I’ll agree the N64 had the better library (sort of; just how many third person over-the-shoulder 3D games can you HAVE?), but I think the Gamecube is the better system. I’ve seen the GC put out graphics the PS2 would break itself trying to match (and yes Twilight Princess on the GC looks fantastic). The controller is far better, and the hardware itself is designed better. It didn’t have a whole lot of knock-out games, I’ll admit.
The last game I played on the Gamecube was the ported Ocarina of Time. I refused to play it on the N64 because I hated the system and the controller, but it certainly is an excellent game.
This isn’t true at all. You can build a very respectable gaming system for $750, especially if you can keep an old monitor, keyboard, speakers, etc.
I’m a hardcore PC gamer who has always built and tweaked good rigs, and I’ve never spent anywhere near $2,000 on one, but none of my systems have ever been more than a small fraction behind the highest-end when I built them. My current system cost somewhere around $1200, which is more than I’d normally spend, but decided to splurge a bit on the best video card available - and it’s still, 2 years later, more than adequate for anything coming out.
Of course, you can rack up a huge bill if you don’t do any research, and build an overly expensive prebuilt “gaming system”, or buy cutting edge parts. There’s an absurd premium for performance at the top end. You might be able to get, for example, a 2 ghz processor for $150, whereas the 2.2 ghz version is $450, and 2.4 ghz version is $900. Is that extra 20% of performance worth 6 times the price? Especially since that lower priced chip is actually the same hardware, and with some technical savvy, you can run it as fast or faster than the $900 part.
Just to add my meager POV to the others in this thread, I’ll be surprised if the PS3 finishes the worldwide XBox360/Wii/PS3 race anywhere besides dead last.
I mean, sure., the games are gorgeous, but they’re not OMGWTFBBQ $600 gorgeous. To most folks – hardcore gamers and casuals alike – the graphics are not significantly different than the XBox 360’s, which is already (a) cheaper and (b) has a larger game library. And while the Wii’s graphics aren’t on the same level as the other two, for most folks, they’re good enough – your non-hardcore gamer who looks at Gamecube titles like Rogue Squadron or Starfox Assault is just going to enjoy the already-better-than-anything-we’ve-had-before graphics, and if Nintendo can squeeze even more power out of the Wii, they’ll be in good shape. Throw in the lower price and the unique controller and they’ve got enough appeal to overcome the graphics deficiency.
I haven’t owned a game console since the Sega Saturn, and I will agree that the last few years of console gaming has struck me as a ho-hum case of “same games with prettier graphics”. At least the Wii gives me something truly different and original, and the ability to bring in the rest of my family for mutual gaming is a big plus. All the polygons in the world wouldn’t be enough to make my wife pick up a DualShock, but she can jump into Wii Sports Tennis without a second’s hesitation, and that’s worth $250 to me.
(And anyone who dismisses Wii Sports as a “shallow tech demo” hasn’t tried getting Pro rank yet… ;))
Disclaimer: I hate Sony. I hate every person who works at Sony and hope they die cold, alone and friendless. Seriously. Sony products are banned from my household. It’s not because of DRMs or crap products, this is entirely personal.
Overpriced isn’t really a subjective term in my opinion. If something is overpriced then you’re being charged more than the market value for it, if you look at the costs of its components, the PS3 is most definitely not overpriced.
Anything they loses money on every sale by its very nature cannot be overpriced.
Nintendo plans to have shipped 6 million by 3/31/2007, they should have greater availability then as the Christmas rush will be firmly behind us (and the rush of people who couldn’t get one for Christmas who are still trying to get one) and also as Nintendo is able to roll out more per week than they currently can.
Interestingly enough the Wii was sought after but fairly available here for the first 2 weeks or so after it came out, after Dec. 15th though, you have been unable to find a single one.
I’m never including stuff like monitors for my systems.
I’ll throw down the gauntlet and ask you to put together a system that you could aseemble for $750 that would be able to play a newly released game on max video settings.
If it can’t do that, to me, it isn’t a top end system. In any case, your average gaming system isn’t $750 because your average PC gamer is probably going to get their PC from some mass builder like Dell or Alienware or perhaps a popular local store. And to be honest I can understand the reasoning behind that, it’s more expensive than assembling the components yourself, and there’s always the risk that one of these mass builders will use weak components, but the vast majority of the time you’ll get a system that is capable of playing top end games very well, and it also comes with a lengthy warranty and the convenience of an easily configurable system for someone that has no desire to do in depth research on the individual components.
