"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."
Consoles are just increasingly bad value for consumers compared to PCs.
2060 super for 300, and then another 200 for a decent processor puts you ahead of a ps5 and for a comparable price. Games are cheaper on PC too, as well as a broader selection. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zYGmJn here is a mid tier build for 850, you could cut the procesor down, install linux for free, and im sure youve got a computer monitor laying around somwhere… the only thing stopping you is inertia.
2060 super for 300, and then another 200 for a decent processor puts you ahead of a ps5 and for a comparable price.
you’re going to have to really scrunge up for deals in order to get psu, storage, memory, motherboard, and a case for your remaining budget of $0.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zYGmJn here is a mid tier build for 850
This is $150 more expensive and the gpu is half as performant as the reported PS5 pro equivalent.
Regarding that last point: consoles don’t come with TVs either, so you don’t even have to factor that in the cost of a gaming PC.
Furthermore, many modern TVs are now being designed with gaming in mind, and thus have input lag comparable to a good gaming monitor (like LG OLEDs and most Samsungs), so the whole concept of needing a dedicated monitor just for your PC is somewhat outdated now. If your TV is good enough for console gaming, then chances are it’s good enough for PC gaming too, so long as you did your research before buying and didn’t just buy whatever had a good picture on the showroom floor.
Also there’s the fact that multiplayer tends to be free on PC, so no subscription fees to worry about. The accessories tend to be cheaper as well.
$850 is way more expensive than a PS5 though lol. Linux also means you can’t play the games that top the most played charts on the PS5 every single month of every single year.
You don’t need a top end card to match console specs, something like a 6650XT or 6700XT is probably enough. Your initial PC build will be more than a console by about 2X if you’re matching specs (maybe 3X if you need a monitor, keyboard, etc), but you’ll make it up with access to cheaper games and being able to upgrade the PC without replacing it, not to mention the added utiliy a PC provides.
So yeah, think of PC vs console as an investment into a platform.
If you only want to play 1-2 games, console may be a better option. But if you’re interested in older or indie games, a PC is essential.
You don’t need a graphics card. You can get mini PCs with decent gaming performance for cheap these days.
Interesting point. Then you understand why Apple is making moves to try to be a real player in gaming.
All three of us see how gaming performance is plateauing across various hardware types to the point that a modern game can run on a wide range of hardware. With settings changes to scale across the hardware, of course.
Or are you going to be a bummer and claim it’s only mini pcs that get this benefit. Not consoles, not VR headsets, not macs, not Linux laptops.
There really is a situation going on where there is a large body of hardware in a similar place on the performance curve in a way that wasn’t always true in the past. Historically, major performance gains were made every few years. And various platforms were on very different and less interoperable hardware architectures, etc.
The Steam Deck’s success proves my point, and your point alone.
The thing is, people don’t wanna hear it. They wanna focus on the very high end. Or super high refresh rates. Or they wanna complain about library sizes.
My 4070 cost $300 and runs everything.
The whole PC cost around $1000, and i have had it since the Xbox One released.
You can get similar performance from a $400 steam deck which is a computer.
On what planet does a Steam Deck give 4070 performance?
And on which does a 4070 cost $300 for that matter? They cost more than a whole PS5.
I can get ps5 graphics with a $280 video card, games are often way cheaper, I can hook the pc up to my TV, and still play with a ps5 or Xbox controller, or mouse and keyboard.
I suspect next gen there will be a ps6 and Xbox will make a cheap cloud gaming box and just go subscription only.
The internet isn’t good enough globally to do that, and still won’t be by 2030 after the ps6/nextbox is out. Maybe the gen after next. But even then, there’s a lot of countries I could see still being patchy. Right now in Australia, Sony won’t even let you access the PS3 streaming games because they know it won’t work well enough.
I mean, for the price of a mid range graphics card I can still buy a whole console. GPU prices are ridiculous. Never mind everything else on top of that.
Yeah but remember to factor in that you probably already need a normal computer for non-game purposes so if you also use that for games you only have to buy one device not two
I just built a PC after not having a computer for about 5+ years.
Built it for games, did not feel like I was missing out on anything in particular except games by not having a computer. There’s a lot of things I’d rather use a computer for but these days most of what I used to do on a computer can be done just fine from a phone or tablet.
During those 5 or so years, I maybe needed to use a computer about a dozen times, and if my wife didn’t have a computer I could have just swung by a library for a bit to take care of it.
