looking at it from a cost point of view. your console may be cheeper as a original investment, but add in a few games (which you will have to buy to make any use of the console) going at around $100 a game (in my country anyway) and so if you buy 10 games you just spent the same as i spent on my computer which just happens to be a fair whack more powerful that what i last checked a xbox 360 could do. also when it comes time for an upgrade in hardware i pay a few hundred and put in a new piece of hardware. i then have complete backwards compatability with everything i had before. now when it comes time for an upgrade for you godly consoles you have to buy an entirley new console which may or may not be compatable with your old games. also you now have 2 consoles and 1 is completley superflous. if i upgrade my video card i can keep my old one and have it sitting there as a physics processor if i so wish.
using price to say why consoles are better is a stupid way of looking at it. pcs may have a higher initial investiment but they can do much much more for that initial investment. and can do it without much further investment. consoles have to keep geting money thrown at them from the get go. and dont even start me on the whole "red ring of death" crap
If you want to game with your PC you have to buy games too. And don't start about pirating games, that is not an argument. You can also pirate games for the xbox, so you can take them all out of the equation. What remains is hardware. You still need a tv to go with the console, but since most people use that for movies also you can 'split the cost' of the tv itself. Sure, 10 games buys you a PC. Why don't you look at your own argument from both sides. 5 PC games buys you a console.
Yes, your PC is more powerful in terms of 'the numbers', but comparing imagery to imagery you get a whole lot more out of a console with performance number X than on a PC with performance number X. Fact is you can't buy a PC that gets you that kind of image quality for the money that a console costs. They do tend to sell the consoles for less than they cost but that's hardly the point from a consumers point of view. But the downside ofcourse is that that's about all you can do with a console.
Then you say you upgrade your PC for a few hundred dollars. That is also what an entirely new console costs, and then you get a whole new generation of console. Sure, a new high end one costs about 400$, but then again if you want the same performance on a PC you will likely spend more than 400$ (motherboard, cpu, ram, gpu). You can also sell your old console if you wish, to lessen the cost of the new one, or just keep it if you want to keep playing the old games.
Also, I don't know what you mean with "keep throwing money at them [consoles]". What money? You buy one and you can play as long as you want. I bet my old SNES still works if I could find it. Sure, if you want to play a new game you have to spend money, but how is that different from a PC?
I don't get the whole flame war thing. If you want to play games cheap and sit on your comfy couch to play games, get a console. If you want to have good graphics and also use the computer for other tasks, spend that bit of money more and get a PC. Everybody is happy. Why flame other people that prefer the other machine?
I use a PC only myself, I really don't have the time or wish to get a console, but why would I disapprove of others doing that?
