The Unspoken Price Drop

In the politics of gaming, I am a PC partisan. Though I may occasionally dabble with console gaming like a repressed ultra-conservative dabbling in a gender identity crisis, in the glaring light of day I fall firmly in that grand old PC curmudgeon party. Were the forces of console gaming to crumble tomorrow and the greedy eye of the gaming industry to once again turn its electric gaze on our platform of ill repute, I would champion it as a victory for good taste and basic human liberty.

So, I was encouraged this week by an e-mail that turned up in our inbox. It was penned for discussion on the podcast, and hopefully that will still take place, but I am unilaterally co-opting the comment for my own nefarious and opinionated purposes here.

The idea is a simple one — that the once vast cost margin between console and PC gaming has all but closed. At the end of my discussion today I want to leave you with two thoughts, and rather than making you wait I’ll offer them here for you to consider now.

The first is that this analysis is spot on.

The second is that it does not matter a whit.

Here is an excerpt of that e-mail:

If I was to get a ps3 slim today and all the peripherals for the playstation move, my total comes up to $450 ($300 ps3 $80 for move and nun chuck controller and $40 for the eye). Same thing with the new xbox and Natal... sorry Kinnect priced at $150. Hasn't the computer become a the cheaper gaming alternative? I walked in to my local computer store the other day and saw a rig running MW2 on 3 screens. They had the thing advertised for $750 Canadian dollars. Most people out there would do fine just by upgrading to a $200 video card.

Okay, first I grant you that the e-mailer (who added no name to his comment, but who hails from the ever reputable hotmail.com) is playing fast and loose with some pretty basic math. Even a numerically intolerant old English major like me can still register the fundamental inequality of $750>$500, so while his premise intrigues me I abandon full support well before the line of arguing that PC gaming is actually cheaper. It’s not, but it is _getting_ cheaper.

Let’s talk Xbox 360 for a minute, though. Just to keep our casual analysis nice and fair, we’ll just pretend like I’m not on my third machine since 2005, or that my total hardware investment is actually around $700 alone. Were you to fire over to Amazon.com today and purchase even the cheaper 120GB Xbox Elite, you will cough up 250 bones, but let’s be realistic about that purchase. If you are me, you’re going to need another controller. You’re going to need HDMI cables. You’re going to need Xbox LIVE, maybe even for the whole family. And, this winter, you’re going to need Kinnect.

That supposed $250 barrier to entry, if you are me, is really closer to $600 — roughly the same price as a relatively decent low end Dell laptop.

The industry likes to make a big deal about price drops, but somehow they have really done relatively little to actually keep consumer total costs in line as these systems enter middle-age. On the other side, the past half decade has seen a precipitous and real world drop in price for desktops and laptops.

I won’t go so far as to say that PC gaming has become trivially cheap — though if you are adventurous, comfortable with handling a little bit of tech and savvy you can shave away hundreds of dollars — but it certainly has come in line with console gaming. So the what is, I think, the underlying premise posed by our e-mail is a valid one: why haven’t game companies and consumers started backing the PC horse?

The short answer that most companies give is piracy.

The more complex answer is that companies make their games where the money is, and gamers go where the games are. At some point a number of years ago, the PC market became so toxic that game makers abandoned it even though there was still a large and healthy population of buyers. These were the days of driver issues, compatibility frustrations, skyrocketing processor costs and the evolution of internet piracy. Making a game exclusive to the PC was like buying speculation property on a variable rate interest only home loan in Las Vegas — a completely losing proposition. For publishers, money is just easier to make on the consoles, and so the game companies left and the gamers went with them.

Here's the thing though. Let's say that the problem of piracy were entirely resolved to the satisfaction of both game makers and gamers tomorrow. There would be no mass exodus back home to PC gaming. The basic landscape of a post-piracy gaming world would probably look a lot like today's. Business operates best from inertia, and for all its flaws the console market is a stable and rich one. This is the world we lost PC gamers will continue to live in, one of sloppy console ports, open animosity from once mighty developers suffering from some kind of corporate-wide PTSD and a gaming industry drifting inevitably toward total media integration and innovation through gadgetry.