You can build a pretty capable PC for about $600. And you won’t have to pay for multiplayer.
If I’m building a PC for gaming, I wouldn’t limit myself to $600. Would you? I’ve never not had PCs or laptops since I first had one in the 90s. I’m building again now to go Linux. 7800xt and 2 Tb SSD cost as much as a PS5 Pro in my part of the world. I only started getting into consoles because I can afford it now, and for physical games. I don’t really get why today it’s PC vs. consoles. I was into PCs but never judged consoles as inferior, just different.
Along with paying for multiplayer I get access to a large catalog of games as well as additional games every month. Yes they’re inaccessible if I stop paying, but that’s not really a big deal. Even all that aside, I pretty much play single player games anyway.
Also, when a game comes out I know it’ll work. No driver bugs, no messing with settings, no checking minimum and recommended specs, it just works. And it works the same for everyone on the platform. I don’t have any desire to spend a bunch of time tweaking settings to get things just right, only to have the game crash for some esoteric reason or another.
“Pretty capable” will get you dunked on in the PC gaming world. For what I’ve seen PC gamers actually recommend I could buy 2-3 modern consoles.
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.
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.
GPU prices are ridiculous, but those GPUs are also ridiculously more powerful than anything in any console.
The rough equivalent to a PS5Pro’s GPU component is a … not current gen, not last gen, but the gen before that… find AMD’s weakest GPU model in the 6 series, the RX 6600, and that is roughly the same performance as the GPU performance of a PS5Pro.
The Switch 2 may have an interesting, custom mobile grade Nvidia APU, but at this point, its not out yet, no benchmarks, etc.
Oh right also: If GPU prices for PCs remain elevated… well, any future consoles will also have elevated prices. Perhaps not to the same degree, but again, that will be because a console will be basically fairly low tier if you compared it to the range of PC hardware… and console mfgs can subsidize console costs with game sales… and they get discounts on ordering the components that go into their consoles by ordering in huge bulk volumes.
Tbh the only consoles I’ve been really interested in lately are the switch and steam deck, simply because they’re also mobile devices.
The Steam Deck is basically a PC. You can get mini PCs with APUs of a similar performance for very low prices these days. That won’t perform like a current gen console but it’s a cheap gaming machine with a huge selection of low cost games and you won’t have to pay for multiplayer.
It’s not that they’re not improving like they used to, it’s that the die can’t shrink any more.
Price cuts and “slim” models used to be possible due to die shrinks. A console might have released on 100nm, and then a process improvement comes out that means it can be made on 50nm, meaning 2x as many chips on a wafer and half the power usage and heat generation. This allowed smaller and cheaper revisions.
Now that the current ones are already on like 4nm, there’s just nowhere to shrink to.
Not to mention that even when some components do shrink, it’s not uniform for all components on the chip, so they can’t just do 1:1 layout shrinks like in the past, but pretty much need to start the physical design portion all over with a new layout and timings (which then cascade out into many other required changes).
Porting to a new process node (even at the same foundry company) isn’t quite as much work as a new project, but it’s close.
Same thing applies to changing to a new foundry company, for all of those wondering why chip designers don’t just switch some production from TSMC to Samsung or Intel since TSMC’s production is sold out. It’s almost as much work as just making a new chip, plus performance and efficiency would be very different depending in where the chip was made.
This is absolutely right. We are getting to the point where the circuit pathway is hundreds or even dozens of electrons wide. The fact that we can even make circuits that small in quantity is fucking amazing. But we are rapidly approaching laws-of-physics type limits in how much smaller we can go.
Plus let’s not forget an awful lot of the super high-end production is being gobbled up by AI training farms and GPU clusters. Companies that will buy 10,000 chips at a time are absolutely the preferred customers.
Which itself is a gimmick, they’ve just made the gates taller, electron leakage would happen otherwise.
NM has been a marketing gimmick since Intel launched their long-standing 14nm node. Actual transistor density depending on which fab you compare to is shambles.
It’s now a title / name of a process and not representative of how small the transistors are.
I’ve not paid for a CPU upgrade since 2020, and before that I was using a 22nm CPU from 2014. The market isn’t exciting (to me anymore), I don’t even want to talk about the GPUs.
Back in the late 90s or early 2000s upgrades felt substantial and exciting, now it’s all same-same with some minor power efficiency gains.
