PC Gaming In 2021: Is It Better Than Buying A PS5 Or Xbox Series X?

Should you even consider building a gaming PC in 2020, even when the next-gen gaming consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X bring 4k gaming to the masses? Well, the short answer is, Yes! You absolutely should. A gaming PC easily beats the next-gen consoles in terms of performance and total cost of ownership. So without wasting any time, here’s why you should consider building a gaming PC in 2020.

The first thing that we need to realize is that the PS5 and Xbox Series X are extremely affordable gaming consoles. It might hurt to hear it, but no one can build a $500 PC that can outperform PS5 or Xbox Series X. But there are several ways of measuring performance; even if we exclude the fact that a PC can perform thousands of additional tasks, it still is a better gaming machine and saves money in the long run.

Although next-gen consoles are advertised for just $500, they concur additional monthly fees in the form of online multiplayer subscriptions. PlayStation Plus, an online subscription service that enables multiplayer functionality in Playstation consoles, including PS4 and PS5, costs about $60 per year. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s most value for money online gaming subscription, which bundles a Netflix-like service for Xbox games along with the multiplayer service, Disney+, and much more, costs about $15 per month.

Additionally, next-gen games cost around $70 each, and that’s a step encouraged by Sony’s own blockbuster first-party studio Santa Monia, which makes the popular God of War series. The restrictions don’t stop there because console players are bound to just a single online gaming store, one that their official maker provides.

The good news is that there are almost none of these problems on a PC. Multiplayer on PC will always be free. No PC player is ever obligated to buy any form of gaming subscription to play online multiplayer games with their friends. Games on PC are on an average $10 cheaper than on consoles. Furthermore, websites like Epic Store, GOG.com, and Steam, regularly give away free games to PC users. Since there are multiple online gaming stores, PC users can always get the best deal when buying games.

Here’s a good example: In India, Witcher 3: Game of the Year Edition on Steam is Rs. 999. On the Xbox and PS store, the same game costs Rs. 2,000, and Rs. 2,999. You can see right away the price difference in games. And if you live in the US, game prices during Steam sales drop as low as $3, not for a random indie title, but a AAA game.

A Gaming PC OutPerforms PS5 And Xbox Series X

Although PS5 and Xbox Series X have been advertised as next-gen consoles, they do not run at a native 4K resolution. They use resolution upscaling to achieve such a high resolution. Meanwhile, a PC with RTX 3070 can deliver close to 60 to 100 FPS at true 4K resolution. According to Digital Foundry, the Xbox Series X maintains a dynamic resolution targeting 60 FPS while maintaining a minimum of 1440p resolution. The resolution might touch 4k in some instances, but folks at the Digital Foundry refused to label it as an absolute certainty.

However, at 1440p resolution, the Nvidia RTX 3070, a $499 GPU, runs AC Valhalla at an average of 74 FPS. And at true 4K resolution, it runs the game between 50–60 FPS, but you’ve to remember that resolution stays 2160p all the time, and there is absolutely no dynamic scaling involved. Performance tests were done before Ubisoft pulled out the recent AC: Valhalla patch, fixing several bugs and performance issues.

On a gaming PC, you have full backward compatibility with every game ever released on the platform. You also have a similar feature on the Xbox Series X, but in games like Just Cause 3 or Far Cry New Dawn, the frames are capped at 30 FPS. Meaning all the power of the Xbox Series X remains underutilized. You need to wait for a developer patch to fully enjoy the game at an unlocked frame rate. There are no such issues when gaming on a PC. You can pump the resolution to even 8k if you have a supported monitor and enjoy your favorite games in the graphics settings that you personally prefer.

Last but not least. If a game sucks, then you can infinitely mod that particular game until you’re not satisfied. For a lot of PC games, you can easily find a ton of mods. You can even play as CJ from San Andreas in Zelda: Breath of The Wild using an emulator and a mod. That’s the level of freedom and “creativity” PC gaming can give you.