A new era of consoles

So after church today I was talking to a friend. He loves to play UT (GOTY) and wanted to upgrade the machines to play newer games. He asked me, "Where can I get a motherboard that will support my AMD 1700 and give me a PCI Xpress slot?"

ummm...how about no where?

I could be wrong, but I don't think they ever really made PCIX mobo's for those old amd processors.

"So what should I do?" he asked.

I told him to go buy a console. I explained that all the game types he likes are all available on consoles now. FPS with online play? Check. Simulations? Check. Casual games and free web based games? Check.

If you would have asked me even 15 months ago if you should dump your pc I would have said no. I thought the 360 looked terrible (nice games now) and it will probably be another year before the PS3 even has enough must own games to make it worth it.

The problem is that windows machine upgradability is a myth. I view PC's as being repairable rather then upgradeable. Take my one friends PC. He has a 5800 nvidia card. He is stuck at agp. He cant upgrade. So he says I will get a new mobo. Of course then he needs a bigger power supply. Then you find out the mobo's with pciX all use a different kind of memory and have different sockets for the processors.

I am not saying that this is bad. I am just saying that when people think they buy a pc and can upgrade it later they are fooling themselves. I understand you can add more ram, or add a faster processor.

The thing is, over the last 10 years I have noticed that when a new, faster processor comes out, they almost always have a different pin layout. Usually the processor or video card upgrades you CAN do are just MINOR in terms of performance increase. If your video card goes out, you might be able to add a slightly faster variant, but almost always the next gen of cards ends up being not compatible with your current motherboard. Sometimes it is your slot, sometimes it is your power.

I am not knocking PC games. I just went to a lan party last week and we played pc games all day. I am just saying that for the common consumerist, it just doesn't financially make sense to game on the PC anymore. A decent homebuilt starts at about 1k now, and a console maxes out at $600. A PC is usually good for 2 years max, a console is usually good for 5-7 years. As a PC ages the games get worse. As a console ages, the best games start appearing.

Plus this isn't even talking about pc maintenance and time suckage, like virus patrol, spyware removal, and the massive waste of space the pc ends up using. I don't even believe that the average consumer is even capable of keeping a windows platform fully functional anymore, but that is a blog for another day.

Anyone else feel this way?

oh yeah. He's coming over next week to see warhawk. He is paranoid about not playing with a mouse. He said he's not bringing his kid tho. He doesn't want his kid to see what he might be missing out on :)