This is why I’m more than happy with my 5800X3D/7900XTX; I know they’ll perform like a dream for years to come. The games I play run beautifully on this hardware under Linux (BeamNG.Drive runs faster than on Windows 10), and I have no interest in upgrading the hardware any time soon.
Hell, the 4790k/750Ti system I built back in 2015 was still a beast in 2021, and if my ex hadn’t gotten it in the divorce (I built it specifically for her, so I didn’t lose any sleep over it), a 1080Ti upgrade would have made it a solid machine for 2025. But here we are - my PC now was a post-divorce gift for myself. Worth every penny. PC and divorce.
So now we can finally go back to good old code optimization, right? Right? (Padme.jpg)
We’ll ask AI to make it performant, and when it breaks, we’ll just go back to the old version. No way in hell we are paying someone
This article doesn’t factor in the new demand that is gobbling up all the CPU and GPU production: Ai server farms. For example, Nvidia, that was once only making graphic cards for gamers, has been trying to keep up with global demand for Ai. The whole market is different, then toss tarrifs and the rest of top.
I wouldn’t blame moores law death, technology is still advancing, but per usual, based on demand.
AI has nothing to do with it. Die shrinks were the reason for “slim” consoles and big price drops in the past. Die shrinks are basically a thing of the past now.
technology is still advancing
Actually not really: performance per watt of the high end stuff has been stagnating since Ampere generation. NVidia hides it by changing models in its benchmarks or advertising raw performance without power figures.
Is it Moores law failing or have we finally reached the point where capitalists are not even pretending to advance technology in order to charge higher prices? Like are we actually not able to make things faster and cheaper anymore or is the market controlled by a monopoly that sees no benefit in significantly improving their products? My opinion has been leaning more and more towards the latter since the pandemic.
This has little to do with “capitalists” and everything to do with the fact that we’ve basically reached the limit of silicon.
While blaming anything and everything on “capitalism” is disingenuous, it really does have to do with a lack of competition in the space. None of the incumbents have any incentive to really put much effort into improving the performance of gaming GPUs. PC CPUs face a similar issue. They’re good enough for the vast majority of users. There is no sizable market that would justify spending huge amounts of money on developing new products. High end gaming PCs and media production workstations are niche products. The real money is made in data centre products.
I mean, when the definition of economy can be “how the species produces what it needs” then the answer to a problem is probably capitalism even if that answer explains very little
Because people continue to accept that price by agreeing to pay it. The price of a product is dictated by what people are willing to pay for it. If the price is so low that the seller isn’t happy with it, they don’t sell it and stop making it.
In other words, if you think Nintendo prices are bullshit price gouging, then vote with your wallet. With enough votes, the prices come down or the company goes under. You don’t have that luxury of choice when it comes to groceries or shelter, but you absolutely do when it comes to luxury entertainment expenses. Make them earn your money.
I don’t agree. It is capitalism, but not in a bad way. Simply put it is economy logic. Chip market has shifted from consumer market to the enterprise market.
So because the supply is limited, the demand has gone way up, and enteprise market has a lot, a mean a lot of money to spare buying, because it is an investment for them and not entertainment.
Also some bad capitalist tacticts in other areas, hard drives for example, that the big players reduced production to keep prices from falling. They cotribute to the problem, but they are not the major factor.
Moore’s law started failing in 2000, when single core speeds peaked, leading to multi core processors since. Memory and storage still had ways to go. Now, the current 5nm process is very close to the limits imposed by the laws of physics, both in how small a laser beam can be and how small a controlled chemical reaction can be done. Unless someone can figure a way to make the whole chip fabrication process in less steps, or with higher yield, or with cheaper machines or materials, even if at 50nm or larger, don’t expect prices to drop.
Granted, if TSMC stopped working in Taiwan, we’d be looking at roughly 70% of all production going poof, so that can be considered a monopoly (it is also their main defense against China, the “Silicon Shield”, so there’s more than just capitalistic greed at play for them)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po-nlRUQkbI - How are Microchips Made? 🖥️🛠️ CPU Manufacturing Process Steps | Branch Education
Very interesting! I was aware of the 5nm advancements and the limitations of chip sizes approaching the physical limitations of the material but I had been assuming since we worked around the single core issue a similar innovation would appear for this bottleneck. It seems like the focus instead was turned towards integrating AI into the gpu architecture and cranking up the power consumption for marginal gains in performance instead of working towards a paradigm shift. Thanks for the in depth explanation though, I always appreciate an opportunity to learn more about this type of stuff!
