£83.99 a year
In USD, the most expensive plan is $160/year. The basic plan is $80/year. Over the lifespan of the console, the basic plan plus the console itself comes out to about $1K. Already more expensive than a basic gaming PC (and much more expensive than a steamdeck). If you were gonna be getting a basic computer anyways, you could probably get a pretty reasonably high-end gaming PC with that extra money.
If the only thing you care about is the up-front costs, then consoles are cheaper, but at least in the US, that’s not really true in the long-term (except for the switch) if you want basic online access. Especially if you are are going to own a decent computer regardless of whether you game or not. Personally, the only difference I would make between my current computer set-up if I didn’t also play games is I wouldn’t have upgraded my 9 year old GPU for $250 (3060ti*), which is cheaper than even a switch without accounting subscriptions costs (which is relatively reasonably priced at $20/year and a lot of the games I’d be interested in if it weren’t for Nintendo are primarily games I’d want to play offline anyways, so the subscription isn’t really that important anyways but the games like like $60/each…).
*edit: used. So a used switch would actually be cheaper as long as you don’t get a few years of subscription or buy like 2 games.
Forgot to mention I got it used, so should be comparing it to used consoles (PS5 looks like its still about $300 for digital edition, but doesn’t really matter since the subscription is most of the cost anyways), so a used switch would actually be cheaper.
If the only thing you care about is the up-front costs, then consoles are cheaper, but at least in the US, that’s not really true in the long-term (except for the switch) if you want basic online access. Especially if you are are going to own a decent computer regardless of whether you game or not. Personally, the only difference I would make between my current computer set-up if I didn’t also play games is I wouldn’t have upgraded my 9 year old GPU for $250 (3060ti*), which is cheaper than even a switch without accounting subscriptions costs (which is relatively reasonably priced at $20/year and a lot of the games I’d be interested in if it weren’t for Nintendo are primarily games I’d want to play offline anyways, so the subscription isn’t really that important anyways but the games like like $60/each…).
*edit: used. So a used switch would actually be cheaper as long as you don’t get a few years of subscription or buy like 2 games.
I suspect the viability of PC gaming is very regional.
A 3060 Ti costs £384 ($490) in the UK. That’s almost exactly the price of a PS5, and the reason I’m still using a 1060 6GB for my PC.
Forgot to mention I got it used, so should be comparing it to used consoles (PS5 looks like its still about $300 for digital edition, but doesn’t really matter since the subscription is most of the cost anyways), so a used switch would actually be cheaper.