Actually, that's not a recent trend. Consoles, at launch period (The first year or two of its lifetime) have always outperformed PC games. Compare early era games on a given console to games that were coming out for PC at the same time, usually the console game surpasses the PC game.
Plus, in order to get the bleeding edge graphics that surpass any given gen of consoles, one has to drop an absolute mint. It's not so much a matter of not being able to afford as proper money management. In order to keep up with anything even encroaching upon the graphical limitations of the 360 and PS3, one would have to drop close to a grand on upgrades (High end processor, plenty of RAM, high end graphics card, good cooling system, nice monitor, in some cases a new motherboard to run SLI and a newer processor). Why do that when you can get an Xbox 360 for $400?
PC gaming is the absolute, far and away worst place for the casual gamer. It's a landscape pretty much dominated by MMOs and FPS and they really don't wander far out of that pair of genres. The selection of even viable PC games is few and far between, much less a variety of them. Pretty much everything available for PC ends up on consoles these days as the console market is exponentially larger.
Judging by your perception, you sound like a slowly recovering "PC elitist." That breed's swiftly dying out in this day and age. Preferring is one thing, but considering console gamers the "weeny" variety is a bit snobbish. The games on console versus PC is debateable in terms of actually gameplay and fun (Which to most console gamers are the real factors that matter). I could name more games for any single console (Even short-lived ones like the Dreamcast) that I enjoyed than games exclusively for the PC I enjoyed.
If you want top hardware and graphics "possibilities", the Playstation 3 is the way to go. If you want to actually get any mileage out of it, though, I'd vehemntly recommend against it. The reason I quote the word possibilities is that I honestly don't think the PS3 will ever reach its potential or even surpass the 360 in terms of actualized graphics.
The system with the best hardware hasn't been the best received since the Super Nintendo. N64 and Xbox were the most powerful consoles in the last two generations and neither performed well in terms of sales. The problem arises that the more powerful and complicated the console is, the harder to design for it is. The Wii, the weakest hardware wise, is said to be the easiest by far to program for, and thus more attractive to programmers. The PS3 is so complex in its architecture that most developers are wary to work with it (Dev kits weren't even finalized and released until scant months before release) and even fewer are willing to try to explore its full potential due to the enormous cost.
Power is one thing, but it's software selection that makes or breaks a console and PS3 simply doesn't have it. We live in a wasteful society and a $600 price tag isn't going to drive consumers away from a good product. The reason the PS3 is sitting on shelves isn't the price, it's the piss-poor support it's getting. Nintendo is a company that can survive on its own properties (Your Marios, Zeldas, Metroids, etc), Sony is not. Sony has a scant handful of marketable first party games and they tend to jump around on them too much (They seem to have all but given up on Jak and Daxter, for example). Meanwhile, Microsoft is gobbling up all of Sony's third party support. They're not pulling exclusive games over to the 360 exclusively themselves, but getting the games on their console as well is enough. If you've got a choice between spending $400 and $600 to play GTA 4, which are you gonna do? ESPECIALLY when the graphical difference is negligible? Sony has, officially, lost exclusive rights to just about every major third party game in development (Devil May Cry, GTA, Resident Evil, etc) and even mainstays like Square Enix are jumping ship (While not announced for 360, FF XIII is not a Sony exclusive and will probably end up there). Considering MGS II came out for Xbox, I doubt the new installment will stay exclusive to Sony much longer with all these developers going with the more likely sale on the 360. Also, Sony's arrogance has been getting the best of them, too. One good example would be with the Unreal 3 engine. Sony had an exclusive agreement to have the next Unreal Tournament on PS3 instead of 360. Along came Gears of War for 360 and Sony shit-talked said game to try and make the competition look bad. This ended up pissing off the Unreal dev team and they yanked the exclusivity.
That's not even touching on the Wii, the console with the current fastest rate of sale. At the clip it's going, it might be the fastest console ever to ten million by the time the demand starts to die down a little (They're still allegedly difficult to find, even with six million units shipped).
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Topic: This Ain't A Console War, It's a Genocide (Sales Figures! Ooooh!) (Read 32239 times)