PC gaming is often criticized for being expensive, and a part of that is the idea of upgrading frequently to “keep up” in some way. In reality, upgrading PCs is both optional and much less frequent than most people think.

Consoles Are the Benchmark

Multiplatform games released on both PC and console are designed to work on the lowest-common-denominator device the title releases on. Consoles do have some advantages in efficiency and reduced system overhead. However, suppose you have a PC that’s just a bit more powerful than the weakest current generation system. In that case, you can be confident that your PC will run games at similar settings and performance for the duration of the console generation.

Take the Xbox Series S as an example. This console has a GPU roughly 20% less powerful than an NVIDIA GTX 1660, so you’d expect a computer with that graphics card and a comparable CPU to match or exceed whatever the Series S can do.

The main caveat is that console versions of games often have settings tuned to that specific hardware platform. Some settings on the console version of a game may also be lower than the lowest possible on the PC version, making it hard to match exactly. Then again, PC games can generally be modded with custom settings, so there may be a solution either way.

Finally, there’s the specter of poor-quality, unoptimized PC ports. This is not nearly the issue it’s…