Pachter: ‘PS3 is More Powerful Than 90% of PCs’
From day one, the PlayStation 3 has been regarded as an incredibly powerful machine. However, many individuals over the past few years, especially those on the PC gaming front, have argued that the only way to play games was on a PC and that game consoles just cannot live up to that gold standard.
As if we couldn’t already tell, times are changing quite rapidly, and many of those individuals who may have regarded the gaming rig PC as the platform of choice for multi-platform titles, have been steadily changing their tune as game consoles, more importantly the PS3, are producing visuals in games that are just as good, if not better than that of their PC counterparts.
This notion was put on blast loud and clear on the most recent episode of “Pach Attack!”, as Wedbush Securities analyst and all around financial gaming guru Robert Pachter stated the following:
“The PC market, if you think about it, just as package products sold – and let’s include steam in there, but not subscriptions like World of Warcraft, is something like six or seven percent of total games sales – it’s not a big number”, he said.
“It’s becoming a declining industry because you can get a near PC experience on a console right now and I know flamers, you all have PCs that just crap all over the PS3 and are much, much more powerful. But the PS3 is a pretty powerful box and it’s probably more powerful than 90 percent of the PCs out there.”
Pachter also said that “the [Xbox] 360 is probably more powerful than 85 percent of the PCs out there.”
Even though Mr. Pachter is human just like the rest of us, he’s very much correct, and in addition to the way game consoles are now being integrated into almost every aspect of out entertainment experience, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re surfing the web and computing primarily on game consoles (if they’re still called that) over the next 2-3 gaming generations, as console developers like Sony and Microsoft aim to cram more and more features and functionality into these processing beasts.
Have you ever leaned toward PCs to fulfill your gaming needs, or have consoles been your primary “go-to” device for pure gaming goodness? Do you think the PS3 will ultimately make PC gaming irrelevant? Let us know in the comments below!
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20 Responses to “Pachter: ‘PS3 is More Powerful Than 90% of PCs’”
to be realistic most of that 90% are casual PC users that don’t expect much more than internet browsing and word processing from their computers. Computer tech. develops so quickly, and drops in price quickly as well, that in 6 months it will be an entirely different story. It actually makes me mad because usually when I have to buy a new computer (I just did last summer) it only takes a few months and I could have bought the same machine for a couple hundred less. That’s just another reason to love the PS3 though, I don’t have to get angry when a new console comes out because I will have already had my PS3 for a long time.
I used to be a hardcore PC gamer. The constant driver updates, hardware upgrades, etc.. finding out that the system you just built 1 year ago cannot play the new releases at max settings gets old.
PS3 is perfect for my gaming needs now. I dont see myself going back to PC gaming ever.
I bought an Alienware laptop, I had it made so that it played games good. If it wasn’t for the machines over heating problems I would be using my laptop, it’s almost 5 years old and the current generation of laptops was finally catching up to my ’04 model.
It was worth the money. But no PC will ever replace my console of choice. PS3
nah PC is better, pachter is a fanboy of PS3, oh well no console can replace my PS3
hello …
i’m a PC & PS3 gamer …yet i don’t have a new top of the edge gaming rig.
In fact i still play my old games on my actual PC (like Diablo II + LOD, Heretic etc..).
But the PC is mostly for Video recording, some DVD or video playback (different region codes/format)
I play mostly on the PS3 for it’s easier for now, but i’m sure it will be back to an equal level when Diablo III will be out.
in fact, it’s all a matter of where the game i love is found & if it is exclusive to a platform.
cheers!
I’ve been using my PS3 in place of my computer for going on two years now. I check my e-mail, pay my bills, watch tv by streaming it through the browser (yeah, I don’t pay for cable haha!), watch movies, store pictures, chat with people, play music on it, and of course get my game on, so for me it literally Does Everything (that ad rang really true to me). I used to be a hardcore pc gamer too, but like Caphead said, maintaining it to keep playing the newest games is hell on your wallet, and just kind of tiring to deal with too. I miss being able to easily modify games and download unofficial map packs and the like, but in the long run I’m really saving a lot of money with the ps3. Now the only reason I still have my laptop is for the occasional game of StarCraft, which hasn’t happened for a while now, and the only reason I want another computer is to be able to play StarCraft 2. But $2500 just to play one game doesn’t seem like a smart investment to me. The only real way I’m limited by using a PS3 instead of a PC is that I can’t install applications for word processing and the like, which I might want for doing work at home – but I don’t want to ever be able to take my work home, so thats good.
@PS3vsXBOX360
Im so damn tired of people like you. Why is it that no one can say anything positive about any perticular console without some tool labeling him as a fanboy??
Grow up
sigh……remember when only adults had a ps3?
@BigWoopMagazine: You could always use Google Docs, this is just a suggestion since I don’t use my PS3 that way but only for gaming.
And for all those out there as I have said many times the core CPU’s in this generation of game consoles are all identical except for the PS3′s Cell Broadband Processor. Both the Wii and 360 use the same chip that Apple used to use for the Mac G4 towers before IBM sold them to Nintendo and M$.