The average PC Gamer I know spent $1500-1800 on their system, not including monitor or etc.
The last system I bought I think I spent $2200 on it. I should mention that while I select all of the components myself and get them at the lowest prices I can find (I usually do significant research into this) I do take them to a local computer shop owned by two people I’m good friends with. They do add some cost to the system (their normal rate is something like $95/hour build time and they discount me to $60/hour build time) and I also usually get a store warranty for 4 years which covers parts and labor. To me that’s the sort of convenience and comfort I’m willing to pay a little extra for, any time I have a system problem I take it 2 minutes down the street and they’ll have it fixed by the next business day.
If I put together a system myself (and I have done this, but never for my primary gaming system) and a component goes bad I have to look through my warranty box to see if I’ve lost mine or not, and then usually I find out the component only had a 1 year warranty on it so I’m SOL. Then I have to send off for a replacement if it is covered by warranty which can take anywhere from 5-20 days to arrive depending on the suppliers current stock, and usually I do have to pay for the shipping.
When I build a system I’m also future proofing, my previous system lived for 4 years and at the end of that 4 year period it was still able to play games like the most recent Elder Scrolls with the highest graphical quality/performance. In its 5th year a few games started to test its abilities and thats when I started looking for a new system (plus I think a few components were going bad, and 5 years is a long time for a PC in my opinion.)
If I was able to put together a $750 system capable of playing the current games to the standards I expect (which I do not believe is acutally possible) I can be certain it wouldn’t continue to do so 3-4 years down the road. To me, if you’re going to play a PC game in crappy resolution with PS2-esque graphics you may as well not even bother, PCs are unique in that they can be customized and you push the envelope to the very edge.
Also, a big problem I see with a $750 system is even what I consider to be a mediocre video card is going to cost $200, and a good power supply (a frequently overlooked component) is going to be expensive as well. I just don’t see it leaving tolerances for quality components, a quality case is at least $50+. Then you will almost certainly have to pay shipping on some of the components, because I’ve never lived anywhere where you can walk up and find in-store all the specific components you want for a custom-built system.
I haven’t been in the market for hardware for years, so I don’t know what the current price/performance ratios are. I assembled most of this system in late 2004 - for comparison’s sake, this system doesn’t have a problem running at HL2, high end at the top, at 1280 at full video settings. Of course, if you’ve got some crazy ass 2000x1500 res LCD, then the requirements go up.
You didn’t say “top end system” in your first post. You said:
Now, you might say “if you don’t have them at 1600x1200 with maximum settings, 8x FSAA and 16x anisotropy, you’re not really playing them”, but that doesn’t seem to be what you were saying in your original post.
As I said, I haven’t kept up with current hardware, but I have no problem believing I could assemble a $750 system that would play a current shooter (what is the current shooter nowadays, anyway? Newest thing I’ve played is F.E.A.R, which my current system has no problem with at all) at a reasonable resolution with high video settings.
Just guessing here, because like I said I’m not up to date, but I’d imagine you can get at a gf7800-class video card for $150, an athlon x2 in the “4000” range for 150, a good motherboard for 100, 250gb hard drive for 90, a good power supply for 70, a gig of good ram for $100, a good case for 70m, and an adequate sound card for 50, which you might not even need, given the increasing quality of audio that comes from motherboard chipsets these days, dvd burner for 20 (it seems extremely cheap, but you can get perfectly good lite-on burners for that much) - did I forget anything? That’s under $750. It’s not top-end, but it’s more than adequate to be able to play current games with a positive experience.
If you know how, you can find the best parts to overclock and get extra performance out of. (Your reaction might be “but that’s stupid/dangerous/inadequate!” There are a ton of myths about overclocking due to ignorance).
Even if you double the money you throw into that system, that’s still well short of the $2000+ system that you quoted as being the minimum for a gamer system. I can’t even come up with a part list that would cost over $2000 without going into “paying 3x as much for a 10% boost” territory.
It’s not the crazy high end SLI setup that can run the highest possible settings that the game allows, but it’d be more than adequate for playing it with a good gameplay experience.
That’s why I added the bit about technical savvy in my posts. I’d never build a prebuilt even if cost wasn’t an issue - I want to know precisely what components are going into my system. The price of prebuilts vs component systems has narrowed significantly over time, and you can get respectable systems from places like Dell for reasonable prices, but it’s still superior all around to build your own if you can (and it doesn’t require all that much knowledge).
