[citation][nom]matchboxmatt[/nom]What about the Wii?[/citation]
While the Wii's retail price is somewhat cheaper than the 360 and PS3, the Wii's strategic unavailability makes it fairly pricey. Then there's the cost of extra controllers plus the specialized controllers for each game. If anything, the Wii costs more than the other consoles.
Now, I didn't really include the Wii because it's an entirely different gaming platform. The games on the Wii are either very casual, or aimed at the younger, less serious gaming crowd.
[citation][nom]momcilosystem[/nom]Yeah, considering that you already have PCI-e and DDR2 machine it is really cheaper and, imho, better. But if you don't have PCI-e, it becomes way expensive, not to mention that you need to replace the core of your PC (read: buy new PC).To get PCIe you need new mobo, hence new cpu (you probably don't have AM2 and AGP or 775 and AGP) hence new RAM (even rarer AGP and DDR2) and at last that PCIe GPU... Which leaves you with most inexpencive parts: case, optical drive and hdd...So, you need to have a decent PC already to make it a gaming PC.CheersP.S. I am PC guy not console guy, just in case you got that impression.[/citation]
The article does actually cover AGP solutions as well. Even with an AGP system, an Intel P4 at 2.8GHz will provide a strong enough core to run today's games with your $150 vid card and RAM upgrade. Granted, AGP costs slightly more and is a bit less cost effective since the core system is a bit slower.