After Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo unveiled their next generation of gaming consoles, people wondered whether the supposedly digital hubs of the future would be doomful to the PCs. You can’t blame them for making such an assumption after all the thrilling features and performance Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo discussed at E3 this year. Anyone slightly knowledgeable about the architecture that the console makers talked about would know that upcoming gaming consoles are undoubtedly powerful, but for obvious reasons neither PC gaming nor PCs in general are doomed.

The three giants can implement whatever features they wish, but the ultimate truth would still be the same: PCs aren’t at the end of their life span just yet. To be fair, there’s no doubt that upcoming consoles promise interesting multimedia features that might hurt the PC in certain areas, but to say the PC is doomed would be incorrect.

First of all, the gaming consoles aren’t even in the market at this point, and we all know how much companies are delighted to excite us initially and then fail to deliver up to our expectations in such scenarios. It has happened far too many times, and until the final product is on retail shelves, predicting something such substantial isn’t advisable.

The second and perhaps the most important thing to majority of us are the prices. With the features and possibilities that the aforementioned console makers have electrified us with, there’s an elevated prospect that upcoming consoles may just retail for $250.00 or up. At that point, it would be difficult to justify their significance to the die-hard PC gamers; this leads to the third point.

Next comes the theory of development. Regardless the power Xbox 360, PS3 and Revolution may offer initially, the performance in these machines would become obsolete with the fast pace computing industry. It’s difficult to understand how gaming consoles can keep up with PCs with an average of more than a three-year product refresh cycle as opposed to six-nine months for graphics processing units for PCs. Not to mention the continuous advancements in faster and efficient drives, memory and CPUs to keep up with latest physics engines and other system straining technologies.

Furthermore, a PC is not just a gaming machine. It’s an everyday household component that is interlinked to our day-to-day lives in such a manner that we are almost dependant on it to do pretty much anything we want. At least that’s the situation with those who have used the PC for a while, and now appreciate the value it retains.

Admittedly, gaming PCs do cost quite a bit, and it’s obvious that gaming consoles will hold somewhat of an advantage against PCs in this area, but how flexible are the gaming consoles anyway. Once the design is finalized, you are stuck with the same hardware for at least three years, if not more. The rest of the gaming development is left up to the software developers who can do only so much to enhance the results. That being said, the idea could change this time around, since Xbox 360, PS3 and Revolution promise to be quite powerful with adequate number of hardware technologies for game developers to take advantage of.

From what it appears, the upcoming games consoles have potential, a lot of potential. The hardware is powerful enough for game developers to really design the jaw-dropping games that are just as comparable as their PC counterparts, but to speculate that PC gaming or even PCs are doomed is preposterous. Upcoming consoles could certainly scratch the idea of PC gaming with equivalent alternatives, but it surely won’t put an end to an otherwise all rounder machine.

To end on a more interesting note, Microsoft alone would make sure that PC market stays healthy and kicking. After all, consoles are not as profitable as the 90 percent of computing population. Windows anyone?