This makes me wonder if you’re out of touch. My 2 year old, $1200 system does things a ps2 could never hope to do, not even close. You make it sound like you’d be getting bottom end stuff by spending less than $2000, when the reality is that you just wouldn’t be paying high premiums for super high end stuff.
If that’s what you like - cool - but don’t suggest that people who don’t pay insane premiums for small amounts of extra performance are getting the shaft and aren’t truly experiencing games.
The N64 was the only non-portable Nintendo console I skipped. Played Ocarina of Time on a friend’s N64. Enjoyed occasional bouts of Goldeneye or Forsaken. Just didn’t have the titles or specs to really pull me in. The still-cartridge-based system lost them their alliance with Squaresoft, which was the final nail in the N64’s coffin.
Hell, I got a Wii and the thing that I’m most disappointed about is that it has a component connection. WTF is the deal with that?
As for buying for for blu-ray, sure it’s cheaper now, but prices are going to come down on other players. And, just like the DVD+/DVD- non-war of a few years ago, there’s already a dual-format HD DVD announced by LG.
Heh, the N64 controller was stupid-looking to a spectacular degree… but other than one flaw*, it was an excellent controller. The D-pad on the left “handle” was actually very effective - it’s a shame so many games didn’t enable it - compared to the mini-Dpad on the GC controller that was virtually vestigal. The C-buttons versus the C-stick largely depended on what game you were playing, but on the whole, the buttons were more useful (they were MUCH better for Ocarina, for instance, having played both the N64 and GC versions). The Z-button on the N64 controller was a first and perfectly executed, while the Z-button on the GC controller… well, defeated the purpose of the Z button (as a “trigger” button), and was positioned such that it was nearly useless for any other function.
The Cube controller has grown on me a little (I previously thought it was the worst controller design in the history of consoles… through using it a ton and much debate I have revised that opinion to “a good effort with a few things that weren’t thought out too well”)… but the N64 controller was functional excellence under a really clunky guise.
That’s an even deeper digression, though, and also a matter of personal opinion to a significant degree. As long as you’re willing to admit that the game library was relatively lacking in top-of-the-line, must-have stuff, I’m perfectly willing to say that overall the Cube is a better system than it’s often given credit for.
*the analog stick on the N64 controller - which was itself a pretty big step forward at the time - tended to get “loose” over time. More so - and more quickly so - if you were a little ‘rough’ with the controller, but over enough time it would happen to any of them. Not the worst thing in the world, but you also didn’t want to be the one with the loose controller during the Goldeneye deathmatch.
Yeah, that did kind of suck… but like I said, the GC was just as bad for RPGs. Each of the system had one excellent S-RPG, one very good Mario-RPG, and a bunch - though, really, not even that many - of pretenders. Cube has a slight edge with Tales of Symphonia, I guess, because that was at least ‘pretty good’, if certainly not overwhelming in any way whatsoever. The PS has been the unquestioned home of console RPGs for each of those generations, though, and that’s one of the things that disturbs me the most about the… issues… that the PS3 is having. If third-party devs split off, it’ll be that much harder to be able to play the quality RPGs that are out there. To this moment in time, if you just bought a PS1 and PS2, you’d have played virtually every worthwhile console RPG of the last two generations (and this one, even, given that there isn’t a single good console-style RPG out yet for the new generation). That’s not likely to be the case going forward, and I do hate missing out on that sort of thing.
At 720p (probably the most common res used by console games), is only 720 lines vertically So if you really want to compare PCs and consoles correctly, you need to figure what system you need to run a game at max settings for 1024x768.
In many cases, all that’s needed to play the latest games a new video card. SenorBeef specs for a $750 system above are certainly reasonable, but in many ways overkill. No PC gamer buys a new hard drive or burner with each upgrade. In actuality, as each new generation of games comes out, it’s usually a new GFX card, new processor + GFX card, new GFX card, new processor + GFX card type of every-other cycle.
In truth, I don’t care about PC vs. consoles because I just love gaming and will go wherever the good games I want to play are.
Well, as I said, I disagree and I’d have to see a system configuration to convince me otherwise. I should say I was off base in saying “you won’t be playing it on a $750 machine” because it’s certainly possible to play games with systems that don’t even match the minimum requirements listed on the box, but there is a drop off in quality/performance in doing so.
