It's not true. Gaming PCs are not "just a tiny bit more than a console", not if you want a comparative experience. The flip-side is that it doesn't cost thousands of dollars to achieve that comparative experience. If I can buy an Xbox 360 for 200 bucks, what is "barely more?" Is it $300? $400? $500? You can't get a good gaming PC for that price. Some people will say you can, but it's not true. If you paid that much for it, you'd be running games at low to medium quality.
How much do you have to pay to get a gaming PC that will run games the same quality that you Xbox 360 runs? Probably somewhere around $700 minimum. Sure, that's "barely" a bit more than the PS3 retailed at when it first launched. But that's hardly the spirit of the conversation, and plus, many PC gamers have had to upgrade since then.
For the record, my gaming rig comes in at $800 before accessories, including monitors. I love it. It's my favorite thing to game on these days. I can max everything on Ultra, with just Arkham City and Battlefield 3 having serious slowdown. But the two extremes on this argument are hilarious.
From: Aecioo | #019
Cheapest way is to build your own PC from the ground up, but if you don't know what you're doing, it might not be worth the risk.
You can spend 400 for a decent desktop and then get some 75 dollar video card and be set for years if you're not confident in building your own.
Except CPU matters a helluva lot more these days. That mythical $475 machine you're talking about doesn't include anything like an OS, any accessories, probably no optical drive (which isn't very important), and, what, a 60 GB hard drive? That machine you're referencing will run some games at low or medium. Maybe. That's a big maybe.
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