The Glade 4.0

I have a hard drive, still can't remember how to install to it. But since I buy 2-3 games a year I'd imagine frequency is probably the issue there.

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Because the failure rate on consoles for heavy gamers is typically less than three years, but the warranty much less than that. Anybody who bought an original 360 and hasn't gotten the "red ring of death" is probably in the minority, according to most of what I've read. Hell, just from reading here I know a few gladers have replaced more than one dead 360 already.

I'm not picking on 360s. PS3s have had their own issues, as well. (The Wii may actually last forever.) The point is, the average functional life of a console is not any longer than the average length of time a gaming PC will remain viable...but of course, even an old gaming PC can still play its old games...and even most new ones. I have a 2 year old gaming laptop from ASUS that can play any current game at maximum graphics settings with stellar framerates...and it's a LAPTOP. (Sure, a new and better version of my laptop costs $1200, but it's a laptop! You can get a more powerful desktop much cheaper.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Well let's go with that. Average lifespan (as in able to play the most current PC games) for a $600 gaming PC is 2-3 years +100-200 for a video card update during that span +$50 for RAM upgrades during that span. Then you need to replace the PC and start the cycle over either due to a new OS or just system rot. Total investment for 6 years = on par with $1500.

Cost of an Xbox 360 = $200. No upgrade/maintenance costs. + $70 per year (so another $210 for an assumed 3 year lifespan) for XBL subscription. Assuming it dies after 3 years you buy a brand new replacement. Total investment for 6 years = $820.

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No, that's not true. You're getting hung up on unnecessary upgrades. A 4 year old video card (Radeon 4870 or nVidia GTX260) from 2008 is still completely viable for current games, at high graphics settings, with that original 4 GB of RAM still working fine. (Hell, Skyrim doesn't use more than 2GB without player mods.)

In 17 years of PC gaming, i have only twice bothered to upgrade a PC between new computers, and both times it was to extend the useful life of the PC beyond 3 years, not to keep it viable during those 3 years.

As I said, my 2 year old laptop still plays video games at maximum graphics settings. That's with a MOBILE Radeon 5870 video chip. The desktop equivalent would be a Radeon 5770 (which was slower than the Radeon 4870 mentioned above.)

You could build a $600-700 gaming PC that likely remains capable of playing new games at near maximum settings for the next 3 years. However, it still plays new games past that. 4 years down the road it might be at medium settings, and 5-6 years at low settings, but it still works -- WITHOUT upgrades. Add in a few small upgrades, and you are doing even better. The thing is, medium settings of current games still look better than the high settings of games three years ago, and low settings in current games look better than the high settings of 5 years ago. And in all cases, they look better than the console game equivalents ever did.

Is PC gaming more expensive than consoles? It most certainly can be, and significantly so, if you're obsessed with maintaining bleeding edge. But it's not significantly so in the midrange, (especially when you factor games themselves cost 30% more on consoles) and the gaming experience is still better on PC.

As for pricing, those consoles stil retail for $300 today, and started off at $400 or $500 at release.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

It will definitely not last forever if you put it in the dishwasher.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

...

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Yeah, Hopwin, I have no idea where you're getting this notion that PCs require any, much less multiple, upgrades to remain viable for a 2-3 year span.

3 years *is* my upgrade cycle. I typically do one upgrade after 2.5-3 years of video card (and maybe RAM, depending on prices when I built the PC and when I do my upgrade) for around 1/4-1/3 the purchase price of my computer, and then after another 2.5-3 years, I rebuild mostly from scratch (I often keep the drives for two computers' worth).

So I pay 125-130% of a computer every five or six years, and play the majority of games on it because they look the best on there.

In fact, my consoles are the less efficient hardware cost per game, as I only really play exclusives on them.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

My first PC ran Windows 3.11. I had to buy a new one to run Windows 95, I then upgraded to Windows 98 but the system couldn't handle it so I had to buy a new PC to run Windows 98. To move to Windows XP I had to buy a new PC. To move my Windows XP system to Vista I had to buy a new PC. I then had to install Windows XP over Vista because Vista blew so badly. My Vista machine could not run Windows 7 today. In addition each of those PCs needed a graphics card update to run the latest version of DirectX. Four of those PCs needed RAM upgrades.

