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The cost argument is one that you hear very often.
Console hardware is cheaper, you have to pay to play online and pc games are cheaper but supposedly PSN Sales are just as good as steam ones by now.
What bothered me is that no one ever seemed to back these up with numbers and I was bored so I decided to do some Math.
Some points to my method:
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Free Games and Bundles are ignored.
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The Prices are only true for Germany ymmv.
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I used historical lowest prices.
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Physical console games include shipping costs(this was still always the cheapest).
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For PC I only used legitimate key resellers and storefronts, so no grey markets.
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I excluded the price of preipherals, Monitors, TVs, Chairs, Sofas, etc.
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I assumed the lifespan of consoles and PCs to be 6 years.
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The average number of games I calculated with the help of Polls.
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I assumed the average cost for the average console game to be 30€.
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I used the average price savings of the PC version to calculate the software cost for the PC.
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I tried to include newer AAA games, somewhat older AAA games, classics and indies.
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I feel like I could have included some AA games but oh well.
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I only used the PS5 for consoles
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I made different tiers for PCs from Low to High End
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I also included my own PC which is actually a high end PC but I reused some parts of my old PC and sold the old motherboard, Ram, CPU and GPU. Which led to the price of 1300€ for me.
Picture of the excel file:
With these parameters and prerequisites only the High End PC for cost 14% more over its lifetime than the Playstation 5.
If you don't care for online gaming then the Semi High End PC would also be more expensive.
You can also sell your games on consoles to get some money back however most people don't seem to do that.
The cheapest way to game would probably be an Xbox Series S with Gamepass.
Do with that information what you want.I just thought it was interesting.
Edit:
I'd like to add an conclusion because I don't think I was clear enough.
The 500€ Budget PC with software would only cost 54% of what the PS5 with software would have cost over its lifetime.The 1000€ PC 74%.The 1500€ PC 94%The 2000€ PC 114%This would obviously change if you buy more or fewer games.I think this shows that even with graphics card prices being as they are the pc is still a very good value proposition.
Edit 2:
I've overlooked some PSN deals and went through all games again and corrected the prices where it was needed.
It didn't change much overall.
Every PC Version is roughly 10% worse off compared to what I said above.
The sites I used to find the prices: