Oh yeah, and the internet subscription also tends to come with a constant stream of free games. Every month there’s a couple new things to play that cost more than your month’s subscription.
And much smaller blast radius too. I don't do home banking on my xbox.
The reason consoles are safer is that you can't do any dodgy downloads on them beyond the manufacturer's walled garden, similar to how mobile devices work, not because they have magic security pixie dust making them invulnerable to malware, especially since they share the same X86 hardware as PCs.
That's not the whole story. The Xbox takes sandboxing very seriously, and provides isolation way beyond a typical PC. See for instance [0]. Recent generations of Xbox and PlayStation have been based on AMD64, but I don't see that this is a major factor.
edit It's a pity they don't offer decent keyboard+mouse support. Being able to use a console as a serious desktop web browser would be a very useful feature.
Some games offer M+KB support, and I think the new Xboxes have some support at a system level. I’m not sure if that extends to the system UI, though.
This ignores the realities of modern day explosives, or even what can be cobbled together from household items. Any discernable difference between a PC & console all but disappears if they're detonated with even a modest explosive.
Context matters as well: A PC is more likely to be in a clearer zone, at the very least for better ventilation. A console on the other hand is much more likely to be in an area that is more densely populated with other consumer electronics. The television alone is likely to be sufficiently large to make a more impressive field of debris than a PC.
Obviously this is just taking the typical setups into account. All bets are off when dealing with a PC that has some truly exotic cooling mechanisms. Detonation under those conditions should, at minimum, be accompanied with evacuation orders for neighbors within a 3 to 4 block radius of your home.
You probably could do this, as the console includes the Edge browser, including a Private Browsing feature. (At least, the Xbox One includes a pre-Chromium version of Edge, I'm not sure about the new Series consoles.) It doesn't strike me as a particularly bad idea, other than in terms of the user experience, likely with no support for keyboard and mouse.
I don't want that, I just want to play one or two games online, the ones I purchase. My friend has been telling me how much better Overwatch is on the PS4, and the fact that I'd need to pay to play online is ridiculous, shocking when I found out about it. It's not too expensive, but the principle of the thing annoys me.
Spec wise PC hardware is cheaper. Most people tend to spend more to build something much more powerful than a console, causing it to cost more.
> lets you kick back on a couch
Nothing is preventing you from doing this with a PC. Steam has a TV mode interface that is much like console interfaces. I use PS4 BT controllers with mine.
> setup and maintenance is a couple orders of less magnitude less complicated
I'll give you that on setup. A dedicated gaming PC doesn't require any more maintenance than a console. Everything auto updates now.
> much smaller attack surface for malware.
Sure, but if you have a computer dedicated to gaming the attack surface area is small. If you're worried about it don't use that computer for anything other than games.
> Oh yeah, and the internet subscription also tends to come with a constant stream of free games. Every month there’s a couple new things to play that cost more than your month’s subscription.
Check out Humble Bundle, it has similar value except you get to keep the games DRM free forever. Also it's not required, you have a choice.
Not really, consoles are now fully fledged X86_X64 PCs with closed source, security through obscurity OSs, similar to Windows and MacOS but with much more DRM to prevent you from running anything not signed by the manufacturer(cough, pirated content, cough).
You could say they're about the same risk in theory but malware on PC land hasn't been an issue in many years unless, as a user, you intentionally visit, download and run unknown stuff off dodgy torrents/pirate/p0rn websites, then nothing can really protect you.
The reason why consoles are "safer" is there's not much you can do with them other than access the manufacturer's "app store" which is thoroughly vetted, not because they have some security secret sauce that PCs don't have. Similarly, if you were to treat your PC like a console/tablet and only visit/download stuff off legitimate sources approved by the vendors then you're at no higher risk of malware.
Total cost excluding games is £800 for 7 years of smooth gameplay.
An £800 PC wouldn’t even play current games smoothly, never mind releases in 7 years.
Why do people assume you need a million $ PC to play current games smoothly? Is it the tech youtubers/influencers like Linus to blame for this madness where everything needs to be run at 4k 300Hz ULTRA settings to count as PC gaming?
PC gaming hardware for a good experience is more affordable than people think.
A 850-900 Euro PC (for us over the channel) with an RTX 2060 will definitely play all AAA titles very smoothly. Sure, not in native 4K, but consoles games(even next gen) are also not native 4K/ultra settings but rendered in lower fidelity then upscaled to whatever your TV output is.
>never mind releases in 7 years.
That PC will most definitely play games 7 years from now but on lower settings which will still match the visual fidelity of the 7 year old console as the game developers will have to lower game details to make the game playable on the then outdated console hardware.
Also, if you added another $800 to your PC every 7 years it would still outperform a console.
Also a gaming PC is still a usable computer, a console is not. Therefore a home PC can pay for itself by letting you code on it or whatever it is you may do.
This is what worries me with younger generations.
Just the other day when google shut down google music a top comment was pretty much 'sorry boomers no one keeps mp3s anymore we all stream get lost dinosaurs'[1] as if that streaming service would always be there...in a thread about a huge music SAAS shutting down!
My PC cost that much 2 or 3 years ago and it barely turns the fans on playing most games even now
Because I buy it once and I can play each and every game in the next 5-7 years without spendig money on hardware upgrade.
> The controls are terrible
I'm ok with them, I'm not into hardcore competitive multi fps
>the FPS is terrible
you mean you cannot get 60 FPS for each and every game? Yeah sure, but I don't really need it.
>the display is probably terrible if they’re using a TV
why would it be?
> paying money if you want to play multiplayer
I usually buy ps+ when it is discounted, so I pay about $5 in a month and I usually get two free games for that price.
>you paid an exorbitant price for a game that is rarely on sale
You can buy ps4 games secondhand usually half price if you wait a month after the release, at least in the uk. Also, even AAA titles are heavily discounted during the summer sale on ps4.
So you probably payed much more for hardware upgrades than I payed for the console and for the games in the last 7 years since ps4 is out :)
Take Horizon: Zero Dawn. It runs just fine on a 7-year old PS4 console. If you want to play on a PC, you need a PC that, at the level of a budget DIY system, will cost you around $600.
This doesn't even take into account the fact that this particular game didn't come to PC for 3.5 years.
The display is fine (I have a 4K HDR TV, which are now commonplace) and I can relax on my couch without messing around with a computer.
They are flat-out easier to setup and maintain for the bulk of the customer base. For example, setting up multiple users (family accounts) is a breeze on my PS4 and Switch, because that is a use case they pay attention to.
Meanwhile over on my PC, Steam supports sharing (family view) but it only seems to work from the same base Windows account. What the hell is the point of that; if I'm not around the kids can download and install all kinds of crap (click OK on the near useless Windows UAC prompt???). Or, I can create their own Steam account and their own Windows account and do library sharing but then you share all the games, you can't pick what subset, what to include or exclude.
Two options, neither fully solving the problem.
I bought a PS4 to play Crash Bandicoot when I wasn’t sure it will ever come out on PC (also fuck exclusives - a whole another debate), but since I bought it on Steam the console is a glorified HBO player. I don’t even use it for Netflix because using my fire TV stick is faster.