My point was, no person I know that primarily uses their PC for gaming has a $750 system, I’ll concede the point that you can run a lot of games on a $750 system, but I do not believe you would be able to run them very well by anyone’s reasonable definition.
I also never said you have to have a $2,000 system to play them.
No, you’re right, it isn’t. But if you’re playing them at a low resolution with low quality video/performance settings my point is you’re not really getting much out of what the PC can offer.
Again, show me, and then I’ll agree with you.
I question the mother board price and the power supply price.
I never said it was the minimum.
I never said otherwise, my point about the $2000 system was that’s what I pay, not that it is what is needed to play games.
I don’t know how I was acting, but I certainly never said that, and that’s really all you have to go on through a medium like this.
But I will stand by my point that you can’t play games very well on a $750 system.
I haven’t bothered to research the specs of the best system you can build for $750, but I have looked at how much one computer of mine would go for based on the sum of its component costs and it’d be around $680 assuming all the components were new. This particular system cannot run Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and by cannot run I mean you literally cannot move around in the game world, the video lag on the absolute lowest settings is so poor that you cannot meaningfully interact with the game world.
It can run EverQuest2, just, but on absolutely the lowest video settings and even then there is very bad stuttering.
And this wasn’t a terrible system when it was built, it has moderately respectable specs (256 MB vid card, 2gb ram, its processor is a little dated.)
Now obviously this is an old system, and you would probably be able to get more per dollar with new components, but I still see it being very difficult to do what you claim you can do within the $750 cap. Especially when we factor in shipping costs or sales tax (you’ll certainly pay one or the other.)
Actually some games are very processor intensive but you can play them with an integrated graphics video card. An example of this is Paradox Games “Crusader Kings” title.
Games may be reaching a point where you are buying new hard drives when you upgrade a system. Vanguard: Saga of Heros is a 20 GB install, for example.
It’s usually best to get a good all around system if you’re buying a new system to be your primary computer. Just because most people do more than play games on them, and it’s convenient to have a good amount of storage space (within reason, there’s no reason to pay for a 750 GB HDD when a 250 one is enough for most people) as well as be able to write to different mediums like DVD. But a huge hard drive and the ability to burn DVDs isn’t really essential by any means for a pure gaming system.
Personally with a new system I usually buy a new keyboard, new mouse, and new speakers. As all three are things that I feel wear and tear gets to a good bit in the life span of one of my systems (usually 4-5 years.) I usually only get a new monitor once every two systems (so 8-10 years.) Although with LCD technology these days my current monitor may even last longer than that, we’ll just have to see.
I disagree. All that power’s worth nothing without stuff to do on it. Who’s going to write the OS, the Office suite, the email client, the peripheral drivers, and all the other stuff that you need to have for a desktop? The Cell speaks PowerPC, so it won’t run Windows. It’s not made by Apple, so it won’t run MacOS. That leaves a specialty OS, something Sony rolls itself, or some manner of open source OS. But, really, “it won’t run Windows” is enough to doom it as a realistic personal computer option for the vast majority of people.
From what little I know about the Cell, it’s really efficient at floating point ops, which makes it great for gaming and physics simulation (with specialized software for it), but not necessarily that good for lots of other uses. But many commonly used applications have little to no need for floating point calculations. Furthermore, vast existing code bases are optimized for integer calculations instead, since they have historically been faster and cheaper to perform. Which is probably still the case with the Cell, except that it’s got multiple efficient floating-point coprocessors to ease the pain.
Problem is, no one cares about Blu-Ray. Only 11% of US households have HDTV. If you don’t have an HDTV set, there’s no point at all to getting Blu-Ray, and even if you do have one, you might be satisfied with a decent upscaling DVD player.
OTOH, if you have HDTV, the price of the PS3 is peanuts compared to what you already spent on the set.
They’ve already been written. If you want to use your PS3 as a desktop, you can install Linux today and use OpenOffice, Thunderbird, etc.
You make it sound like you’d be stuttering along at 10 FPS on minimum settings, but that’s not remotely the case.
