Did you read the article? They took a dual-core Celeron as a CPU to match the 8-core CPU on the PS4. That's what i call a joke. And like the article said, you can't get a memory as fast as the GDDR5 for PCs.
So, what? It still doesn't change the fact that GDDR5 has a much higher bandwidth, as the guy said.

By all accounts that has more to do with a really shitty port/optimization than the hardware not being good enough.

That's interesting and it rings true couse console games are expensive as shit.

Do you think, however, the way they make console games has to do with "bad design choices" PC gamers have to suck up? (from a PC gamer perspective)

The way they are played (console games) and designed to benefit the usage and limitations of a controller - things like regenerating health, contextual movement, small corridor levels, "go here" arrows, etc. Are such mechanics console exclusive? If a consoles and their games need to be so unique to itself, why can't the PC version be unique by itself?

Hell, take the new thief 4 - you can't even jump on your free will any more, not unless the game says you can. How is a PC gamer supposed to swallow that?

Well I did say near, even if it's not on par. And your right, software does improve over time, but hardware becomes newer and cheaper in time as well. If you had a computer already that ran well and had a modern OS (like say 7 or 8) 600 dollars can buy you a pretty monstrous amount of GPU firepower. I haven't seen the system myself personally running Ryse but I have seen Hi res comparison screen shots of games released on 360 and One and there are more details (I like the fact that broken windows now break as a window should in game) but to me (and this is a personal observation) it just seems like it's more stuff on screen then an actual bump in the overall look of the game. For me it's not enough of a jump. It might be for some. For what it's worth I hear I'm not the only one with this opinion. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/19/microsoft-corporations-xbox-one-is-selling-so-poor.aspx

If someone were to ask me where consoles are headed in the next 2 generations, I think were going to see a divorce from hardware design by all major video game companies. They'll still be Nintendo's, Playstations, and Xboxes, but they will be more like prefabbed PC's (like Alienware or Dell) with better connectivity to a tv and controller.
The reason why I say this is the PCI-bus for the graphics card is getting updated more frequently and it's eroding the performance gains one would get with a "fixed" system. We might even see the return of MB/GPU combos that are way better versions of the old NForce boards.

true, but with nowaday tech it's not like good old roms, you may need extremely powerful PC not some average joe rig

so a game created today may require a PC from the far future to be emulated, maybe... the emulating scene may not even bother if that's the case

Well that's a whole different story, since the hardware manufacturers are not the game developers.
The PC game market has been on a decline for many years for several reasons. A gaming PC is expensive, piracy is as rampant as always and the market shares go to casual facebook games.
For a family it's now cheaper to buy a console for playing and a cheap office PC from the discounter for the other stuff. So consoles get more market share than gamer PCs. Consoles also have lower piracy since it takes more skill to get them running, you can demand higher prices and they won't drop as fast as the PC game prices, where sometimes the price is halved after two or three weeks in retail.

So for developers it's a sensible choice to think console first, PC secondary (and even "maybe not"). The PC market still has enough potential to warrant a port, also even console games are developed on PC (can't get Visual Studio on XBox).
Next thing is, if you develop PC first and then port to console, you have to go great lengths to make it playable. Going the other way is a lot easier. Think of a game that has sniper enemies that hide somewhere in environment. On the PC I'm sitting close to the monitor and can scan every pixel for suspicious movements. Now on the console I'm sitting a few meters away from my TV set on my couch and can't do that. The game would be too hard and would need a complete redesign for the PC.
On the other hand, if you make a console game, you create a big interface, since the user sits far away and must be able to read it. Porting this to the PC works out of the box, even if it is annoying (think of Oblivion for example).

I too wish for better PC ports. But the reality is, most of the time the PC version is an afterthought that they do not want put much effort in. It's our task as customers to vote with our wallet and reward good ports with money.

The jumping clues and arrows are a symptom of the general dumbing down of a games as they reach more people. If there were no consoles, this would still happen. There's always a marketing guy out there that says: "There are a handful of people that don't play our game because they don't get it. We have to dumb it down, so they would by it!".

Also the audience gets older and has less time. I have job, wife kids, and while I enjoyed mapping Dungeon Master, I wouldn't touch an RPG without automapping nowadays. People that spent hours trying to beat some boss battle and making there way through complex labyrinths when they were young still play and still want the same gratification - only they can spend maybe 2-4 hours per week to get it.

It's a rather complex matter.

A console is a machine that doesn't require antivirus, drivers, compatibility issues or even killing other background tasks. You put in the game, and play.

Some people love constantly tweaking their game machine instead of playing games, but I'm not one of those people.

Some PC games are unique, and don't suit a console - many of the GOGs for example, or pretty much any RTS or 4x game. But when all else is equal, I'd gladly get the more expensive console version over the PC version.

This was always true. You needed a 486 with 100 MHz (better Pentium) to emulate an Amiga 500 with a whopping 7.14Mhz half-way decently.
Some extremely optimized Amiga games even stutter on my 4x3.5GHz machine.