Dr.Blumpkin,
your tired mate ?, well go to bed, i like my ps3 more that PC, durrr
I, too, have an Alienware laptop (2 years old now). Subtract the fact that the harddrive is small and the hinges broke (a common problem with this model), it’s pretty nice. But I love my PS3 more, and, on many levels, I think it’s so much better than my Alienware.
My keyboard does light up, though.
I wouldn’t even want to think about how much it would cost to build a good gaming PC. Nor would I want to devote massive amounts of time to learning how to build one. I just like to play games and I’m supremely happy with my PS3.
I have friends that swear by PC gaming, I’m fine with limiting myself to one console. Anymore Money sinks and I’d need a loan.
Patcher is 73% more annoying than most analysts.
85% of most statistics are made up on the spot.
sry for those pc gamrs
I was exclusively a PC gamer from 1988 to 2000 and still play lots of games on my computer, but I have to admit, PC gaming, on PCs, is practically dead. Then again, games like Call of Duty or The Elder Scrolls series used to be PC exclusives, so it seems more like PC gaming has taken over console gaming than the other way around. If you take a look, traditional console genres like platformers and brawlers are hard to find compared to first person shooters, role-playing games, etc. which used to be, for the most part, overwhelmingly PC titles.
I LOVE my PS3 but PC gaming is not as bad as people make it out to be. PC gaming has many drawbacks like lack of games and small community, but when it comes to the graphics of multiplatform games, there is NO question that PC games look better. Good gaming rigs can easily display games in 1080p+ at 150+ fps whereas the PS3 would suffer with about 30fps at 720p. Not only do multiplatform games look better, but they have mods and add-ons exclusive to the PC. Just look at the modding in GTA4. One thing you can change is all of the cars. You can make the Turismo into a Ferrari f430.
Still, PC gaming is, and will always be too pricey.
PC’s are just fun to use too. Your in total control of your system. You can update any piece of hardware you want.
“I wouldn’t even want to think about how much it would cost to build a good gaming PC “
There is no such thing as a good WinTel PC system to run games, as ultimately a Workstation class systems costing upwards of £2,500 is required; like the developers use themselves.
Comparitive PC clones are much less efficient than their worsktation counterparts(upto 40% less), due to the desktop PC driver implementations, and the lack of O/S customization that the highend CAD workstations get for their custom built motherboards.
You are then relying on the game developer, who is trying to hit a moving hardware target; meaning that for a game to have fur/water/lighting effects like a like Shadows of the Colossus on the ps2(with its’ 300Mhz EmotionEngine), then you need every PC system to be 20x the ps2′s performance in general processing terms.
Today’s average PC is a 3GHz Pentium 4 with an OpenGL 2.0 Ati 9800 chipset; as needed by the Doom3 engine, which is magnitudes of performance lower than the 360 and Ps3.
Windows Vista/7′s Aero desktop is trying to fix that, but most people still run XP.
hello …
i used to build & sell custom PCs & all i can say is that sometimes people would buy a ferrari to drive at only 100 km/hour on an inappropriate road.
The PC is the ‘best’ All-in-1 platform & will remain so for ever because it is the tool of the developers.
All games are then downgraded for consoles & even PC Release, that’s why it is easy sometimes to just re-release a higher level port.
In terms of ease of use for gaming, the console is best.
In terms of variety, backward compatibility & even emulation, the PC is King.
Now whether the console would be a PS3 or other, depends on what we like, like i said; it depends on the game we play & where they are!
It’s not because i’m a PS3 fan (not ‘fanboy’ here) that the PC or other consoles are bad, it’s just that the PS3 is good for me (maybe for more reasons to anyone) …
Best Combo: PC + PS3
cheers!
“The PC is the ‘best’ All-in-1 platform “
It can’t be, as it is a general purpose processor, based on an architecture that spends too much time cache missing, to avoid being too difficult to developer for.
Most Pentium 3 800Mhz systems were more than adequate for general purpose processing; but lacked the high floating point throughput, to efficiently deal with highly vectorised problems, such as 3D graphics, video encoding/decoding, gene sequencing, image processing, etc.
Inside the Cell lives a 2-way PPE, when combined with the RSX graphics accelerator, is more than adequate for general purpose processing tasks of any PC.
Even the small percentage of customers with the new Core i PC processors are not getting power and performance efficiency of the PS3. It is still more of a brute force approach, than an elegant and finely balanced architecture; that has become the trademark of the PS2 and PS3 systems.
IBM’s document “Scaling the Performance Heights” is essential reading for anyone who thinks the PS3 isn’t better placed, than most PCs.
When a system’s only failing is an initial steep learning curve for PPE/SPU programming, you know that it could be the one to finally replace the old x86 architecture when Cell 2 arrives.
Coming back to Shadows of Colossus, anyone want to put forward a game developed for the average PC that does fur/water/lighting/animation as good. The technical specs of a PC required to emulate the PS2 hardware, and run Shadows of the Colossus should make people stop and think about PCs.
My best combo, old or cheap PC (WinXp/Linux) + PS3