Depressing, right? Well, actually I’d say no. After all, as a primarily PC gamer, the market drift is kind of working for my pocketbook. The pressure to keep costs low on my platform of choice is creating some pretty good deals, not the least of which is that new releases are traditionally cheaper, and while I can’t get every game I may want, I pay a lot less than I did five years ago to sustain my still healthy habit. Digital distribution is an advanced lifeform on PCs, and the rich independent market augments the not as prominent but still considerable major publisher releases.

I don’t imagine that I am a typical example, but I am definitely feeling the drain on my wallet coming from those scheming little boxes entrenched around my television. Like the once mighty PC marker, the constant push to upgrade and enhance is becoming a cost burden, and based on this year’s E3 there is no sign on the horizon that the trend will change. One might almost describe it as bubble-esque.

Do I think that should that bubble burst, suddenly people will rush back to the PC as the platform of choice? Not really. That ship has sailed into the west, but I have come to terms with the new face of PC gaming and have made peace. I’m just glad that it’s going to cost a lot less.

Comments

I concur with those who say adding Kinect to the price is not fair. Also, in your comments it sounds like you are adding a $50 HDMI cable to the $250 Xbox to get $300. If you are paying $50 for an HDMI cable, then I have some snake oil to sell you.

But to cap it all off, the price of PC gaming is still too much when you consider that for most people, you will be spending the cost of entry ON TOP OF what you already paid for your console cost of entry. If you are a serious gamer, you can't possibly game on PC only. There are just too many games that are console only. So everyone already owns a console, be it PS3 or Xbox 360. So the $600 for a PC is an extra barrier to play a small subset of games that are not available on consoles.

And that brings us to where I am right now. Do I want to fork over $600+ just to play Starcraft 2? Sure there's a few other PC-only games I might be interested in. But then it comes down to the ultimate resource: time. I barely have enough time to play the console games I want to play, much less PC games which are generally even more time consuming.

Kojiro wrote:

If you are a serious gamer, you can't possibly game on PC only. There are just too many games that are console only. So everyone already owns a console, be it PS3 or Xbox 360. So the $600 for a PC is an extra barrier to play a small subset of games that are not available on consoles.

So now we're just assuming everyone owns a console now? Wrong wrong wronngity wrong.

Kojiro wrote:

But to cap it all off, the price of PC gaming is still too much when you consider that for most people, you will be spending the cost of entry ON TOP OF what you already paid for your console cost of entry. If you are a serious gamer, you can't possibly game on PC only. There are just too many games that are console only. So everyone already owns a console, be it PS3 or Xbox 360. So the $600 for a PC is an extra barrier to play a small subset of games that are not available on consoles.

I just highlighted the only part of the paragraph that's true. If you have enough time to play every game that comes out even on a single console (or on the PC), I would like to purchase your magical time dilation device.

beeporama wrote:
Nelly K wrote:

The barrier of entry for PC is definitely getting cheaper and there's no reason PC can't compete with consoles on the price front. The problem is there's no one company driving home that notion to the buying public. It really becomes a matter of research, which for a lot of people, is asking too much. When I bought my 360, it cost around 550 with an extra controller, charging cable, hard drive, and some used games (yes, I went to Gamestop, and yes, I bought their protection plan like an idiot). I was one of the desperate fools that got duped into buying an arcade sku 'cuz the premiums were out of stock everywhere. HDTV enhanced the experience tenfold. Slap on another 650 bucks for that. The real investment for my console experience was roughly 1200 dollars. Yes I also play movies and other stuff on my HDTV... through my Xbox. Console gaming is arguably more expensive than PC gaming in the long run, especially if you want all this add-on stuff coming to the consoles, but can live with a less-than-bleeding-edge graphics card.

