where are you getting these arbitrary numbers from? I’m talking about a hypothetical PC vendor that offers prices in these ranges:
$750 for the lowest end (think core i5 and 660ti)
$950 for mid-range (core i5, gtx680, watercooling, overclocked)
$1650 for the uber-high crazy rig (core i7 overclocked to 5Ghz, phase-change watercooling, gtx690)
I would love it if a PC brand offered these kinds of prices.
Sorry about this :(
I think your post has value and is interesting. The PC experience is rought around the edges… less rought than years ago, but is still not a packaged product, far from it.
Something that repackage the PC and provide PC bonus, like emulation,mods, etc. Interesting.
But this sorta already exist with Macs, except Apple have a anti-game politic, adding problems where sould be none.
I don’t think so. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about console ports over the years. Auto detect is pretty useless overall in most games.
PCs, unlike consoles, have a backlog that stretches back to the 70s. I doubt that does not pose a challenge for some people.
BTW, where is this subscription plan nonsense coming from? Someone here needs to show me :)
Emulation has very specific hardware requirements when more recent platforms are concerned. It’s not a viable business model if you don’t even have a known customer base (people who can run PCSX2, Dolphin). So people with laptops, netbooks, pre-2010 imacs, budget computers with amd cpus … all these people really will not be able to run dolphin or pcsx2 at a level that is acceptable to start making purchases (60fps, 1080p resolutions). If a user base of people purchasing PCs with known configurations is built you can utilise it for this emu store.
It seems like the only thing this model would offer is somebody else doing the work on really niche things like emulation and overclocking. And if you’re the type of person who wants to do those things, you’re probably the type who wants to do them yourself.
The rest of us have Steam and, for older games, GOG. The days of “trial and error” and time-consuming bugfixes have been over for a while, for me. 99% of the time my game experience is: buy on Steam, download on Steam, click “play” and play the game. In that rare instance where I have a problem, a few minutes of googling will either find me a quick fix that somebody has worked out, or confirm that it’s a bug and I need to wait for a patch. And most of the time the fix is “whoops, steam didn’t install the redist thing, go do that manually in the Steam folder.” Even updating drivers these days is: go to a webpage, download a thing, click a couple of things, restart.
For the most part, everything just works. If you want to get into playing old Amiga games or emulating the PS2 then fine, go nuts, but I’m going to guess that that appeals to such a small percentage of the (already pretty niche) PC gaming population as to be irrelevant.
You’re the one who started the discussion by asking about if PC users would pay the equivalent cost of a current iMac if it meant getting your laundry list of extras.
I look at iMac prices, then I look at the hardware, then I determine what it would cost for similar hardware to build a PC of comparable power. The numbers aren’t that hard.
You seem to vastly overestimate how many people give two shits about playing 5+ year old games aside from WoW or how much of a driver that would be to motivate people to open their wallets.
I don’t need tweaks. I need better ports and better graphics drivers. I’d pay for that. These are “first party” issues we can’t solve completely on our own.
Oh right! I sometimes forget that “mid-range price” in the Apple world is completely different from what PC users expect! What I had in mind was a bit less than $1000.
I get the feeling that most of the people who commented are fine with whatever gets them by. Something that “runs most games fine and doesn’t occasionally display a BSOD”.
I guess in this age of multiple devices it’s hard to find PC users who expect more from their devices.
PCs, by virtue of the variety in the hardware and OS ecosystem, have huge potential.
You could build an equivalent of a Mac Pro that’s half the size for example. Or you could build an equivalent of a Mac Mini at 5 times it’s size - but a quarter of it’s price. You can build a media PC, a work PC, or a gaming PC. Or you could just do all three in one machine.
I personally built a Bluray, HD-DVD, iTunes, Netflix, HULU, Wii, Gamecube, Playstattion 2, Playstation, Saturn, SNES, Mega Drive, NES, Neo Geo, DOS, Amiga super media machine that runs at 4.5Ghz, has a combined 7TB of hard disk space, 16 gigs of ram, a high end gtx580 and is whisper quiet. Oh, and it’s made of aluminium, has built-in bluetooth and IR, a VFD display and is about 25% smaller than a Mac Pro - it can actually double up as a 4U rack server if I wish.
