PC gaming and performance: Social gaming is less simple than console socialization, however you do have Skype and great clients like Steam. Performance is vastly superior to PC gaming since you aren't tied down by a $400-500 price tag. A gaming tower should only cost about $700-800 if you are willing to build it. (and for less than double the price you can potentially get triple the performance than a console [dual graphics cards, 16-32 GB RAM, multiple monitors, huge harddrive, a workhorse processor] Oh and don't forget that you can always use a PC to pirate games, if you or some of your friends are tech savvy you should never have to buy a single player game again. (I do not endorse this) Console gaming and performance: Socialization is fun. It's usually easier to put in a backpack. Cheap. Plug-and-play. Performance among consoles rides on the fact that they have no bulky operating system. Even then, however, they only have 8GB RAM and the graphics specs are probably not powerful enough to let you use equipment like the Oculous Rift. (I read the graphics will be roughly equivalent to a card with 2GB memory with a speed of 1000 Mhz)