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Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

As presented, the choices then are:

- buy a $800 GPU, keep PC gaming and all the fun maintenance associated with that

- buy a cool new toy like a Xbox Series X/PS5/Steam Deck

- don't do anything, game at 720P with no AA (this sounds sort of like when I had lunchables for dinner yesterday)

Your alternative isn't wrong but they weren't looking to optimize for staying on a PC, but rather, for gaming, and were already thinking in terms of "how much of my disposable income do I want to spend on my hobby?" rather than "should I spend my disposable income on my hobby?"

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I had a PS5. I sold it after playing a few exclusives because there was just nothing else to play. Games are more expensive on consoles than PC, no mods, have to pay to play online, and so on.

Plus, the very fact that it's a general purpose computer I can use for work, programming, and cool GPU stuff like Stable Diffusion are what made me get a PC over a console. In other words, I'm gonna need a computer anyway, why not get one that can play games over getting a computer or laptop and also a games console that doesn't do everything as well as a gaming PC?

I'm sure in the long term one would actually spend less on a PC than a console, given all these constraints.

Couch experience is overall much nicer. Dual classing one pc as a tv and desk thing is just plain annoying.

PC -> TV experiences are also not great in general.

Also many will not buy a desktop computer, their compute device is a phone at most.

Dual classing a pc as a tv and desk PC can be pretty nice once you get it set up. Something like Nvidia Shield, Moonlight Gamestream software (if you have an Nvidia card), and Playnight launcher can work great if you can hook it all together with ethernet or MOCA over COAX.

Having run an over powered desktop to enable my gaming hobby, I have been toying with putting a "thin client" on my desk and my beefy rig in the living room.

Computer performance has felt ~stagnant for the past decade. Given the number of platforms that build to be mobile friendly, there is increasingly less need to be constantly running a power hungry rig as my main configuration when I am spending most of my time browser the internet. If I want to "desktop game" I could stream from the living room to my desk in the event it is not a controller friendly experience.

> PC -> TV experiences are also not great in general.

Why not? I recently bought an inexpensive gamepad, hooked up TV via HDMI and added a wireless keyboard+touchpad to the mix (I can't get used to Steam console mode). Overall experience is pretty good, effectively indistinguishable from PS4 we had in the office.

It drops into desktop, you have to drag out the keyboard / mouse, it's connected as another monitor on hdmi, so if someone else turns on the tv, that starts interacting with your computer as a second screen. Not to mention the extra annoyances when the tv is in another room.

Streaming boxes like the nvidia shield or similar have their own issues, along with dropping to desktop and so on.

While a dedicated TV console has none of those issues.

> It drops into desktop, you have to drag out the keyboard / mouse ...

For the years I had a living room PC hooked up to the main TV, I used a small gamepad-sized wireless keyboard and touchpad similar to this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Z81U3YY

The one I had worked pretty well, but it wasn't this model.

I just do both really. There are some games that are just better sitting on the sofa that can be started fast and no fuss. Then there are some games that are maybe more of a slow Sunday afternoon at a desk vibe.

First point is disingenuous, it’s not like you only have that one option. There’s plenty options at lower price points which are still decent. And there’s the second-hand market for the budget-conscious. You can get a decent pc for around 1k, and much lower with second-hand market options.

For the maintenance, it’s not like you’re buying a car. Unless you’re enthusiastic about your pc, you can get a pre-built, plug it in and use it, same as console.

Not to mention that games are cheaper and there’s more cheap indie titles available, so if one is optimising for max gaming enjoyment for the least money, pc looks like a better option. But if the plan is to play through the best titles here and there, then console is a good option as well.

There is far more maintenance or rather troubleshooting with a PC. The Steam Deck too TBH (even on "Verified" games you run into the occasional problem with more frequency than a Switch). You're just far more likely to run into some weird problem or issue with a random title especially that 10 year old game you bought for $1.

On console you match the label to the machine and it works.

- play any of the myriad brilliant non-AAA games that don't require bleeding edge hardware for full experience.

> - don't do anything, game at 720P with no AA (this sounds sort of like when I had lunchables for dinner yesterday)

This sounds sort of like audiophiles, who don't listen to music unless the audio system doesn't have expensive cables.

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