You aren't making a great argument here. You say your "real investment" was around $1200, but you're counting all kinds of extras, including the HDTV! (Not to mention poor decisions you're admitting to flat out.) I think assembling a PC with multiple controllers, some games, and a monitor equivalent to an HDTV would be hard to get in under $1200. Perhaps there is some price parity at this point but it's not fair to cheat in the comparisons.

More importantly, they typical consumer (who, yes, doesn't do research, just like many of us spend money instead of learning to do our own plumbing, fix our own car, etc.) will already have a television. Few people are starting with nothing and saying "okay, I am going to build the best possible gaming experience within my budget." They have a TV, and a very limited budget (most of us also won't spend $1200 all at once, but find it easier to spread it out over time). It's the cost of a console with nothing else versus the cost of a laptop or PC (and possibly a monitor since most people still don't have the know-how to hook a PC up to a TV set). That's where console wins the war, because all the extra crap can be bought a few paychecks later. You can even hook it up to an old standard def television if you're really poor and get the HDTV later.

I was speaking from my specific experience, not from the perspective of the general populace. Obviously I'm in the minority on this and your point is well-received. I bought my HDTV specifically to complement my Xbox. All of my entertainment derives from it, so yes, in some cases, it is fair to include the price of the HDTV because I am that guy you describe in your second paragraph. I built the best possible gaming experience within the budget I allotted myself all in one shot. On the flip side of that coin, HDTV's are getting cheaper so maybe that washes out the argument anyway.

For me it's convenience. I have a PC connected to my plasma tv, but to get it to work right takes way more work than I want it to.

1. Nvidia drivers are stupid. They detect my tv as an hdtv, and for some reason believe that it should set the brightness to limited (16-235) rather than full if the game resolution is anything less than 1080p. To change its mind I have to enter resolutions manually. And that only works for 1280x720--when I try to do it for other resolutions, like 1024x768, the drivers which were already unable to show 1024x768 in a 4:3 resolution on my screen, show a completely distorted image. This problem alone will turn anyone off from trying to using a PC as a gaming platform. Even if the problem is somehow my fault, it's still a disaster as far as convenience goes. On the PS3 I plug in an hdmi cable, change the brightness range to full, and voila--everything just works.

2. controls. keyboard and mouse are great for the desktop, but not so convenient when I'm sitting on the couch. I bought a wireless controller, but every game recognizes it differently, and in many games I can't swap the dual stick controls, so the right one ends up being movement and the left gets used for aiming. Beyond that I have to configure controls for every game--I like configuration and which consoles would have it, but give me a few defaults assuming an xbox/ps3 type controller, please.

I like messing around with configuration options, but only as long as I can actually get the thing to work right. Nvidia seems bent on preventing that. So I'm mostly a console player these days.

All the great deals that have been on Steam lately make me happy in my pants.

Comparing the cost of consoles to PCs seems unfair. Don't most, if not all, people have a PC already? Maybe all you need to make it gameable is a 100-200 dollar graphics card?

burntham77 wrote:

All the great deals that have been on Steam lately make me happy in my pants.

Comparing the cost of consoles to PCs seems unfair. Don't most, if not all, people have a PC already? Maybe all you need to make it gameable is a 100-200 dollar graphics card?

These days, I think more and more people have a laptop or even netbook instead of a PC. It's still a bit apples-and-oranges, though, as you say.

This thread has really brought me around on the idea that it's still the knowledge gap that is the problem. Consoles may be getting more complex, but I wouldn't begin to know how to shop graphics cards (if I even had a desktop), and despite being tech savvy I struggle to output from my laptop to my television. I don't know much about Steam (but more than the layman). And there are still a lot of games sold on a whim, with people browsing the store looking at box art and asking what a game is like.

It does seem like PC gaming can be cheaper and more effective but only if you meet certain criteria: have/want a desktop PC anyway, fairly savvy, don't crave physical media.

burntham77 wrote:

All the great deals that have been on Steam lately make me happy in my pants.

Comparing the cost of consoles to PCs seems unfair. Don't most, if not all, people have a PC already? Maybe all you need to make it gameable is a 100-200 dollar graphics card?

