sell for about £5 less than they paid, a very cheap way of having access to the latest games that is harder to experience on the PC. I agree that between Steam, Origin, GMG and Humble the cheap end of gaming is better on PC, but I think that PS+ in particular is comparable as it gives you more quality games than you can play for very little outlay which is exactly the situation I have on my PC.
Anyway I will leave it at that unless you can backup your claims that I have questioned at the start of this post. No point arguing with a brick wall.
10 million shipped, not 10 million sold. Their console SALES are still sitting around 7 million
The reason that I haven’t included links is because a brief Google search yields the results. I’ll do that from now on, if you can’t access Google – though I thought the consoles had internet browsing? /s
Why would I include builders profit? I’m assuming that people will build them themselves… There is no more reason to have someone build a PC for you than there is to get a flatpack built by someone else. The only people who need this service are those with too much money and not enough time, and they don’t fit into this category. Yet again, I must repeat that you are not comparing like for like. Someone looking for a budget PC would and should self-build, and they would not (and don’t) have any trouble doing this. As for ‘better experience’, you’re just making a fool of yourself. You know nothing about hardware if you don’t understand that this build is *significantly* superior to either console. Only using one scale of measurement, the R9 270 can output 2.37-56tlops (depending on the card), not overclocked, while the XB1 GPU outputs 1.32tflops. In terms of raw power, that’s almost double.
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/ps4-vs-xbox-720-which-is-better-1127315/2
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/graphics-cards/radeon-r9-270-slides-into-amd-gpu-family-new-battlefield-4-bundle-revealed-1198971
(links above, for the Google handicapped).
Your understanding of hardware market is amusingly limited – let me explain more, I guess I just assumed that you knew about this stuff (because you said you did). Hardware prices vary hugely for multiple reasons: lifetime of individual products, new process tech, new product lineups on the horizon, general economic cycles in the market, seasonal economic changes. If you want to observe this PCpartpicker records data of this type in a handy graph as a sample for each individual part. Right now is not a great time to buy for a number of reasons – though it’s not really a terrible time either. I can’t include all of the reasons because there are an almost infinite number of them, so I’ll just explain those I see as most important. First, AMD aren’t really competing with Nvidia in the high end at the moment because they haven’t released a new process lineup of GPUs to compete with the 900 series. This filters down the market and has led to less competition, and thus less competitive pricing than we on the PC side hope for. Then there’s the time of year: it’s not yet pre-Christmas, when the sales will begin. Outlets always slowly raise their prices up to the Christmas sale period, just before they drop them, because this means they can give a high ‘was’ figure, and a relatively normal ‘now’ figure, meaning it looks like it’s much cheaper than it is, and looks like you save more. Amazon and the big retailers are the worst for this. Right now we’re in the ‘high’ period just before the plummet when the sales will come. Just look at PCpartpicker for a sample, and you’ll see what I mean.
FYI: There are currently 60 pages worth of games, including CIV5, Borderlands (1, 2, presequel), the entire Valve library, etc that work on SteamOS – that’s more than the entire library of games for both consoles, I’d bet. Anything that works on Linux distribution packages will work on SteamOS, and things that won’t natively can be run via Wine or other similar things. If you *must* have Windows then you can buy a key from ebay for £15-20. However, this is not necessary, and it’s not legitimate for you to demand this. A budget user would use a free OS, and they’d still have access to more games on a Linux package than on the XB1 or ps4.
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=&sort_by=_ASC&os=linux&page=1
(for the steam search crippled)
I’m not going to talk about 2006 PC builds. This is pointless because it’s not what we’re talking about and I’ve already described many of the differences between last and this gen, and impossible given the fluctuations in the market that are now lost to the record.
If you went over to /r/pcgaming, or /r/pcmasterrace, you would right now find imgur links to people currently using 20 year old mice. Most people don’t use mechs and gaming mice; yet *again* I must repeat that we are talking about a budget gamer. A budget mouse and keyboard are fine for games. My wife uses a £2 mouse/mousepad set and a £1 keyboard, and games with this, and won’t buy new gear because she likes them – and I use a CM Sentinel mouse and a Ducky Zero, so it’s not like she’s ignorant of quality. I could equally demand of you the Kinect, if you’re going to demand a controller, and if you demand I budget for a high quality keys/mouse set then I could equally justify demanding you budget for a third party high quality controller, like a Razor product, which will set you down more than a high quality mouse/keys.
