Xbox 360 and PS3: Death to PC Gaming?

CNET has published an article entitled “Xbox 360 and PS3: Death to PC Gaming?”, in which they offer a few reasons why the next-gen consoles will cause even more problems for PC gaming. While we’ve seen “PC Gaming is Dead” articles for quite some time now, I will agree that high-end PCs are getting far too expensive compared to your typical console system:

If you buy the hype, the PS3’s Cell processor–combined with an Nvidia-based RSX graphics processor–will offer stronger graphical performance than just about anything you can get in a current gaming PC. That means you’re getting a whole system for less than what it would cost to buy a cutting-edge, high-end graphics card. But you don’t have to take my word for it or even Sony’s: the claim that the PS3 will offer the equivalent graphics performance of two GeForce 6800 Ultra cards working in tandem came from Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia. Current cost of those cards: about $500 each. Cost of Alienware’s Aurora ALX SLI, which incorporates a dual 6800 Ultra configuration: nearly $5,000. And how many consumers are willing to pay hundreds extra for PC graphics cards that the manufacturer’s own CEO admits are inferior? I’ll let you do the math.