Licensing fees to Sony and Microsoft.

That's exactly why, yep.

I reach 30 this year and I don't ever remember PC games being more expensive than console games.

Sega Megadrive games were £35-40 I think, but I never could get my parents to buy me one. Instead, a Commodore 64 with a bazillion games was acquired second hand. When I got a PC a couple of years after that, games were £30, then very briefly pushing up to £35. Now I buy online, they're mostly £25.

 I don't remember PC games being more expensive than console games, but getting PC games can end up costing more if you need to get a new computer every few months.

But I do remember PC games allways being better than console games (not just in graphics). I'm talking inovation, interface, mods. It just seemed that games evolved as fast as the computers did.

So? I don't see Little Big Planet on PCs. Nor do I see Gran Turismo. Or any of the other PS3 exclusives.

The technology that runs a game is about the most meaningless part of the game. Quake 3 may have run on better technology than an N64, but that didn't make it better than Super Mario 64.

I'm old enough to remember "shareware" was common.

I just allways remember console games starting at $49.99-$59.99 range when first released. PC games were allways about $10-$15 less per game. Assuming you had a PC that could play games.

Don't knock game consoles so quickly,

If you want to talk about outdated, try reading this http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/10/computing.sciencenews. The damn thing is built out of PS3 parts.

Or help cure cancer,

 http://www.joystiq.com/2006/08/24/help-cure-cancer-with-your-ps3/ 

If anyone has complaints about hardware capabilites it would be me, but the lion share of the fault can be placed on game devs who try to be edgy by pushing graphics to the limits. More often than not it ends up hurting the gameplay more than adding experiance.

I've played through both Devil May Cry 4 and Starwars The Force Unleashed and they are beautifull and slick games. But I felt a little disapointed by the load times.  

PC games being cheaper is part of what attracts me to the format as well.  And I'm really tired of hearing everyone dog on gaming pc's for being so expensive and in constant need of upgrading.  I first dipped my toes into PC gaming about three years ago, and I slapped an $89 GeForce 6800 into my cheap, crappy eMachine with a 2.0GB single-core cpu and was playing all kinds of great games right off the bat.  Later, I upgraded to a gig of RAM and traded up for a 7600 and could play Call of Duty 2 on high--and that was a 360 launch title!  I have personally found PC gaming to be a much cheaper alternative to consoles.  If you want to play Crysis on high then ok, you need to pony up some dough, but for every Crysis there are 20 or 30 great games that run fine on cheap setups.  And who doesn't have a computer just sitting there in their house these days?  People don't realize what slapping a hundred dollar video card into your home PC can yield gaming-wise.  One last thing, used pc games are ridiculously low priced on the secondary market compared to used console games.

I have a Wii and 3 desktops and one laptop at home. I'm 34 yars old. I played Atari 2600 nes snes, genesis, super nintendo and PS1. The games on those consoles were always expensive compared to PC. NHL2008 was 20 on the PC try adn find that on a console at that price.

The only reason I got the Wii is because I have 3 kids and most games are less then 30$ each. I never dreamed of getting a 400$ console (whicjh finally are cheaper these days) and pay 50$ or more for consoles games.

Consoles are overated. I can do so so so much more on a pc that I could never do on a console. I buy 1 pc every 4 years which cost me about 1500$. The family can play, work, watch movies, do research, chat, emails and so many other things. Find me a console that can do all of those then a console might be something worthwile.

If it's only for gaming most consoles are aimed at one type of people, I'm glad I am not one of them.

kind of annoying  all those new games are brought to console only  its sortoff forcing us to buy their consoles  im not gonna  anyways

im just happy that some people are smart enough to publish their games on the PC anyways  any game with DRM and sucky anti-piracy solutions i ought to dl,  im not gonna pay extra something that doesnt work - .-     but people that publish both console and PC,   i admire those,  and i just buy their stuff to support em (not talking about those that publish console first then 6 / 12 months later introduce a pc-version,  that's even worse then drm - .-

Some of those Wii gizmos are very good in being the cheaper alternatives in aiding scientific research.  

I agree with you 100%.  Our kids should be playing outside more anyway

My kids are not allowed to play video games during the week. School first books and other things. On the week-ends when we are home they can play. I guess it's a good way to limit their time on video games.

Holy &@#) I can get Gears for my PS3?!