Lenas wrote:
First of all, I'm not using mid-life prices. I stated $350 which was the entry point for the 360 when it came out.
I remember price being a big deal at the time. The $600 figure I remember was only for the PS3. It turns out the Xbox 360 launched at $400.
At any rate, a PC has a greater functionality than just playing games. Yes, doing so does require you to upgrade parts more frequently, however at no point do you ever need the absolute top end equipment to play the games coming out. Parts below the price break are sufficient to play anything you want to play for a significant length of time. On top of that, as I stated in my previous post, you are able to pay for computer upgrades out of more than just your "play games" budget. For example, I run number-crunching software. I have a vested interest in a powerful machines for reasons other than **** around to play video games. Some of the parts in that machine pay for themselves over their lifetime.
Everyone has a certain amount of money they're willing to pay on entertainment. That serves to limit how much we're willing to pay on a video game console, as well as how often. That same dollar amount does not correlate to how much we're willing to pay on a computer part, because in addition to having an upper limit to the amount we're willing to pay on entertainment, we also have an amount of money we're willing to pay on work & productivity, or on life convenience. Multiple pools of money converge to justify the purchase of a computer.