LogFAQs > #965808435

Archgoat posted...

Is it really that much money though?

For anyone with a tight enough discretionary spending budget to have to choose, you're making the choice between 7 full-price games (formerly 8, but that changed) and buying that extra console. Potentially even more than that, if you wait for sales and/or buy cheaper titles on a regular basis. It's not an insurmountable cost, no, but it is a very steep ask if the person is only interested in a tiny handful of exclusive games. In essence, it means a single system-seller actually costs $570 instead of $70, and that's going to rub anyone the wrong way and generally result in people just not paying that much unless they genuinely don't care about money on that scale (or have such crippling FOMO that they're compelled to do it).

Archgoat posted...

but people routinely upgrade their very expensive phones every 2 to 3 years.

Pretty often, those upgrades are buried in contracts that mean they're paid for just by paying for phone service. Speaking personally, I replaced my 8-year-old flip phone with a $900 (CDN) smartphone that I didn't pay a cent for because it was covered in the same plan I already had (with a two-year period of being locked into that contract, of course). Now, I certainly won't be replacing this every two years (it's been three already and I don't plan to replace it until it stops working), but I'll be taking a similar approach to that replacement as well, rather than buying anything outright.

There are indeed people who do buy new phones every couple years, or don't realize just how much they're spending on those phones because they accept it as the service cost (also meaning they overpay for service once the contract period is up), but the former isn't really the norm, and the latter isn't so much a conscious decision as it is falling prey to a deceptive marketing scheme. To that end, balking at buying an extra console isn't necessarily inconsistent with frequent phone upgrades (especially where phone upgrades can be treated as a recurring expense, while extra consoles are reactionary one-time purchases).

Archgoat posted...

Sony fanboys say there is no reason to buy an Xbox because the games are on PC as well, but that is a much more expensive item to acquire (if you want it to play all the games).

It is, but it also offers much greater value for that higher up-front cost. In addition to playing current games, you get nigh-unlimited backwards compatibility (with a bit of fiddling for really old stuff), fewer concerns about being locked out by new generations, the most versatile media centre you can get, the definitive web browsing/social media experience (hence what we're doing now), professional/household utility... And that's even without considering that sales are more frequent, deeper, and more readily accessible on PC than other systems and there are far fewer concerns about the digital storefronts supplying your games being shut down.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the PC I built in 2011 has seen more overall use time than every console I've ever owned combined, just because of how much non-gaming utility it has. While that's not necessarily a vital metric for picking a game system to buy, in terms of the overall value calculation, it definitely needs to be factored in.

Archgoat posted...

If a console is something you can only afford to buy one of per generation, then maybe it is just best for that person to wait until they can make a more informed decisions after more games are released.

That is indeed probably a better idea than rushing out to buy one right away, especially where they tend to get cheaper and have fewer technical issues as the generation goes on. That does carry the risk of not being able to find physical copies of many games, since stores often stop stocking them (especially less mainstream titles), but between Amazon and digital markets, that risk is much less significant than it used to be.