Unless you need to upgrade the motherboard, and then maybe the power supply. I got out of the game because it was rarely just the 100-200 dollars. That 100-200 dollars just forced me to make other upgrades so that the 100-200 didn't go to waste.

And regardless, I got tired of having to red the requirements on the games, which really don't tell you what you really need. And the requirements have gotten more complicated as the chipsets are no longer nice numbers that increase.

And for me, it really isn't the cost, anyway. I switched to Mac, so I spend more for what has been a much better computing experience. I was willing to sacrifice gaming for a better all-around experience because console gaming has become so good. When Alan Wake came out, I didn't read the requirements on the box, or even wonder what sacrifices I might make to make it run well.

Things could change, but even spending time with Windows 7 via my daughter's laptop, I'm not inspired to make a change at this point.

The thing about PC gaming is, if you don't have a capable 3D card, you can still do an awful lot of gaming that you can't get elsewhere. Flashy graphics 3D gaming is a subset of PC gaming, not the entirety, and even low-end graphics cards can start up things like Civ4.

I may be in the minority here, but for me, playing console games while sitting across the room on the couch (no matter how big the TV is) is much less immersive than playing on the PC in which the monitor is 2 feet from my eyeballs. This is why I played RDR on my 360 connected to my PC monitor and speakers.

MeatMan wrote:

I may be in the minority here, but for me, playing console games while sitting across the room on the couch (no matter how big the TV is) is much less immersive than playing on the PC in which the monitor is 2 feet from my eyeballs. This is why I played RDR on my 360 connected to my PC monitor and speakers.

You could sit closer to the TV.

This thread is still going? I bet Elysium already has the next provocative console/PC article typed up, ready for the next time that we hit a valley in site traffic.

Look, we can move goalposts around all day long. What if you don't have a TV? What if you don't have a PC? What if you don't have a broadband connection and, thus, can't take advantage of digital distribution? Elysium's article set the pace for this discussion with wacky provisos and prerequisites for one side versus the other, and the last three pages in this thread haven't tripped up yet.

Instead of carrying that baton any further, I'd rather jump back to a key tenet of the original post: if PCs are getting cheaper, what exactly does that mean?

On the surface, I think Elysium's point about the decreasing prices of entry-level PCs has merit, even if the exact details have been fudged around somewhat. The idea here is that it's cheaper to get into PC gaming than it has been at any other time in recent memory and, as somebody who has recently dropped some cash on a new PC gaming rig, I'm hard-pressed to find any reason to argue with him on that specific point.

However, it's the implication that follows, the idea this drop in PC pricing somehow "closes the gap" on consoles in value, is where my eyebrows perk up a bit. There's more than one gap being closed here.

For years, the PC gaming scene has always offered, in my opinion, the better value proposition for a potential gamer that wants to be able to play anything. If you own a decent PC and dedicate the time and effort to keeping it up to date, you can cover FPS, RTS, war games, online games...hell, even console games, if you feel comfortable in dealing with emulators. It costs more than simply jumping in with a console of your choosing, but you get more bang for the buck with the PC.

As the years have passed through the last few console generations, though, many of those game types and features unique to PC gaming have become available on the console side as well. With the increased crossover of those features and the emergence of popular peripheral-based games like Rock Band or Wii Sports, the value proposition for owning a PC to play everything has lessened somewhat and, as a result, the pendulum has started to swing away from the PC platform and settle somewhere in the middle.

This is the source for all of those crazy "death of PC gaming" cries, in my opinion, and I feel like it will continue to fuel that gnashing of teeth as the homogenization of the gaming landscape continues.

This is why arguing that there's less of a difference in platform costs between playing Mass Effect 2 on PC vs. console misses the crucial point, the point that the console viability of a game like Mass Effect 2 or Modern Warfare is damaging to the once-mighty value of the PC as a gaming platform.