Consoles are getting close to what you would pay for a PC. 200 dollars more for a console next gen and people should really consider a gaming rig at that point that can play with tv's nicely.

Console PC development isn't as far off as it might seem. All the xboxes (from the first to One) use a slightly custom (might not even be the case now) version of Direct X as a developer API. This is also used in development for a lot of PC games. In the case of the original Xbox, it was important since developers could create the games faster when the original Xbox came out and people started asking about what else was available after the launch titles. A lot of PC developers made quick work of ports over to the console (Morrowind, Call of Cthulu, Unreal Tournaments) it got to the point where a lot of console gamers dubbed the system "port box".

Wii 2? I had never heard of it.

The Wii and the Wii U were already outdated when they were released, so they're not really good parameters to compare to PCs. That's probably why you think consoles are just cheap PCs with outdated hardware.

I'm not sure you realize that a console graphics card is comparable to a 7770/r7 250, which is in the $100 range and outperforms consoles (by a slight bit). Also, your claim on 60 FPS forgets that these games are all running on low settings out of the box. You can't run BF4 on ultra at 1080p on a console @ playable frames, nor could you with a 7770. But that's fine.

You would need around $500 to build a comparable PC I guesstimate, which you have to consider that PCs are able to do many things while consoles are manufactured the same way in bulk (lower pricing for that) for 1 task. I'm not dissing consoles or anything, this is just how the tech specs behind it works. Having dedicated processing to games is certainly a plus, but the performance is not anything special for the price.

But for me, the price you pay on games pretty much kills their feasibility. I could spend a few hundred on just a handful of games there vs a few hundred games @ the same price for PC (including AAA's like skyrim & far cry 3) . That's my only problem with consoles. Any savings on hardware get negated on the game prices, which is all of their profits. But many people still buy at full price anyway and for those it works out the same.

Hardware advancement is based on performance vs. power consumption, not raw performance.

Wii and Wii U, which have a max power consumption of around 20W and 33W, respectively, could hardly be considered outdated when they were first released.

Otherwise you could say Radeon 7750 (TDP=55W) is outdated compared to 4870 (TDP=160W), which makes no sense at all.

Well, the initial price tags of 50-60 bucks are discouraging but frankly, I managed to get a (physical) collection of 20+ major PS3 releases for ~200 bucks, I even easily found The Last of Us for ~20€ only one month after release (actually new, not used). Additionally the second hand market allows to easily obtain many games dirt cheap. I only got my PS3 last summer but within months I had a collection that made it seem as if I had been a proud PS3 owner since its launch.

Additionally also digital distribution is catching up on consoles. There's sales going on similar to the ones on Steam and PS+ actually gives you several "free" games a month for a reasonable subscription fee and that includes some of the biggest and more recent titles.

So really, I can't say that console gaming is that much more expensive if at all. The main difference is that you're probably not gonna end up with a library of thousands of indie games that you're never gonna play there.

Nope, it doesn't. It's impossible to compare consoles and PCs directly as they have different architecture and OS. Consoles are way more efficient at running games because they're built to run games. PCs are not.

Low settings? Are you kidding me? Please, tell me you're kidding. At least do some research before coming up with false claims such as this one. Please.

Time for some facts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxFUCT5tGgI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkgfWNP54EA

Both games use pretty much the same assets from the PC version. The textures are definitely the same for BF4 (some alpha effects and shadows are better on the PC in BF4). In COD Ghosts the textures are slightly better on the PC, as you can see on the video, but for a game that brings even a GTX Titan to it's knees it's not exactly something to be proud of. The only difference is that BF4 runs ar 900p on the PS4, while the PC could go higher, but even on 1080p it requires a really powerful PC. I can tell that from experience. I own the PC version of Battlefield 4 and i REALLY regret choosing it over the Xbox One version. Despite having a decent enough PC (i7 CPU, 8GB RAM DDR3, GTX680) i can't get smooth framerates at 1080p with everything set to ultra. And that PC is much more expensive than a console. The video card alone costs more than a Xbox One or a PS4 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=gtx680&N=-1&isNodeId=1).

I don't have COD Ghosts, but from what i've seen even a GTX Titan struggles to keep good framerates (check the Digital FOundry analysis if you don't believe me). And that's a U$999 video card we're talking about.

I could also talk about NFS Rivals, but the PC version is so broken it's not even worth bothering with it.

Oh really? So, please, build a PC for me that can run COD Ghosts with everything set to ultra at 1080p for U$399. Or BF4 at 900p.

And i didn't even mention the console exclusives that look way better than these multiplatform titles (Ryse and Killzone).

That's not true. There are many games that are dirty cheap now on the bargain bin.

Oh, there's also one detail that you ignored: consoles allow you so buy and sell your games in the second hand market. PCs don't. Once you buy that fancy looking game on Steam it's over, you can't sell it anymore even if it sucks. Not to mention that you can rent games to test them out.

As Fallout mentioned, there's also the fact that both PS+ and Xbox Live give you free games that are worth much more than the subscription fee, specially PS+. Even if you buy a PS3, sign up for PS+ and stop buying games you'll still end up with a massive library.