The PS4 will be more powerful than even a lot of gaming pc's at launch, but by the time games actually get anything like the amount out of the hardware that will see them use enough of the power to actually make them pratically more powerful than a decent gaming pc at launch, the Pc will be back in front again.
The power of the PS4 and new X-box is completely meaningless until near the end of their life cycle anyway, it takes devs that long to get anything like the performance that is theoretically possible aout of a console, the games that have come out in the last year or so look one hell of a lot better than the stuff that came out at launch.
The PS4 will be more powerful than most gaming pc's sold, but PC's will be in front in general straight away in terms of straight hardware. The "average" PC won't be infront for 3-4 years at least though. On launch a quad Haswell or octo AMD anything will have more processing power, and a 7950 will have more GPU power(let alone sli/xfire configs, higher single cards, or any new ones launched by then). The PS4 will likely be as fast as a gaming "pc" needs to be for the time though, more CPU power doesn't do an awful lot for gaming and the sheer efficiency of a console vs gaming "through" a nasty intrusive inefficient OS will mean the PS4 will utilise its available power far far more efficiently than a top end PC can.
For instance having just looked on Dell, under their "best selling deals" they have a bunch of computers with Intel IGPU's, and two computers they state have superior graphics, with 7570's in....., their special edition media centres are $1400 with a 7770 in, their alienware graphics computers are surprisingly good gaming alternatives Their aimed at gaming Alienwares, lol, $700 gets youa 640gt, upgrading to $1100 nets you a 660gtx, $1800 gets you 7850 xfire and $400 more gets you 7950xfire....
640gt is where gaming is "at" for your average gamer buying from Dell and spending up to $1000. Most people don't have a freaking clue what they are buying, getting, or missing out on. In 4 years the average card will be two real generations on, but still low end, and still WAY below a 7850 in performance, let alone a low level access console 7850 which will gain hugely in efficiency. Windows KILLS performance badly and is crazy inefficient, but the average gamer doesn't have even "midrange" current gen cards.
As for the power being irrelevant, absolutely 100% incorrect. Its as simple as this, games on the xbox 360 8 years ago didn't use 25% of the gpu power and use 100% today, they used 100% both times, just efficiency of coding, leveraging the power and using the power changes. This changes over time with much better hardware each couple of years anyway. People get better at designing, get better tools, can design more things more quickly and spend more time on particular parts to make them look better.
If the Xbox 360 had less power on launch, the games would have looked significantly worse. There are two huge and VERY separate parts to gaming design, things that require performance and improve with more performance available and design, which is purely down to the people, time and quality of people doing it, and none of that has anything to do with performance. If we stopped getting more power in gpu's today, graphics quality would increase for decades more with the same level of power. The only exception to that is games designed for previous consoles but released on the new ones, there are a few games that get caught out, especially games in design for a few years that get delayed until after the PS4 release, most guys starting a new game from within the past 2 years should be designing for the new consoles though.
I think the problem with this thread and the devs original point is that as a statement it means nothing to anyone about anything.
It is irrelevant whether it is better than most pcs or your current rig, the point is that when you buy a pc you can make it whatever spec you would like. The people who's computers are less powerful choose for it to be that way and knew what they were getting.
As above, most people absolutely do not know what they are getting, and when they bought dell's with 6300gt's in SLI, thought they were getting gaming beasts.
Dell sell Intel HD as standard and talk up 640gt/7570's as "gaming" gpu's for anything less than $1000 pc's. Most people don't choose what is in their PC, they have £600 for a PC and buy whats £600, and when Dell or a guy in purple shirt tell them that absolutely low end GPU is great for gaming, they assume its true.
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