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.
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.