Is computer gaming is expensive?

Is computer gaming expensive?

  • Yes

    Votes: 292 68.2%
  • No

    Votes: 30 7.0%
  • Only if ur stupid

    Votes: 106 24.8%

  • Total voters
    428
Status
Not open for further replies.
Yes computer gaming is expensive..... At least the way most people on this site do it.

I love to game on my computer, but I also love making fast computers. It's a game unto itself. If I was concerned about the price and only gaming above all else, I would probably be a console gamer.
 
It doesn't have to be expensive.

I put together the desktop in my signature for only $532 total, including tax and shipping. If I needed a monitor (I don't), I would have bought something like a 19" Daewoo CRT for $70AR. What games can't you play on a P4 3GHz with 1GB and a x800 Pro 256MB? It plays everything i've tried.

My last desktop was an upgraded HP A64 3400+ (1GB, same size HDs as in my sig, x800 XT PE) and even that was only $520 total including taxes and shipping. I got rid of it due to the glitches in the Asus motherboard (never resolved after 6 months) and lack of expansion slots. :mad:

It's really easy to spend a lot on computers. A little effort can save a lot of money.
 
Yes and No,

If you buy an Xbox and Playstation every time it comes out you are looking at around $600 every 3 years.. take the Average $10 Premium you pay for top titles when the come out, say you buy one per month, that is $360 over 3 years in additional costs. and Bam, you are near $1000.00 easily every 3 years.

You can buy and upgrade a PC very well for $1000 every three years.
 
Yes = for high end pc or top of the line system

No = it's not expensive if you want to play games at 10x7 resolution

Only if you're stupid = People who buy over price system. (not all, but some)
 
i think it's about the same, but mostly because i play the same game over and over online, and half the other stuff i dont pay for (let's call them demos for now), so for me buying a new console that hasn't been modded for $400 and spending $60 or more per game would be out of the question. cuz everyone knows you'd want more and more games:D
 
The games themselves can be expensive and add up over time. Think an average of $50 a game, just 4 games would be $200, it can get expensive quick.
 
No, I don't think gaming is expensive...

I'm running a 9800Pro and a P4C and I have no itentions to upgrade for another 3+ years.
 
Well, I think because of AMD, a decent gaming processor isn't 500 dollars now. The under 200 dollar CPU I can thank AMD for. I do believe higher end gaming is expensive for the most part, but if you play your cards right and look for deals(whether it be rebates, fatwallet.com/slickdeals.net), overclock, and use things like onboard sound instead of the x-fi, you could save a lot of money and come out with a computer to get you by on some midrange to higher end gaming. I know that's how I feel about my computer now. I may not play at 1600x1200 with 6-8x AA and 16XAF on every game, but I play all my games on high detail (I refuse to pay for the x800 and play on low detail for the first year or so) with at least 2xaa and 8xAF at 1280x1024 with at least more than playable framerate.
 
Computer gaming is expensive only if you always strive to play the latest games at the highest settings... I'm an avid Warcraft 3 fan so gaming is very cheap for me :)
 
Yes and No

If you absolutely need the best FPS and look/feel then it can become ver expensive.

If you willing to sit middle of the road and get the best of both quality and price then you can usually stay afloat pretty easily.
 
It can be if you insist on the best of everything. And then you realize that something better will come along in a few months. If you're willing to settle for a tier or two down and search for good deals, you can end up with a very good rig for little money. I bought a Dell 2.4GHz about 3 years ago for about $70, upgraded with about $50 worth of RDRAM, a bigger hard drive on sale for about $40, and a 9600 Pro for about $150 two years ago. Plays older games great, and newer ones just fine as long as you don't use maximum settings. For a little over $300 I had a rig that was (and still is) good at most games, plus all the other uses of a computer. I just upgraded with Project NeXT Cube, but that was more for a casemod project than a need for "better" gaming.

 
if you play your games at the res console games play at then no

if you play your games at a higher res then what consoles can do, then it costs more.

if you want to spend the extra money for higher res/iq it might cost more but it doesnt make it "expensive." you get what you pay for and the pc gives you a much wider range on price vs performance then console, alowing you to pick whats perfect for you.

do its only expensive if youre stupid and dont buy what you want.
 
