the PS4 has features that a built into the hardware to get more out of the basic sum of it's parts.

will a AMD 7990 be faster anyway? of course it will.

will AMD 7990 get it's ass handed to it by yet another card that follows sometime after it??
you bet.

Yeah, PCs are out-of-date just as quickly as consoles, yet consoles seem to last longer. I don't see anyone still playing great looking games on Nvidia's 8800GTS. In fact, there were no games on the 8800GTS that looked as good as Uncharted 3. I've only upgraded my video card once since the 8800GTS, and that cost me $300...more than a PS3. Sure, I have the best version of Far Cry 3, Battlefield 3, etc. But I still had to spend $250 on my 8800GTS just to catch up with the PS3, and $300 on my current card, just to beat it (not to mention the processor and RAM upgrades).

Consoles have a clear advantage. PC-only enthusiasts seem to think that consoles hold PC back, but even top-of-the-line PCs can stutter on some of the best games out there.

The proof is in the pudding. Game quality rests solely in the hands of developers. Give good developers good tools, and you'll wind up with amazing games.

Sony has great developers, and in the PS4, the promise of a great tool.

I'm excited.

@inveni0

8800GTX playing:

Battlefield 3 in 1080:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

PS3 doent even manage 720p.

Tombraider in 1080 60fps:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

PS3 720p 30fps

Black ops 2 1080p:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

PS3 630p

Want more examples?

So what happens when you buy the PS4? how do you intend to play all those games you bought for the PS3?

1. you plan on rebuying PS3's whenever they fail?

2. Buy HD remakes on PS4, might as buy that HD ramake for GOW that you bought on the PS3 again on the PS4?

3. subscribe to a streaming service to play games you already own?

You will also need to consider what your friends do if you want to play MP games from the PS3, in which case buying a HD remake on the PS4 might not work. Since there may not be MP game play between different gens of console.

In the end these are all expensive and unrealistic solutions. PC gaming just is cheaper and offers a feasible solution.

Not even Futuremark, creators of the benchmark that pushes high end PC to their max, utilizes the full bandwidth of PCIe 3.0... even when running at a ridiculous resolution of 4320x2304.

Sony is simply future proofing their system JUST IN CASE some future gaming engine is capable of doing so.

I didn't say GTX. I said GTS.

http://www.hwcompare.com/41...

Significant performance difference at an equally significant price difference, but only supporting my case anyway. If you want to spend $600 on a graphics card alone, that's fine. But PS3 (even at a launch price of $600) is still a great value for the money, and longer lasting than equivalently priced PC parts. In late 2007, you could not build a PC that would today still look as good as the PS3.

@ inveni0
You don't need to spend $600 to beat out PS4's 1.84Gflops performance though. A radeon 7870 can be purchased today for $244 and it performs at 2.56Gflops (about 40% more power BEFORE overclocking) and it'll probably be down around $150 by the the time the PS4 actually launches.
http://www.newegg.ca/Produc...
p.s. that video card even comes bundled with 3 games, farcry 3, bioshock infinite and tombraider to boot!

Yes, but there's more to a PC than just the video card. What if you need more RAM and the motherboard that came in your computer doesn't hold more than 4GB? That's actually pretty common in a lot of PCs. It's easy to spend more than the cost of what the PS4 will launch at in upgrading your PC.

But again, that's not the point. The point is that the PS4 is a good value because it will last for at least 5 years before people start aching for more power. I start aching for more power out of my PC about 18 months after my last upgrade.

???
Even this ridiculously cheap $50 Motherboard supports up to 16GB of ram so I don't know how many years back you are talking to get such a strangely low amount of RAM? Most current motherboards support at least 64GB of RAM now.
http://www.newegg.com/Produ...
http://www.amazon.com/Gigab...

Most people don't buy or upgrade their computers every two years. So, if you're a kid at home, your parents' PC is probably at least 3-4 years old, most likely 5. I've had a number of relatives think that buying the cheapest bundle at Wal-Mart is the way to get a PC, and they come home with this tiny little thing that doesn't even have a PCI-e slot. They're slim PCs, and they use micro-ATX form factors (I even bought a Gateway once with a BTX motherboard, which replacing required a whole new case...). They also use sub-300w PSUs in many cases, which means you'll need to upgrade that, as well. You're looking at an additional $30 for 4GB RAM, $60 for a decent PSU, and $150 for a moderate graphics card. That's $270 in addition to what the PC cost in the first place, assuming your processor is up to the task.

Upgrading the standard out-of-the-box PC is not as easy as you suggest.

Not sure why you're bringing non-gaming PCs into this. That's like saying it's a negative that you can't upgrade into a PS3 from a DVD player. Though at least there is some ability to transfer components from your non-gaming PC to a new gaming PC you're building.

Because people act like the PS4 shouldn't exist because a gaming PC can be better. To use your analogy, it's like saying BluRay players shouldn't exist because of the PS3. It just doesn't make sense.

Bottom line is that a gaming PC that will out perform PS4 in 5 years will cost more than PS4 in 5 years. Otherwise, the exclusives we see from PS4 will be (based on past experience) fantastic...just like the games we have now on PS3.

EDIT: I have a gaming PC (built for gaming specifically) and a PS3. No 360 because their exclusives started out as being on PC AND 360, and so I picked PC over 360 (of course). But I know that Sony's exclusives will be exclusive to PS4, and that's why I'm going with a gaming PC (for multi-platforms) and a PS4 for exclusives. I'll be using the same technique in the next gen. I just think that many PC enthusiasts have their logic a little slanted when it comes to which is "better". And I think it's clear that no $400 PC will be better than PS4 (assuming a $400 launch price...if it's $500 or $600, we may have to recalculate).

@inveni0

Diamond 7870 Ghz Edition Graphics card - $234
http://www.newegg.com/Produ...
AMD Phenom II X4-965 Quad core Processor - $80
http://www.newegg.com/Produ...
Asrock 770i ATX Motherboard - $55
http://www.newegg.com/Produ...
8Gb Crucial DDR3 1600 RAM (2x4Gb) - $47
http://www.newegg.com/Produ...
1 TB Hitachi Hard Drive - $70
http://www.newegg.com/Produ...

Total: $486

That there is a decent mid range gaming PC and that doesn't even factor in the fact that every game is $10 cheaper. Buy even 10 games in that computer's life and it is even cheaper than a $400 console that you bought 10 games for.

@blackmagic,

where are the case, power unit, all the cooling system and mouse, keyboard?
Quit lying to yourself. PC gaming is expensive than console gaming.

You're kidding right?

I would use the same case and 650 watt power supply that I already own and have used for the past two upgrade cycles of my computer. Why would I buy another?
Same goes for my mouse and keyboard. All these things do not suddenly become obsolete just because I bought new innards.

And for me personally, I have a 500Gb, 1Tb and 3Tb hard drive in my present computer (the 500Gb and 1Tb are from previous builds) so I wouldn't actually buy another hard drive if I was upgrading right now. I also brought forward 8Gb of RAM from my last build to my present build and added 8Gb to give me 16Gb total. So for me, it would be significantly cheaper for me to build a new computer if I was to do it right now.

Do you buy a new Television every single time you buy a console?

@Elite_737: An additional note,
That 20GB/s Mark Cerny mentioned is a special path where the GPU bypasses its caches to read and write to system memory, so calculations of the GPU can be written to memory with low latencies. (Will provide coherency with CPU at system RAM level, by avoiding the cache). This 20GB/s will not be used for transferring texture data to GPU (like you would on a PCI-express), for example.