I think it's intended as a comparison of cost when building a gaming-capable computer vs. a console of somewhat equivalent power.
It used to be a general rule of thumb that you could build a computer of roughly equivalent power for the cost of a game console, or a little more — now the memory costs more than the whole console.
Thank you for mentioning this. Not knowing the specs of a PS5, I'd assumed that the comparison was made because the PS5 now sold for less than the RAM it contains, and scalpers were now hungrily buying up all available PlayStation inventory just to tear them open and feast on the RAM inside.
But since it's 16 GB, the comparison doesn't really make sense.
It still is a rule of thumb, you dont need DDR5 for a gaming computer let alone 64gb. A low end am4 cpu + 16gb of DD4 3600 and a decent gpu will beat a ps5 in performance and cost. I dont understand why the headline made this strange comparison.
You do have the option to open up Discord voice chats on PS5. Amazing what Discord could do when forced to actually write something efficient.
Youtube also exists as an app, and maybe you can trick the heavily gimped built in browser to go there as well, although last I checked it wasn't trivial.
I can run the spotify electron app, discord and watch youtube on my 2nd monitor perfectly fine with 16gb of DDR3 ram. When I open my game I get better fps than the ps5.
It doesn't help that GPUs have also generally gone up over the past decade because there's more market for them besides gaming, along with how they benefit from being hugely parallel and the larger you can make them the better, and fabrication costs are shooting up. I think there was a GamersNexus video at the launch of one of the previous GPU generations that noted that there was a move from "more for your money" each generation towards "more for more", i.e. keeping the value roughly static and increasing the amount they charged for a more capable product.
Because, unless this changed, consoles are loss-leaders. At least back in the ps2/gamecube/OG Xbox, the systems were sold at a loss and the money was recouped on controllers and games.
Can’t use a ps2 controller to play a ps2 game on a ps2 without the ps2 console.
If this is still true or not, I don’t know. I do know that the ps5 with an optical drive cost $100 more than the digital edition. I also know that the drive does not cost $100 and sincerely doubt the labor makes up the difference.
That's a an analogy-- a literary technique the writer is using, to show the correspondence between the price of a specific amount of DDR5 RAM to a fully integrated system, so the reader can follow the conclusions of their article easier.