Let me use my PC for an example. It’s 2 years old, with some components older than that. If you throw out the 350 I spent on hard drives (75gb raptor, 2 high quality 250gb drives), I spent:
IIRC ~80 for the case, Antec Sonata,
$80 for power supply, antec truepower 430 (the case came with a truepower 380 - I had the power supply from a previous computer. I could’ve saved $80 here by using the adequate to good power supply the case came with if I didn’t already have something better - but you can get a decent case/psu combo for under $100)
about $130 combined for a 512 stick of corsair 3200c2 and mushkin 2-2-2 3200 (added later),
$400 for a gf 6800 GT,
$130 for an athlon 3200+ winchester,
$120 for a MSI neo platinum 2 nforce 3 board
If you take out the $80 I’m counting for the old power supply, since the case came with one, that’s $860. So this system I’m running now is barely more expensive than this hypothetical $750 system built today - and I still have no trouble running modern games without slowness - except for, perhaps, flight sim X, but apparently it runs slow for EVERYONE and really benefits from the dx10 generation of cards.
I haven’t played whatever the latest cutting edge games are, but it can do oblivion with high settings with 50+ fps, which was cutting edge over a year after I built this system. F.E.A.R., also a year after I built it, runs more than adequately even with FSAA and anisotropy. What was cutting edge at the time I built it, hl2, runs fine with max settings, fsaa, aniso, and still pumps out 80+ FPS at all times.
Of course, a sytem built today with 750 would be more powerful than this system built with a little more 2 years ago. You make it sound as if I’m barely meeting the minimum requirements for things, but for the most part, I’m still having good frame rates at high settings on every game I play, when the reality is that when I built this rig, it was far above average for a gaming system, and 2 years later, is still adequate.
You said
It sounds to me as if you’re saying
A) a $750 system won’t run the latest games (or, at least, won’t won them adequately)
B) A true gaming rig is way out of most people’s price range
C) Most people aren’t willing to pay $2000
It seems to me that B and C are linked, in that you’re saying a “true gaming system” starts at $2000. I may be mistaking your meaning, but I’m not just pulling it out of nowhere.
1280x and even 1024x are relatively low resolutions by modern standards, I admit - but I’m still a CRT fan and that’s what I tend to game at. Certainly, the settings I use at these resolutions aren’t low at all, and neither is the performance.
Well I’m not going to do a ton of research for a hypothetical system, so this may not be the absolute best value, and I’m just going with what I’m familiar with (nvidia, AMD) but pulling prices from newegg:
Athlon X2 4200+ Windsor, $170
Geforce 7800 gt, $130
Antec Sonata 2 with 450w SmartPower, $100 + $15 shipping
Gig of ddr 2 $110 (various brands)
Asus M2N4-SLI motherboard, $100 - I basically looked for the most expensive board from a reputable manufacturer. You can’t even find nforce 4 board for over $100 there.
Not sure if we’re including hard drives, but WD 320 GB HD for $100
I rounded up a bit on prices to factor shipping in - there was even a rebate I didn’t factor in.
Comes out to $725.
This system could easily run any game you throw at it at 1280x with maximum settings. It would probably be more than adequate at 1600x1200 too, but I’ve never ran resolutions that high, so I don’t know how much of a drop off there is.
In no way would this system remotely be barely scraping by with minimum requirements, at low resolutions, settings, and frame rates. That’s so far detached from reality that I’m not sure if you’ve ever worked with anything between a $2000+ gaming rig and trying to run games on some casual computing dell.
Look on newegg yourself. Even the high quality motherboards cost under $100. I’ve never paid more than $120-$130, and I always buy the best/“enthusiast” motherboards. An Antec Truepower 430, which is a good power supply, is $70 shipped.
Well, again, rereading what you said, it sounds like you’re saying “true gamer rigs” start at $2000+
Fair enough - but still, what I’m attacking is the notion that you’d have a laughably bad gaming experience with $750.
Well, now you’ve got a hypothetical system to chew on. My current system, is equal or inferior in every way to that system (except hard drive space) still plays any game adequately at high settings at the resolutions I prefer - so there’s no way that you could say that the system listed above would be barely scraping by.
The other thing that’s missing is that people don’t buy computers just to play games. They spec out a computer and then figure out what to add on top so that it can become a gaming machine. If you decide to buy a PS3, you’re still going to be buying that $300 PC anyway to use word and surf the web. So really, the price for a gaming PC to be competitive is $750 + $300 which gives you much more latitude.
Your common standard definition TV plays at 480i. To get the equivalent on a PC, you’ll have to drop your resolution all the way down to 640x480, and even then you’re getting 480p not 480i.