Valve got stymied a bit by the hardware situation there's been the last couple years. as well as certain organizations' interests in PC running counter to barriers being lowered.

we'll see what happens one Polaris drops.

That screamingly obvious fact was missed by the wrong people.

Depends on how close your PC & TV are to each other. If they are in the same room, then yeah, no problem, if they are on other sides of the apartment/building then it's more of a problem.

Not everyone have their PC & TV close to each other.

So the SteamMachines market was "those unable to move a box from one room to another".

More like those who don't want to have to bother dealing with it every time they move from their chair to their couch for gaming.
I for one would not even bother with couch gaming if I had to unplug my PC, move it to another room, plug it in, then move it back to where it usually sits and plug it in there again.

And you're happy to spend £600 to avoid doing so?

Me personally? No, I would not. I also don't have any current gen consoles and don't consider those worth getting at this point in time. But people are willing to get consoles specifically for couch gaming, and this would not be much different to that. Slightly higher up-front cost, but you already have the games and getting new games is cheaper than getting console games.

Not slightly more. To get a steammachine that could play current gen console games comfortably cost twice that of the consoles.

PC games are, on the whole, more expensive than consoles. Due to lack of 2nd hand market and heavy reliance on Digital distribution.

It does not cost twice as much over here. Nor are PC games more expensive over here, in fact they are considerably cheaper, as second hand games, at least the kind you would want to play and not the kind of shareware that the Wii is well known for, still often costs more than 15€+postage (a shovelware title like Ninjabread Man will generally cost between 8-10€+postage (used that as an example as that's one of the games you'll find plenty of copies of, and it tends to be one of the cheaper titles), while PC games of similar age will cost ~10€. And let's not forget bundles (where the vast majority of my games come from, and humble is even getting big budget AAA games in there with a relative frequency).

I disagree on the last part. Even second hand console games are usually a lot more expensive than PC games. PC games are cheaper as full price and they are cheaper in sales, precisely because of digital distribution. The ubiquity, immediacy and simplicity of digital distribution has resulted in most PC games selling for full retail price for less than a year and regular sales with massive discounts.

Also there is no need for a big second hand market anymore because sale prices are cheaper today than second hand prices used to be before digital distribution. As for sales, you had to wait many years to find a game, let alone a AAA game, in a bargain bin for a price that they today regularly reach after 2-3 years. And they're available for everyone at that price, not just the lucky fuck who managed to find the one single copy at the bottom of the bin.

If anything makes PC games more expensive than console games, it's the combined price for game and platform. If you don't buy many games, the higher price of a decent gaming PC will make the gaming experience overall more expensive.

Serious question, anyone can answer, how are modern consoles about playing games from older consoles?

I would imagine they have made strides with this, but if not, wouldn't that make the console games WAY more expensive because you have to pitch them every time you update your console.

Again, I have no idea either way, so I'm asking.

if you mean backwards compatability

the ps3 played ps1 and ps2 games out of the box but that was phased out and it an now only play ps1 games along side ps3 games

the ps vita can play psp and ps1 games bought on the psn store

the xbox 360 can play about half of the original xbox games

the halbox erhm xbox one can play 360 games but i have no idea how wel it does this

the ps4 has NO back wards compatabilty at all as of yet

bizarrely enough the wii wii U and 3Ds are the best at this because of the virtual console
the wii plays nes
snes
megadrive
neo geo
pc engine
and n64 games
and it also had c64 games

All I know is my current new PC still plays the games I bought 20 years ago. I can't think of a better deal than that.

so can my ps2 ;p
providing they are ps1 and ps 2 games

and the ps2 is 16 years old by now !
..guh

Last year I took a list of 20 randomly chosen games released on all platforms from the previous year.

IIRC 18 games where cheaper for a new disc on consoles than they were on PC. Second hand of course was even cheaper.

Yes PC Digital has sales, and sale prices trump second hand prices. However, any given game is on sale 10 maybe 20 days a year, the rest of the year their prices are considerable more. Even taking the best sale prices of each game it was only about £20 Cheaper than getting the same games 2nd hand on console.

PC games are cheaper at release, due to console manufacturers cut, normally after 3-6 months console games cost (for new) is cheaper than the same game on PC.

If I gave you a list of 20 random games from 2015 and said buy them for the end of next week, you would save about £200 buying them on consoles over PC.

It is also worth noting, examining data shown by steamspy that about 1/4 of games are bought on sale. The other 3/4 were bought at full price.

Please do this for yourselves. Look up 5 games released last year and compare prices.
Sales are unpredictable, depreciation of physical goods is not.