Summary
PCs and consoles both have their advantages, but the price discrepancy between them is staggering. It’s worth taking a closer look at why this is, and the multiple forms costs can take.
We Can All Agree Consoles Cost Less Than PCs
It’s not controversial to say that a PC gaming rig is more expensive than a console.Even a budget rigis still going to cost around double the $499 starting point of a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X does. Yet if we’re being real, the appeal of playing on a PC for many is the ability to tailor their rig with the best tech they can afford and regularly make upgrades.
For example, the apple of any PC gamer’s eye right now is NVIDIA’sRTX 5090. The 50 series will likely get a refresh next year, followed by an RTX 60 series a few years after. If you upgrade every cycle, you’re spending quite a lot of cash knowing the next best thing is countable months away. Even if you skip a cycle before upgrading, you still may find yourself paying for another more-expensive-than-a-console GPU before the console generation even flips over. There’s athrill to keeping up with cutting edge technology, but it’s a costly one.
This is before we add in all the other parts you need to buy for a gaming PC, and the added cost of continuing to spend to maintain it all. You’ll wanta mouse and keyboard well-suited for gaming(pricey), ahigh refresh rate monitorthat can display the games at a quality befitting your rig (even pricier), and so on.
All this is worth the money for the right customer (I’ll join you in raising my hand), but it doesn’t compare to the price of buying a plug-and-play console.
Deep Game Discounts Don’t Offset the Cost
One of the much-touted financial benefits of PC gaming is that games get deeper discounts than you’ll usually find on console storefronts. This is great, though it can also backfire.
Steam salesare only the tip of the iceberg here, with so many online retailers—and if we’re being honest about the purchasing practices of PC gamers,dubious key resellers—vying to make a buck. This drives prices down quickly, and if a game you want isn’t on sale, there’s a good chance it will be in short order.
Every game has a “right price” for someone, and most games will reach that price at some point or another. This means it’s easy to fall into thetrap of buying games you’ll never playjust because the price was “too low not to.” The result is some PC gamers paying the same or more than console players overall because of the volume of games purchased (which is, of course, the model PC game retailers bank on).
There’s also the fact that console deals have gotten pretty decent, especially if your console has a disc drive. So, even if your buying habits on PC and console simulate each other, the gap may not be particularly appreciable in the context of offsetting the cost of your rig.
Ultimately, the cost differential between the hardware is hundreds at the lowest and thousands at the upper end. No amount of $4.99 bargains is going to make up the difference.
PC Gaming Also Has a Time and Effort Expense
In the spirit of “time is money,” it’s worth noting the time expense is sacrosanct with PC gaming and largely removed from consoles.
A console is—at least in spirit—a plug-and-play device that requires no knowledge beyond stringing an HDMI cable from your TV to your gaming box. I’d argue that Nintendo is the only company still making good on this exact promise, but the point stands that console gaming is an experience thatforgoes the maintenance, settings tweaking, and troubleshooting that defines PC gaming. At most, you have to pick betweenpre-set performance and fidelity modes.
Even though the aforementioned skills can be learned by anyone who puts in the time, there’s then the effort expense to consider. PCs are where you go to engage your every ounce of focus with a game, whereasconsoles are often off-the-clock chill out machines. The console player has already expended the energy they care to for the day. Both of these are completely valid strokes for different folks, though you can see how the PC crowd would be more inclined to pay for better graphics and visuals given their relationship to their hobby.
With PCs, You Also Get a Computer
What justifies all the expense of a PC rig beyond cutting-edge gaming is that you also end up with an extremely capable computer for both casual and creative use.
While I personally use a laptop as my daily driver and leave my rig for gaming, someone who doesn’t need portability could cut out the cost of buying a laptop altogether. This contextualizes the price of PC gaming as an extension of buying a new all-purpose computer. As someone whose laptop is still more expensive than his PC rig, I can only imagine how much money I’d save if I didn’t need a portable screen beyond my phone.
Consoles have their own extended use cases, too. For example, they’re streaming boxes withbetter versions of apps than you’ll find on Smart TVs, or can be great for playing emulators on your TV likeRetroArch on Xbox Series X. Plus, it’s not impossible that a PC player may be able to avoid buying a TV, which turns that into an expensive proposition for console gamers (albeit, most people buying consoles already have TVs).
The obvious but not insignificant fact that your gaming PC is good for much more than gaming remains a real price justification, though.
I Love Both Experiences, Regardless of Cost
Having fairly recently gotten back into PC gaming, I’ve come to love it enough that I coughed up a not-insignificant chunk to build myself the rig I wanted versus the cheap one I was able to get on sale as a re-entry point.
It’s a more intimate gaming experience that I’ve made unique from console gaming by usingan ultrawide curved monitor. It’s also nostalgic touse some of my old kit, like my Razer Naga and Sennheiser HD 598 that have both been kickin’ for well over a decade. The totality of this experience has been very much worth the cost to me.
At the same time, I’m just not one to awkwardly string an HDMI cord between my PC and TV halfway across my apartment. This leaves consoles as my go-to when it’s time to be a couch potato and look at a big screen (and avoid sitting in the same place I work). Time and effort are a cost I’m not always in the mood to spare, even if the monetary costs have already been sunk. I’ll take the graphics and performance hit because it lets me relax.
Still, I love that there’s always something new and better to strive for with a PC. A dream rig is an ever-shifting goalpost. It makes the techie in me jump for joy, and my wallet cry in sorrow.
If you want to save money on a PC,you should build instead of buying pre-built. Alternatively, if a plug-and-play solution suits you, there are some good reasons whythe PS5 Pro isn’t bad value despite its $700 asking price.
