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Gaming PC Makers Take Aim at Lucrative Niche
Cymage writes "Yahoo (Reuters) reports that gaming PCs are now a high profit area, and that the bigger players (Dell, HP) are trying to get into the market: 'In an age when a new PC can cost just a few hundred dollars, an adolescent need for speed is creating a profitable niche for souped-up gaming computers at the ultra-costly end of the market.' How many people really spend $5,000 on a gaming machine? Mine cost less than $2,000, and I can play UT2k4 and others on it just fine."
"With price tags from US$2,000 to $5,000, the market is luring heavyweights..."
:)
I can't see myself paying that much for a gaming machine. I can buy a PS2/XBOX/GAMECUBE for less than 200 dollars. I could even buy all three and a decent amount of games for each system for less than 2,000. I know, they can only play games but isn't that the point of a gaming pc? I wouldn't want to put my gaming pc on the internet, because then I would have to worry about viruses, which means I have to install a firewall, virus scanner etc which would just slow down my game play. A gaming system works like it should. I don't have to make sure I have the newest video card, all games will work. It plays games with no blue screens, drivers to intall, or patches. Not to mention its easy to stick in my car and play where ever I can find a tv.
I just want my phantom console.
Great, but why did it take them so long to figure out that people don't need new 3GHz Dells just to run word processors and internet explorer (at least until MS Longhorn comes out...)?
Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Mine costs 500 and it plays UT2004 just fine as well. What it comes down to: there are always people out there that will pay for fancy hardware when something much more simple will due. Remember, there are lots of people who buy fancy sports cars and SUVs who drive to the store and soccer games.
Like in any industry, there will be the ultra-highend enthusiast niche. Alienware, VoodooPC, Falcon NW, and others have been catering to these kind of users for years. Any commentary about pricing is pointless: these people pay big bucks to get bragging rights to the fastest, most tricked out, and beautiful (damn, that alienware case is gorgeous) machines money can buy.
It's the same in many industries, especially the automotive industry. Any commentary about how "it's different with cars, they aren't obselete in 3 years" is pointless: the automotive industry's pace of improvement and innovation is much, much slower than the PC industry's.
And just like with cars, we have nerds who buy honda civics and rice them up with neon lights, big, loud heatsink fans, awesome paintjobs, spoilers, etc etc. (case modders if you're dense).
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Console drawback #1: Closed bootloader. Without a modchip or a buffer-overflow exploit, the consoles cannot run games from studios that aren't yet big enough to attract a Major Licensed Publisher's attention. Imagine a CD player that can't play CDs from outside the RIAA. Modchips violate the DMCA and foreign counterparts, and non-hackers would find it even harder to set up a buffer-overflow exploit (as seen in Phantasy Star Online for GameCube and MechAssault for Xbox) than to set up a dedicated gaming PC.
Console drawback #2: No widespread support for keyboard and mouse. Many players prefer to use a keyboard and mouse for some game genres such as shooters and battlefield simulations, but console games tend not to try to read them, even if you have a keyboard and mouse hooked up through the PS2 or Xbox console's USB port.
Truth is that Unreal 2004 doesn't require a monster gaming box to run decently. It runs just fine on my son's p3 850 with geforce4 4400.
A better question is how Far Cry runs, as thats about the only current game out that brings machines to their "knees".
Sometimes my arms bend back.
PCs are better than video game consoles for certain types of games, mainly strategy and RPG games.
Until video game consoles come up with good replacements for the keyboard and mouse, that fact will remain.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I think the same philosophy goes to having a comfortable bed, chair, etc. Money's made to be spent, and what better place to spend it than on something I use most every day?
Including their $48 "heavy duty" power cable, and their $21 10-foot ethernet cable.
As cool as some of the features on that box look, those two details make me think rip-off.
Any builders out there able to tell us an estimated cost of building this one themselves?
"As low as $144 per month!"
Ok, if you have to apply for credit to buy a PC you don't need to buy that PC. Computers are one of those things that if you can't afford to pay for it all at once then you shouldn't be buying it. This isn't a car or a house.
...the elitists of the world would want some way to stratify PC ownership. Same reason that there are Kias, and there are Porsches. The small-penis crowd needs to validate itself through what it owns.
.sig, I don't share this info around anywhere generally (or here specifically in case you'd think I'm metaphorically waving my member around). Why do I have it? Because I play some games (WW2OL is a good example) that really do play better with high-end machines and the horsepower = better graphics, higher screen resolutions, fewer stutters, etc. Simply put: more fun. And the fact that it's a high end machine doesn't mean I want to flaunt it, it means that I can afford it within my budget of discretionary $$, at least equivalent to the fun I get out of it.
Maybe you could squeeze a little more blatant envy in there, but I doubt it. Unless you're willing to contend that driving a Kia is the same experience as driving a Porsche, that's a pretty meaningless statement.
Look, the difference between a Kia and a Porsche is about $50,000 (give or take).
