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Games consoles suffer from a shared, inherent property: limited life shelf. Any generation of games consoles will be supported for a certain number of years, with the number of years varying between each console depending on its popularity. Five or six years is becoming the common lifespan of a generation although some individual consoles are an exception. The PS2 (a member of the sixth generation of consoles) is still going strong nearly 10 years after its launch. The PS2, along with the PS1, are exceptions rather than the rule. Regardless, eventually commercial support for any given games console will disappear completely. This limitation problem does not apply to the PC: the PC therefore has a games library spanning 20 + years across all genres, and is a library that's continually increasing year upon year. This shelf limitation will also have an affect on another property: price. To play the latest games, one has to spend more than 200 to get a decent gaming experience (even more if further games and hardware are to be purchased). With a PC, to play the latest games all the user would need to upgrade, if need be, is the processor or graphics card, which come in at less than 200. Obviously, some people will purchase any PC component (e.g sound card, video card, CPU, motherboard, monitor, etc or even all at once) as soon as it comes out regardless of whether or not they require its functionality.

During the past 10 or so years, one of the great strengths of the PC is being able to emulate other computers and games consoles. Using emulation software, gamers are able access other libraries of games across a wide number of games consoles and other computers from the ancient Odyssey right up to the sixth generation of consoles (PS2, Dreamcast and Xbox). Admittedly, emulators for the sixth generation of consoles are not as abundant or as perfect as emulators for previous generations, but research and development within the emulation community is continuous. It will also take a long time for the current generation of consoles (PS3, Wii and Xbox 360) to be emulated on the PC because they are intensely powerful and complicated. But the potential for emulation will always be there. And they will be emulated, as will future generations of games consoles. All it takes is time and patience, along with skill and luck.

This is not to say that games consoles can not emulate other machines; they can, and it has been especially noted that the Xbox, due to it's similarity to

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