No.

If you shell out for a console when it first comes out historically they've had better graphics than PCs of their time. With each round it's been getting closer, with the Xbox containing a GeForce2.5 when the GeForce3 was imminent.

With consoles, you are paying a premium for the game. Over here, games cost £40-£45 on consoles (we're talking AAA titles) whereas PC AAA titles go for £35. Also, budget PC games cost £5 or £10 where console "budget" seems to be £20.

When your console can no longer cut the mustard, you have to junk it, and junk the collection of games that you've accrued (not strictly true with the PS2 though). You could sell the crap ones+the old console to help pay for the new one, but it won't make much of a dent in the price.
With the PC, you've just got to upgrade it. Since about the days of 20GB hard disks you've not NEEDED to upgrade them to play games, but everything else has had to change at a cost of around £100 per year (probably works out to be US$140 what with the price premium we seem to pay over here for hardware). Some years more, some less. Every 4 years or so you'll need to shell out for a new motherboard and chip or get an expensive graphics card, but once you have a basic rig and are willing to upgrade it, it will be cheaper in the long run.

Also, console games are generally rubbish (my opinion only). You won't see a FPS on a console that has an inferior PC version. Total War, Black And White, and the old Civ games. Fantastic strategy games (very rare on console). Driving games and sports games (particularly football - soccer) seem to be about equal. The only excelling genre on consoles are the beat em ups. The PC just doesn't get them. RPGs seem to be very different. I don't like the FF style storybook punctuated with fighting, but love Baldur's Gate 1&2, System Shock and Ultima Underworld. Mark them as equal I guess.

Don't get me wrong, more rubbish games probably come out on PC but the soulless cash-ins (movie based games) seem to be fewer, amongst the trailblazers of Half Life 2, FEAR and Baldur's Gate.

The PC is so much more too. Internet, school work, real work, music, porn - it has it all.

It can be expensive (and I almost put "Only if you're stupid") but in my case, I don't think so.
 
the more i think about this, the more im inclined to say no. heres why...

gaming is not expensive. i can game on my dual p3 1.6 and a radeon 9600 pro just fine.

being a hardware enthusiast is expensive. most people on this board are gamers AND hardware enthusiasts, which makes it expensive. top end hardware for games is expensive. then again, top end workstation hardware is even more expensive. in the end, being a hardware enthusiest is waht makes PC gaming expensive, not PC gaming itself.
 
Nope......$3000 bucks for a 386 sx 16mhz with 4MB ram, 2MB VGA onboard video card, 40mb hd, and a 15" .28 dot pitch monitor in 1987 to play games like Police Quests, King Quests, Wing Commander, etc......THAT was expensive.
 
TheBluePill said:
Yes and No,

If you buy an Xbox and Playstation every time it comes out you are looking at around $600 every 3 years.. take the Average $10 Premium you pay for top titles when the come out, say you buy one per month, that is $360 over 3 years in additional costs. and Bam, you are near $1000.00 easily every 3 years.

You can buy and upgrade a PC very well for $1000 every three years.

Console gamers seem to often conveniently forget to add in the cost of their television to the equation.
 
Its expensive if you want it to be.

If you want to have a sick computer, then you spend a lot of money, but if you want a computer that can play all of todays games, but dont want to spend more that 500 bucks, you can do that too. Online gaming is also currently much bigger on PC's making the replay value better in my mind.

Really, it all depends on how much you want to spend.
 
Well, in my Case, I never added up the price of my GF's and I's boxen, but I'll give it a shot. Hers was mostly retail with alot of gimme's, while I recycle my parts or go for the best deals.

Deacon
AXPM 2400+ = $80
A7N8X-X = $40 (refurb off newegg)
1gb DDR400 $80
XFX GF6 6800 = $145 (after rebate @ Newegg)
80 Gig HDD = Free (Work ordered one on accident, needed scsi)
160 gig HDD = $70 (after Rebate)
Case = $30
Viewsonic G800 = Free (Given to me)
KBrd/Mouse = $25 (AT MOST)
Headphones = $30
5.1 Speakers = $50
TOTAL on hardware = $405

Gir
AXP 2400+ = $90
Gigabyte Mobo = $70
1.25 Gig DDR400 = FREE (hand me downs from Deacon)
Leadtec GF6 6200 = $120 (Paid too much, but a needed upgrade)
80 Gig HDD = $30
160 Gig HDD = $70 (after Rebate)
Case = Free (Present)
Sony EV700 = Free (Present)
Kbrd/mouse = Free (Presents)
Headphones = $30
Labtec 2.0 Speakers = $30
Total on hardware = $440

This doesn't take in to account hardware that we resell to get some value out of it. Right now I got someone asking $100 for my old 5950Ultra and he'll probabily get it. I wanna upgrade move my OS drives from the 80's to the 160's and buy two 500GB HDD's, but I'm waiting for the right time to do that. As for Games, we buy one copy for games that we'll playe offline, and two for games we play online... Examples of that are Q3A, BF2, and WoW. I don't think that gaming is expensive on a PC if you make intellegent purchases on hardware.

Plus I haven't had a Console since the SNES, tho I had a PS2 for about a week, sold it for a 4x75 watt stereo w/ remote + Installation at a Stereo Store in So. Cal. Only thing Wrong with the PS2 was the lens was dirty, otherwise, I got it free from a friend that had ripped it completely apart.
 
Krycek1 said:
Hell, Yes... To put together a nice rig with a monitor you easily need 1500 bucks min.

That's not expensive. It's less than I spend in a year on cable (including high-speed internet). It's only a little bit more than I spend each year on my cellular phones. It's about what I pay for satellite each year. It's certainly less than I spend on auto insurance each year.

Say you spend 8 hours a week playing a game. That's about 400 hours each year; about $4 or $5 per hour for the year, once you buy some games. That's substantially less than you pay for other forms of entertainment. It's certainly less than you'd pay to see a professional sporting event, and might even be less than you'd spend on going to the movies.

Why do you think it's expensive?
 
most of you people are idiots, unless your expecting to build an sli system your rarly gonna build something over 1k unless your looking at the HIGHEST end parts which isnt necessary
 
If you need an extra 7800GTX for SLI...you care too much about computer games :). A decent A64, decent vid card, decent parts to go around it...$1000 max for something that is MULTIFUNCTION compared to a console.

That being said, one day people will surf/e-mail/Word on their consoles...then it might be different.

And you might need to spend over $1K if you're getting an X2 processor and 2GB of RAM ;).
 
kcthebrewer said:
I don't know exactly what people are talking about with gaming being expensive. You can game on a even a low end system ($600).

The worst cost of gaming IMO is buying the games. Spending $30-$50 in games all the time get fricken expensive. I don't pirate.

That said, I am looking at spending ~$4000 on my next rig.

*cough* bittorrent *cough*
 
well it can be. a reasonable box can play games well enough if your willing to sacrifice resolution, etc,

but also whats expensive to some may not be to others.

personally, i dont see $2000-$2500 as expensive for a computer. true ill save for it for a few months or, upgrade gradually for a new system(next update is new cpu, mobo, and video card in a socket 939/pci express shuffle).

a new console system and a decent tv to play it on can set you back a fair bit, add in some more controllers, and where are you at then? true most people dont buy a tv witht heir consoles, but its still needed to play....
 
I put 'only if ur stupid', even though 'stupid' seemed a little harsh. For me, being young, it has been pretty expensive. $1400+ to be more specific... But it's really only expensive if you want it to be. Some people like to spend upward of $2000 on a nice rig because they like eye candy. Others do it to compensate. On the flip side, some people are plenty happy with an older, more inexpensive rig that can play CS:S at a decent resolution.
 
I have a very nice way of doing it. You simply play games that are at least a year old. You get them for nice low prices (just got UT2004 for $10 at newegg), and you use hardware that is now cheap. Voila, you can play games with some pretty impressive graphics, even if they are *gasp* a year old.

The other huge advantage to this is that after a year, you know which games are good, and which ones are better to avoid. So not only do you save money on the games you buy, but you don't waste money on games you won't like.
 
Astaroth125 said:
Gaming is not expensive. Gaming at high quality, high resolution is expensive. Similar to driving. You can get a car for $2,000. Or you can get a Ferrari for $100,000+. All depends on what you want from the experience. I'm sure Ferrari owners will tell you that driving your Honda isn't really driving. :p

Astaroth

Or you could buy an Ariel Atom and get supercar performance for the price of 2 civics. ;)
 
gtx4u said:
Do you think computer gaming is expensive?

No, I did the math and found that If I divide the total amount that I have spent on gaming and the length of time I have been playing, I get a $70.00 per month hobby. :cool:

It can seem like it's expensive because you spend a lot of money all at once. After that you just pay for the games you want. When I'm ready to upgrade I just sell everything individually on eBay. I made $850.00 back on my last rig with selling the monitor (sold everything separately). :)
 
Well lets see here, if i smoked, that would be on average, about 36€ a week, going at the rate my mother smokes and so on, and if i drank, that would be, well lets say a friday out with some mates would be about 50-75€ EASILY, so thats mmm lets say 100€ a week i'm not spending, now lets look at all the other things my rig does, It plays music, so no CD sound system, (saving about 100-200€ if not more) it plays DVD's (saving me about 100-200€ for a decent DVD) it lets me watch TV (Saves me 150€ TV licence, and also the 300 i would pay for a good TV) so... In my life my pc isnt expensive since it replaces the need to do or purchase other things, so for me, spending a few hundred on my pc and parts, is a GOOD thing :)
 
If you have a dog you probably spend more in a year than on games.....if you take proper care of him/her.
If you have children you spend way more to upgrade them than to upgrade the PC
By the process of deduction....you probably have a husband/wife on which you will spend more than the cable bill.....
there you go.....gaming is cheap if you have the time away from all the above. and you need to sleep and work,too. :D
 
You have to remember that playing video games on a console is only giving you ~640x480 resolution (unless it's an HD game on an HD console and HD TV... I'm not sure what the res on those are, anyone know) with "optimized" detail levels... So even if you build a system that can run said game at 1024x768 with high detail, you've got a MUCH nicer platform to play games on. I still run a 1.4g t-bird with a gf4ti4600. Why? I'd like to upgrade and play everything at uber-high res and uber-high detail, but I can't justify spending the cash.. so I don't. But I still play the games I want to play.

So, as said before, it CAN be expensive if you want it to be. Or it can be very reasonable if you keep your head on straight.
 
it really depends on a couple of things like where u live like for example i live in australia and a AMDFX57 cost $1590 and a X850XT PE cost $800-$900 might be less now and also if u get it off the net, also a $2500 pc will be enough for a good gaming experence like u can have everything upto max settings and still have good frames and yes also u will be able to surf net with that , watch DVD's ,burn cd's etc etc also another thing is if u are a mainstream-hardcore gamer like me than yeah it is expensive for gaming but in the end it doesnt matter really.

Hope that is clear for u's my gaming pc in my sig cost $2800 australian approx
 
Stellar said:
Most people already have a computer for other uses, therefore gaming is only a decent video card away in most cases. For the price of a console alone you can buy a mid to high-end video card.

So I vote no, it's not. Not unless you INSIST on playing all games at high resolution and high detail (I know I do).

That's one of the great things about computer gaming.. you can pick and choose your level and combination of hardware to fit your needs or budget.


I agree.. If you have a $1000 dell already, $400 buys you a damn good gaming experience.. And will prolly continue to give you good performance for a couple years or more... If you already buy a new, half way decent comp every 2-3 years any way, the $300-$400 extra you pay to get a good graphics card is not all that much.. ( I feel like I've said this before)
 
For what it's worth, for the past several years I've found that I can put together a just-under-cutting-edge gaming computer at any time for about $800 and make the system last at least 3 years. Of course by that time, it's definitely towards the low end of the midrange-performers...

Expensive? Yeah, but oh so worth it.
Especially for all the non-gaming "bonus" creative stuff I can do with it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top