OSNews

I have heard several times that it is a bad thing that you cannot extend or upgrade your gaming consoles. I disagree with that.

First, you say that your 8-year-old PC is better at gaming than you N64, which is also out since 1996 (production ceased in 2001). If your PC is from 1996 i guess it's a Pentium in the area between 100-200 Mhz, 16 MB RAM and a first-generation 3D card. I really don't know what you mean by 'getting more mileage' out of it. Granted, you can use such a PC for a lot of things (like a server, or just for browsing with BeOS), but a PC (especially one suitable for gaming) is much more expensive. I would say that you would have to spend around 1000$ for a PC that plays today's games reasonably well, while a new Gamecube costs only 99$. Even if you buy a new console every 3 years, it will still be much cheaper than upgrading a PC with a state-of-the-art graphics card (and the PS2 is out since 2000 and new games will be released for several years).

Second, your article evolves around the fact that getting games to work in Linux is really hard and should be simple. This is another strong point of consoles: No installation. Pop in the cartridge/cd/dvd/umd and start to play. If simplicity is your concern, go for a console.

Finally, I do understand that there are some people who just don't like gaming consoles. That's OK, of course. But your arguments against them seemed a bit strange to me. Also, I know quite some people who just buy a new graphics card worth hundreds of Euros just to play a game they don't really like, but which has great effects and is something you can show off with...