I the difficulty continues to go up 10% each time, then, no mining will not be profitable for someone getting in at this point.
We can, and have, argued what the future difficulty increases will be. I hope they level off soon, but I'm not optimistic.
However, if you are going to buy a machine for gaming anyway, and do some mining on the side, go for it. You don't have to recoup the whole rig cost to turn a mining profit, because you bought it to game with, not to mine with.
![Smiley](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
You just have to recoup the "extra" stuff you bought for mining that you would not have otherwise bought to game with.