PC gaming has always been more expensive and less appealing to many because of the amount of money that can be saved by just going out and buying a console instead, without breaking the bank. Xbox One and Play Station 4 are the two biggest consoles out there now in competition. Consoles are usually in a price range that is available for most, especially for some of the newest games; which can be around $250-400, for the newer consoles. That price is not too bad considering many of the newer models have many other capabilities other than just gaming, such as movie streaming, and web browsing.

Computer hardware is always more expensive than a consoles hardware. Consoles and PC’s are built completely different. Consoles are designed from a perspective such as, get as much power out of the price of the system, which generally makes them weaker because of their bottleneck. A bottleneck is where something in a system is really powerful, such as a graphics card but, is being held back from preforming at its maximum potential because, for instance, your CPU isn’t able to render fast enough.  This is a common thing in PC’s, in the console industry everything is dumbed down a little so that cheaper hardware can run, really intensive programs and games; which makes it more available to a wider audience. When gaming on PC though everything is harder to run, and less optimized. Console gaming for example is like building a homemade bike ramp; you can buy the building equipment cheap and make an adequate ramp. PC gaming on the other hand is like buying an industrial steel ramp that can go beyond just being used for bikes.  What I’m trying to get at by using these similes is that PC gaming is more expensive, and is overkill, mostly.

Sony, the company that is currently beating Microsoft in sales in consoles, is putting out a new console, extremely similar to that of the current PlayStation 4. The new PlayStation, PlayStation 4.5, A.K.A PlayStation NEO, is an exact copy of the PS4 but has an upgraded graphics card that allows up to 4K resolution while gaming. This is something that has sparked a lot of controversy in the video game publishing world and gaming world. The reason being why would Sony put out a new PlayStation about 2 years after another console’s release? Many game publishers are concerned about the wellbeing of the people who stick to the original PS4 rather than the more expensive one, because many people don’t have a reason to upgrade because many people don’t have 4K televisions or displays.  Publishers think that game developers are going to have to leave PS4 people in the dirt, while the PlayStation 4.5 people are going to get more access to virtual reality and high resolution games. PlayStation fans are worried that soon the PS4 will go obsolete, forcing people to upgrade to the PS4.5.  Many questioned whether or not this is a bad move by Sony; many suggest that “If you’re going to want to play video games in 4K, than you should just be gaming on a PC.”