If you read my posts, you will discover how I have explained that devs. will optimize for the consoles only at later years near their end of life. Nobody said they will do the first day, because that is absurd.
The PS4 is much more easy to program than the XB360/PS3. Your analogy is not valid.
The PC targeted at many launch titles is an i7 with a GTX-680. That is the PC used to run some of the PS4 demos. The i5 lacks HT and the 7950 lacks performance.
The i7 + GTX-680 has problems to run demos, it cannot run the elemental demo at 30fps 1080p and it cannot run the killzone demo because lacks VRAM.
You did not offer any real argument against the consoles cost a tiny fraction of a performance comparable PC.
I find amazing that you reject Steam statistics with "Compare apples to apples: modern PCs with modern consoles". You are the one who continuously mention the PS3 in your anti-PS4 arguments. LOL
Just because you use a rig to run a demo doesn't necessarily mean it's targeted rig. Do you have a cite for that, that gamedevs are targeting an i7/680 rig for PS4 launch titles? Even if they are, it's likely overkill. Remember that a 7950 with Boost is already on par with the original 7970 (5% slower clock for clock), which itself is very close to a GTX 680 when you use up to date drivers. With a very mild overclock, a 7950 can actually BEAT a GTX 680... and comes with free games to boot. As for i7, hyperthreading does NOTHING for most games. Some games are still single-threaded for crying out loud, and programming for max load for many threads isn't trivial and gamedevs are unlikely to fully saturate all PS4 cores with launch titles.. that will take years of learning to achieve if they ever do. So a fast quadcore i5 is all you need. Haswell has ~10% higher IPC than Ivy Bridge, according to rumors, btw, so factor that in, too.
The difference between my using PS3 Slim wattage and your using Steam numbers is that I actually have a good reason for it, whereas you do not. Do you have better numbers for PS4 load estimates? If not, then taking the PS3 Slim wattage is reasonable, esp. given the APU is sort of a known quantity (can extrapolate from existing ones) and GDDR5 wattage is known as well though wattage can vary depending on process and frequency. That is why I mentioned the PS3 at all. You on the other hand are obsessed with apples-to-oranges comparisons of Steam Survey PCs (many of which are old) vs PS4.
It remains to be seen how hard gamedevs can squeeze performance out of the PS4 at launch vs over time. Cell was a mess and the APU in PS4 is probably easier to program for, and yes DirectX eats performance, and yes GDDR5 unified memory is intriguing, but it's a brand new console. I don't know how you expect gamedevs to just jump on board and get THAT much more out of the hardware than a PC would from the same hardware, at launch. A launch that is in the future so by that point a i5-3470 (partially unlocked) and 7950 Boost will be outdated and presumably even cheaper. Perhaps we can agree to disagree on this one.
We can even agree to disagree on factoring TV vs monitor costs on the grounds that for some people, TVs are a sunk cost.
How much of a factor VRAM limitations are remains to be seen in actual games. For multiplatform, producing games for the lowest common denominator has been gamedevs' M.O. for a long time now. Even in a worst case scenario, turning down textures a notch (and gaining fps) may be a workaround until VGA cards get more RAM.
What I completely disagree with is your disingenuously ignoring operating costs even though you brought one up (electricity). Consoles cost more than PCs to operate for gaming. Period. The game publishing licensing fees and possible XBL-style fees (jury is out for PSN price in the PS4 era) and higher launch and post-launch prices for games drown out the small extra price of power for PCs. Then factor in how PCs can be upgraded with off the shelf parts, and the jury is out for PS4 as to whether you need proprietary hardware like proprietary hard drives, or like they tried to make people do with memory sticks for a long time, even though CF/SD are the real standards.
And that's not even factoring in how PCs can do so much more than consoles in terms of programs you can run.
Remember, you brought up electricity as an operating cost. If you didn't want to talk about operating costs, then don't bring up electricity. Now that you opened up that door, don't be sad that all of the other operating costs of consoles more than make up for their slight energy efficiency as of 2013... and future PCs will catch up in terms of perf/watt.
So no, I can't agree with how the PS4 will be a "tiny fraction" of the cost of a performance-comparable PC, not unless it launches for $99 with no monthly fee or something.
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