This is my experience.



Cool.

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$199 brand new today. Not sure what the release cost is. As for the point of games as an expense, I believe I mentioned I buy 2-3 games per year so it doesn't really factor in for me.

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Your first mistake was upgrading from XP to Vista. There was never a good reason to do that. 2 years later, upgrading from XP to Windows 7 was a good idea, and that could possibly require a new PC if your PC was old enough, but that's not really the point.

There was six years between XP and Vista. Eight between XP and Windows 7. If you haven't upgraded in that time, you probably should have.

Not to mention, we're talking about gaming, not operating systems. You don't need to upgrade operating systems every time one comes out in order to keep running new games. There comes a point when it's inevitable, but they aren't tied together.

You also can't look at the industry prior to XP and compare it to now. The PC lifecycle has stabilized somewhat. A decent new video card 4 years ago is still viable today. In the 1990's, that was not the case.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Windows 7 runs better on lower end hardware than XP did.

You get in trouble with gaming PC's when you buy on the 'minimum system requirements' end of the spectrum. The hardware becomes outdated and unusable very quickly this way. There is a balance between buying bleeding edge and buying the lowest end (i.e cheapest) hardware available to play whatever you are interested.

Playing two or three games in a year makes PC's tough to justify, but to be honest, it makes buying a console tough to justify too, unless you are using them for other purposes.

The console also feels a lot less immersive then PCs did. That might more reflect me and my tastes as they've shifted over time but it definitely feels that way to me.

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The other thing is, you still need a PC even if you're not a gamer. The only difference is the cost of the video card you keep in it.

I agree with you in that I also find PC's more immersive. I'm not sure how you're ranking this as a negative thing, though.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I haven't used a PC in about a year other than my company laptop.

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You do all your PC tasks...from a mobile device or something?

I don't think i could handle that. I don't go anywhere without at least bringing a netbook. iOS/Android/Blackberry sucks for regular browsing/document creation/email/instant messenger.* It's only good in situations where you are forced to use it due to space and logistics.

* That may not be fair. Stick any of these OSes on a tablet with a dedicated standalone keyboard, and it's probably alright. It's the mobile interface which sucks.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I don't really have any PC tasks left in my life. I email, I surf the web and that's about it.

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My core 2 duo 4gb 8800gtx plays skyrim fine on my 1080p plasma. My Xbox needed replacing , but was under extended warranty


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Just to put that in perspective for the PC-impaired (no offense, Hopwin), the Core 2 Duo and 8800GTX are about 6 years old. And it still runs a current game without difficulty, without upgrades.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

i will attest to this.

I have been using a Core 2 Duo E8500 and a 8800GTX that was pretty bleeding edge when I bought it.

I was playing SW:TOR on max settings with it without any problems. In fact, I built a new PC with some fairly high end current technology, and there really isn't much difference in playability to be very honest.

I think I've installed too many mods. The game crashes when I load my game. lol.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I am on my second go through with Skyrim, after my old 360 died and I had to restart from scratch. I went with an archery centric rogue type, also making use of daggers for some throat slitting action. I've got to say, I'm sorely disappointed with the dark brotherhood and theives guild quest lines. I loved the forsworn rebellion however.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I liked the Nightingale part of the Thieves quest, but I thought the Dark Brotherhood was very dull, just like in Oblivion.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

It's boring and dull because ...

1. It has no pacing.
2. It's completely irrational and predicated on a betrayal that would not have happened.
3. Of the three people who "should survive", one is hated by everyone else and problematic to begin with ...

None of the major Guilds feel right except for the Thieve's Guild. None of them are epic or require work to re-establish the declining Guild; and, in the case of the Dark Brotherhood ...

You are the guild.

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Skyrim is boring to me because the world is sterile and lifeless. Compared to bioware RPGs, the characters have no depth. You can't have conversations with your companions, other people are rarely more interactive than NPCs in MMOs. The character development is everything in an RPG (not just for the main character, but for the NPCs and companions as well), and nobody does it better than Bioware. Which isn't to say Bioware doesn't have some serious flaws in its games, but they're the only ones that hold my interest in the long term.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █