What makes gaming PCs so expensive compared to XBOX 360? [closed]

Question

I was looking to buy a desktop, which I could also use to play games (mainly FPS). I was kinda confused at the obscenely high prices of the "gaming" PCs that are advertised by manufacturers. From what I could understand, these PCs had obscenely high spec CPUs and memory, and a better cooling system. But given that I can play about the same games on XBOX 360, the prices don't make sense.

In India, Dell's cheapest Alienware desktop goes for about $2200 (i5-2400 cpu, 4 gb ddr3 1333 ram), while the XBOX S 250 GB is about $450. Roughly a price factor of five. Given that games released today would run comfortably on both, what is the reason for the large price difference? I believe that the XBox will not include peripherals, so maybe $200 extra for that.

So what causes this huge difference? Is there something I am missing here? Are gaming PCs much much more powerful than the XBOX, or maybe the XBOX just runs faster on cheaper hardware because it's not cluttered? Is the quality of XBOX 360 not up to par with today's desktops?

PS: I am looking to understand what basically to look for in a PC that I can game on.

Answer 1

A Gaming PC has considerably higher specs than a game console does.

There are a number of reasons for this:

1. PCs don't have the luxury of unloading most of their OS when a game is running, thus require more RAM and processing power.
2. PCs can output graphics at resolutions much higher than a game console can. Game consoles max out at 1920x1080 (AKA 1080p) and quite often games use a lower resolution than that (1280x720 aka 720p).
3. Modern PCs can output to multiple displays simultaneously, treating them as a single larger desktop.
4. Modern graphics cards have additional features that the consoles don't support, such as Tessellation.
5. Gaming PCs have much faster processors than consoles do.

There also appears to be some difference in price between regions. In the US, Alienware's cheapest desktop model (the Aurora with i5-2300, 4gb ddr3 1333 ram, and nVidia GTX460 1GB) costs $1199 USD, while the Xbox 360 S 250GB costs $299 USD.

You may also be able to find it cheaper by ordering parts separately and having someone build the PC for you. Where I live, there are many companies that will do this for you. I don't know what the situation is in India.

Answer 2

1. Console manufacturers usually don't expect to make high profit from selling the console itself. In the case of Microsoft, for example, they make money out of each game sold (a portion of the game's cost goes to MS) and from XBOX Live Gold memberships. There is intense competition between the console manufacturers to sell you the console so you can then buy games and start creating profit for them. In the case of Sony, the PS3 was an important way of promoting the Blu-Ray format, justifying the sale of the console at a very competitive price.

2. Consoles are manufactured on higly automated assembly lines. There only a few variations of the console (revised designs) and each revision is produced in millions of units. The produciton of PC's cannot be automated as such. Many parts must be installed by hand. And to make the delivery time not too long for custom PC's (Dell, Alienware, etc.) these have to be manufactured close to customer. For the north american customers, this means the PC is assembled close to them, and not in Asia like most consoles are. This means considerable differences in the manufacturing cost, especially since the production cannot be entirely automated.

Answer 3

Many gaming PCs have their cases blinged out with fancy metalwork and blue LED lightshows and you pay a premium for all this unnecessary extra stuff. If you specced up a decent desktop PC with a good graphics card and sufficient RAM, you can make up something totally suitable for gaming for much less cash.

Answer 4

Consoles have limited hardware capacity in compare to PC. Even if you want, you can upgrade your PC's hardware which is not possible in consoles. Thus the cost of hardware is the factor of the expensiveness of the PC gaming. But this inexpensive gaming console does not match the visuals of the same game in compare to the PC.