Depends what matters to you. Do you care a lot for graphics? I can run nearly every game I care about on a laptop, since I care about gameplay like older emulator, indie games such as into the breach don't need good graphics, AoE II and SC are way more fun than ray traced shooters to me. For a cheap PC a 3400G APU can play GTA5 pretty well, and emulate PS3 games, nothing high spec just a CPU+GPU combo chip for $150 that will play older games, not lock games by console, and run PC software. Lots of great free games on PC like cave story exist too, not to mention the granular settings to games that don't exist on console, free mods to make games like Skyrim keep it modern, the existance of mods for games like Fallout or GTA5 make console games less full featured and unappealing unless you want to be locked to whatever they think is best for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0p5fbW5odY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yxPtHuyPJo If you want the latest AAA games, consoles are cheaper unfront costs, more expensive in the long run, and you have less freedom to run cool stuff on the games.