Some of this takes time and effort to do though, and it’s true that I’ve seen a lot of people switch to Mac simply because they reached a point where they couldn’t build a PC and devote the required time to do it right. I thought there would be a similiar sentiment with some of the posters here. Guess I was wrong?
The guys who gave up and switched to Mac never cared about that stuff enough in the first place that it influenced their decision. The folks who do care about that stuff stuck it out, which meant doubling-down on DIY PC builds. And if you can DIY, why pay someone else extra and give up control?
Your idea is in a 3-way valley between people who care primarily about low cost (any PC that’s “good enough” is good enough), ease of use (they gave up on caring about stuff like which hardware configurations best runs emulators a long time ago), and enthusiasts (who want what they want and have already put in the effort themselves to get it).
Also, I checked the apple store and current iMacs are priced between $1,300 and $1,800. If there’s a sub-$1,000 offering I didn’t see it.
never said the target was to offer a “cheap” PC, just something with actual good value.
Specs-wise, Macs have been really underwhelming these past few years. Obviously most mac fanatics don’t notice these things.
Whoops. I thought this thread was about trainers. I do pay for a subscription for trainers so I can beat my games in single-player easily if I wanted to. I miss the old days where there were cheat codes and people weren’t all achievement whores.
Easier than it already is? Er, no thanks.
Pre-set hardware configurations? So basically you’re asking if we should switch to consoles for gaming?
PC gaming isn’t supposed to be easy, silly goose. Go home mashakos, you are drunk. ;)
Good point.
Pre-set doesn’t mean rigid or fixed in place. Hey, if you can build a PC that can last 5 years and can do funky stuff like run pcsx2 and dilphin perfectly, this isn’t for you. I’m sure there a bunch of people who want that but can’t be bothered or have too much going in their lives to put in the effort. These people are now in console land, but show them something better that is attainable and I am sure down to my bones they will switch without hesitation.
The number of people who care about console emulation on a PC is small, the subset of those people who do it legally is smaller, and the subset of THOSE people who would pay extra for a seamless experience is minuscule. You’re trying to solve a problem and charge money for something that has maybe a six figure customer base at best.
To the original question: No, absolutely not.
interesting. That’s not the impression I get from coverage on dolphin and pcsx2 in the web over the years. How are you getting your info?
What Dolphin/PCSX2 coverage? What are you using as data to support your theory that going down this road has enough profit potential to sustain a business?
Hey, more power to you if you can do it and get enough people to purchase this product to make a living, but I seriously doubt there’s enough demand to attract investors or run anything but a garage operation. Besides the legal hoop-jumping needed to make this work, the emulator audience seems to be filled with people that don’t mind a little elbow grease to play their games.
This makes me think of the all little rituals I developed to get my NES cartridges to actually work.
pcsx2 is pretty popular. It is old enough that a decently powerful cheap machine these days can use it easily. It is also very stable and user friendly after being out so long.
This proved its worth in allowing me to play a fan translated Front Mission V which never came out outside of Japan.
Dolphin requires a much stronger PC (mostly cpu), is still somewhat quirky and has few games that appeal to people who would spend the time trying to get it to work (hardcore gamers).
At this point your mainstream gamers probably aren’t going to play ps2 games. They are too old. Dolphin is also too much trouble for most people and likely has significant controller woes (you can hook up a gamepad to a pc with no problem, but i don’t think you can do the same with a wiimote and even if you can, it is a non traditional controller so most people won’t have unless they have a wii).
I’d personally love if there was some sort of emulator marketplace, but i doubt the profit is there and you would have to be the God Emperor of Japan in order to get all of the copyright holders of these consoles to agree to sell previous generation games for a cheap enough price that people would actually buy them. Old school copyright holders HATE digital distribution.