there is a bit of a difference, generally in a prebuilt pc or a laptop you’ll have have control over the the parts on some level, allowing you to more effectively get something that fits your needs.
Functionally tho both are generally overpaying for a given strength of the computer behind whatever OS you are running be it a console or a pc and in both cases you are beholden to the stock levels of the machine as a whole, this last console release with ps5 showcasing that very well. At least with a laptop the extra money you are paying over buying desktop parts gets you some grade A mobility.
this generation of consoles, with the ps5 coming out with some tech that isnt in the consumer market yet, is the first generation of consoles for that to be true for multiple generations of consoles, the xbox 1 and ps4 were both really weak, the ps4 pro basically all the same parts as the ps4 with a tiny bit of additions making it 5 years out of date on its release day.
If you are comparing them to PC's where you are paying for a brand name that put the computer together then yea, you are wasting less of your money with a console than the overcharge you are getting with the PC equivalent of a set of beats headphones. For basically every generation of console since like 2005 a pc built out of parts you bought will be cheaper than an equivalent console. Most people just dont know how to, and in the past didnt have the tools to know how to, build a pc.
I've built three gaming PCs that were all pretty good for the time I built them, so I know how well they perform in comparison to, for instance, my Xbox One, and the one I built that out performed it to an extent was significantly more expensive than the $600CDN I paid for the console.
Maybe I just suck at buying parts, but a case, motherboard, cooler, cpu, power supply, gpu and maybe OS is generally going to run me a fair bit more that 600 dollary-doos.
Functionally tho both are generally overpaying for a given strength of the computer behind whatever OS you are running be it a console or a pc and in both cases you are beholden to the stock levels of the machine as a whole, this last console release with ps5 showcasing that very well. At least with a laptop the extra money you are paying over buying desktop parts gets you some grade A mobility.
If you are comparing them to PC's where you are paying for a brand name that put the computer together then yea, you are wasting less of your money with a console than the overcharge you are getting with the PC equivalent of a set of beats headphones. For basically every generation of console since like 2005 a pc built out of parts you bought will be cheaper than an equivalent console. Most people just dont know how to, and in the past didnt have the tools to know how to, build a pc.
Maybe I just suck at buying parts, but a case, motherboard, cooler, cpu, power supply, gpu and maybe OS is generally going to run me a fair bit more that 600 dollary-doos.