If $50,000 is a smaller % of my income than the "fun factor" I'd get out of driving it, then I'd buy a Porsche. Yes, for *some* people that fun-factor has to do with gratuitous exhibition of wealth, I suppose. But I know quite a few guys that have Porsches, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, etc. that DON'T drive them around daily but only for fun on closed circuits or on rallies. How is this explained in your penis-exhibition theory?
Likewise, I have a good system - not cutting edge but top of the line when I built it 18 months ago. I don't put my system specs in my
Sorry, but I'm just so sick of this class envy crap. I know it's a political year and we're all getting class-war propaganda dumped on us by one party 24/7, but still....
-Styopa
Ok, a few things..... First, you said decent case and power supply. Yes, you can get a case and power supply for $35 - $50 using sites like www.mwave.com. However, if you give a crap about your system and plan on putting in a kick ass video card later, don't ever use the power supplies that come with these cases. They will underpower your whole rig, and then you'll be sorry when you have to replace the motherboard due to bad power. Read this article, and you'll understand a lot more about power supplies and why free ones with cases are bad:
Power
Second, I agree with you that memory is not as important as some people pay for it, but still, 2-2-2 memory is faster than the standard stuff you get, and does indeed improve performance if the rest of your rig is able to keep up already.
A big, simple reason innovation in cars (or airplanes, or coffee makers) is slower than that in computers: computers are still a young industry. Bill Gates likes to use this sort of comparison by way of arguing that MS hasn't stifled innovation: "If airplanes had changed as much between 1980 and today as computers, they'd fly us cross-country for 50 cents in ten minutes," that kind of thing. But all those other industries changed at a vastly higher rate when they were young too. Flying machines changed an awful lot from Santos-Dumont's balloons to World War I to the German jets at the end of WWII, in every imaginable way, right?
But back to your point: Cars won't be obsolete in 3 or 5 years, and that difference really isn't "pointless." If I trick up my Civic, it'll be out-of-style in three years, but it'll get me there on the gas they sell at SA. With a gaming computer, I can spend through the nose and be below box specs for some of the games that come out next year. Partly that's just the young industry again. But you know, you can still find places to land your biplane.
Between the gaming wonks trying to one-up each other and the game studios whose idea of innovation is better texture effects in FPS titles, the lack of imagination is pretty amazing. You'd think this would be such a creative thing, games, but instead we get the equivalent of U.S. blockbuster movies over and over again. You'd think the wonks would at least show some individuality in their tastes... Car geeks and EAA airplane kit builders are a lot more interesting, for my two cents.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
For the past 20 years, I have been an avid computer gamer and have had countless hours of fun playing games from Manic Miner and Jetpac, through Speedball 2 and Alien Breed, to Doom(s), Civilization(s), Half-Life & Unreal (Tournament(s)).
Today, I still play all of those games, some through the marvels of emulators. All of them, and more, are as immersive now as they were then.
However, I think we would be in agreement that playing Manic Miner at a higher frame rate or resolution would not enhance, in any way, the excellent playability of the original game.
Carrying this forward through my list of games, whilst many of them enjoy 3D rendering technology and first-person perspective, they all have one thing in common - they are all just games.
What I mean by this statement is that I do not need to be immersed in lifelike graphics in order to enjoy gaming - that's because I am possessed of an intellect that tells me that when I am staring at a PC monitor blasting aliens/jumping ledges, I am in a fantasy state of conciousness. At this level of conciousness, I immerse myself (thank you very much) into a game - sure, graphics will assist in my self-propelled immersion but the main catalyst for rocketing me into that world of make believe will be... and allow me to blow the dust off of this word as it has not one that is often used... gameplay.
Now, call me revolutionary but I don't actually give a tinker's nostril about a game that is whizzing past me at 50000 frames per second at 20480 x 10240 resolution if I have to keep simultaneously poking my brain through my earhole to stop it going comatose through lack of stimulation.
Therefore, if you don't mind, I think I'd rather stay just here, building my bland white-coloured PCs with 100 pound/euro/dollar graphic cards for 1/4 of the cost of one of your "HumungoFastPenileViper GX" gaming PCs, secure in the knowledge that I retain enough currency to enjoy financing some social contact and interaction in the real world also.
Good day to you.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
In other words, for $800 you bought a bargain basement motherboard that might be untrustworthy (leaky capacitors?), half the CPU performance, 1 GB of unreliable no-name RAM (does it even pass memtest86?), overclocked it (is this thing stable at *all*?), and a PSU that probably drops voltage when doing anything 3D. If you aren't paying $80 or more for a PSU alone you aren't spending enough.
A high powered rig *will* make you perform better in a resource intensive game such as Dark Age of Camelot, where the computer must render hundreds of characters and effects simultaniously at a high framerate to keep you in the battle. I play on a 3GHz P4 with a gig of ram and a Radeon 9800 pro, and I still have some trouble in certain situations with a large number of players. And yes, my system is *very* clean.
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?