As for your ‘point of view’ about Star Citizen, this is yet another biased travesty. Don’t you get sick of special pleading? PC games are vastly cheaper than Sony/MS games because they don’t have the hideous licensing fee. That doesn’t mean they’re lower quality (lol@that), it just means, as usual, the PC is better in another way for the customer. As for wanting to play DMC on a controller, I just want to say good luck playing any kinect game without a kinect. You cannot make this demand, just give it up. Obviously I will ignore your request to build a pc that includes Windows and mouse/keys for £270, because I have already explained how this is special pleading. However, for that budget, this is what I would build, for use with SteamOS and free mouse/keys, as I have suggested:
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/platoandfriends%40gmail.com/saved/yhFYcf
It still has a better CPU, better quality RAM, a very similar HDD (that would have more space because SteamOS needs much less space than the XB1), a better GPU (1.54 tflops, with no hogging OS), and a nice Windowed gaming case again and reliable 80+ bronze PSU. This would come with 2 free games from the Never Settle as above. So, a better PC than the consoles, and 2 free games on top. If the consoles can’t even beat the PC in precisely their own market segment then that’s nothing but laughable.
http://sites.amd.com/us/promo/never-settle/Pages/never-settle.aspx
APIs? Lol, again. You mention DX and Mantle, but don’t seem to actually know anything about them. I really can’t be bothered explaining this, so you’ll just need to look these up. The XB1 runs on DX 11, and will be getting DX 12 – same as Windows. The API access is *exactly the same*. Yes, a Windows machine can harness this best as a result, but here I’m addressing your argument that the consoles have lower level APIs. This is simply not true. In hardware terms as well: both consoles are AMD hardware, slightly remodelled versions of the HD7750. The CPU is a low frequency 8 core AMD APU, Jaguar based architecture, most suitable for mobiles and tablets. I have a similar type in my own phone. The 4300 I posted above absolutely dominates it – Jaguar is less advanced than Bulldozer nevermind Piledriver. In terms of coding for various cards, again, this is just ignorance. There are a very limited number of architectures on the market right now. AMD and Nvidia are the only designers, and it’s really very easy to code for these: a good load of the job is done already by coding for the XB1/ps4. So, there is no reason whatsoever to think that the consoles will get *any* real optimisation advantages this time around, never mind small ones. For crying out loud, MS’s major day one franchise Titanfall is better optimised for the PC than XB1:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-titanfall-next-gen-face-off
And plays a crapload better, hence:
http://hothardware.com/News/HeadToHead-Battle-Confirms-Titanfall-Is-Best-Played-On-PC-/
FYI: I have never paid more than £15 for a PC game, and I buy day one sometimes. My average price paid for a decent PC game is around £2.50; and that’s for permanent access. I can play other people’s games for free, which is equivalent to your idea of resale a week later for £5 less (which is really exaggerated by the way); except, of course, that free is quite literally *infinitely* cheaper than ‘£5’ (read £15). I shop around too, but again I wasn’t counting that as I thought it was an unfair thing to include. Standard pricing for games on PC is half or less than half standard on the consoles. I’m not writing off the used game market for consoles at all. It makes sense on the consoles. But it doesn’t make sense on the PC because new games are so cheap and easy, so there wouldn’t be a market for them even if people wanted them because there wouldn’t be any profit in it.
Bear in mind that I am talking about the least advantageous parts of PC gaming – the parts where the consoles really should be winning. We haven’t talked about the massively larger game library, huge amount of exclusives, better graphics, better performance, much cheaper overall experience, more flexible experience in terms of inputs (controllers, keys/mouse/whatever), and outputs (monitors, TV sets, portable dvd players, broken laptops), or the bigger communities, the free online play, the lack of any subscriptions, the multi-functionality of the device, the widespread compatibility, and I could go on ad nauseum. We have only talked about the worse bits for the PC and the best bits for the consoles, and *even there* the PC seems to beat them.
Why should you price with a builders profit, well because that was your initial claim, you wrote:
“A low end gaming machine can be had for the same price as an XB1 currently, and it will marginally outperform it on most games, and will last much longer (with much higher quality components), and be much quieter. I know this because I build PCs on the side for people – and that is including a small build cost that goes to me.”
You are still no closer to backing this up than at any point previously. Your latest build still ignores delivery charges, an input device and the OS required to run the majority of AAA PC games. If as you say you are a system builder with a number of customers you would know that these are generally part of the costs you have to include to price jobs for your customers, as well as a profit for yourself.
Instead of actually answering my reasonable questions you seem intent on name calling, accusing me of not understanding anything and blowing a lot of huff and puff about things I have in no way implied or said such as claiming I said PC games are lower quality. You did not answer a single question with an accurately backed up fact which says a lot about the quality of your reply.
I am banging my head against a brick wall here as you seem completely unable to see any of the flaws and contradictions in your own statements. I get it you like PCs, they are your big love in your life. I do too but I am not blind to why so many people buy consoles. I suppose all the millions of people who can see benefits in both, or the many more who simply prefer consoles are all ill informed idiots to you, I bow down as you are clearly very clever and know better than millions of people.
Anyway this is my last reply, starting to think you are just trolling.
true that i also have big hands but im kinda used to it now with the new sticks.