While the price is dropping on PC gaming, the value proposition presented by a Gaming PC (whatever that might be) vs. Some Console Out There (with whatever weirdo peripherals and doo-hickeys you might choose) is dropping as well. And, though that trend won't bring about the End Of PC Gaming that has been foretold by console fanboys for years, it will likely force long-standing members of The PC Master Race to adjust their step.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

This thread is still going?

I bet Elysium already has the next provocative console/PC article typed up, ready for the next time that we hit a valley in site traffic.

He doesn't, but it's nice of you to think so.

MeatMan wrote:

I may be in the minority here, but for me, playing console games while sitting across the room on the couch (no matter how big the TV is) is much less immersive than playing on the PC in which the monitor is 2 feet from my eyeballs. This is why I played RDR on my 360 connected to my PC monitor and speakers.

I'm not sure I buy this anymore. Of course, everyone is different and people migrate to whatever works best for them.

But I would say that some of the reactions I went through last night while playing Alan Wake indicated it was pretty darn immersive. And when I dance around like an idiot when scoring the go ahead goal in NHL 10, I don't think being hunched over a monitor would really help. And the full on giggling and trash talk involved when we play New Super Mario Bros. on the Wii would definitely not occur on a PC.

I used to buy into the immersion fact, as well. But really, once you zone in on a good game, the outside world fades away whether you are up close to a monitor, or even playing from the couch on a 20 inch SDTV.

Yes, I think immersion has more to do with the content of the game mentally engaging you, and lack of real world distractions.

When I want immersion, I go out and shoot people with my taser cannon. In a swimming pool.

There's too many variables that influence the cost debate. Anyone can easily pick and choose variables to provide a strong argument either way. I've tried to break it down before, but it gets exponentially complex as you add increasingly uncommon scenarios. It should suffice to say that the costs involved in having either type of platform are different but essentially similar enough. In my case, I can't rationalize the costs of those consumption-only devices.

I like to break down the difference between the platforms in another way, simply by rethinking the question. Much of debate is fixated on the question "which is a better purchase for my gaming desires?" There's arguments for both, and they depend on what you want and what you already have. But what about "which is a better platform for games?" I like PC gaming because I have control; game developers have control. PC gaming is one of choices, and all that entails. (complexity, choice dissatisfaction, consumer power, better and worse gaming experiences, competition-induced low hardware/software prices, no single voice, etc.) Console gaming is one of few choices, and all that entails. (monopolies, price fixing, walled gardens, licensing, consistency, better targeted development, loss leading console prices, marketing, etc.) The choices available on the PC provide me with a great deal of flexibility. What about Ventrilo (or skype, teamspeak, in-game voice -- to name some CHOICES) or any number of simultaneously useful applications? That hardware is useful for other types of gaming that aren't traditional -- meta-gaming, free casual gaming, social gaming, chat gaming, etc. It's useful for anything we can imagine because we have the control and NOT the console manufacturer. They MIGHT add one or two of these things, but it's always their way or maybe try the other guy. PC is even a better venue for independent games, allowing many developers freedom from the all too common negative influence of a controlling publisher.

Costs aside, choice and control are why I play exclusively on the PC in my home.

I think the "and all that entails" is what people have difficulty with, because people want to have their cake and eat it. People want a 'best' platform that's better than the other ones (which by coincidence are often the ones they didn't buy), but the folly of platform wars is that there isn't a universally best platform, but one that's best for you.

What could probably be the best thing in gaming would be to cut through the marketing hype and let people choose wisely based on their needs and wants.

The math is always pretty obvious: console gaming is based on the idea that you underpay for the hardware and then overpay for the software/services.

If you're a heavy user (I myself could stand to lay off the dope and shed a few pounds) you're going to make out better on the PC, because the software pricing is more competitive and having AIM/Ventrillo running in the background is objectively better than whatever XBL or PSN can do. Digital distribution makes it easier for online games to stay populated and relevant far outside the retail window that you get with the consoles.

If you're only going to pick up a game or two a year, the consoles are a better bet. If you plan on getting a game or two a month, PC is where it's at.