With the end of physical media, the PlayStation is just a worse PC to me. I only buy console games second hand because I never pay full price for games, so if that's no longer possible I'll just...
With the end of physical media, the PlayStation is just a worse PC to me. I only buy console games second hand because I never pay full price for games, so if that's no longer possible I'll just not own consoles anymore.
Not only will it be a worse PC, it is almost certainly going to start being priced like a PC due to the ongoing memory crisis. Other than exclusive games, the rationale to get a console is gone...
Not only will it be a worse PC, it is almost certainly going to start being priced like a PC due to the ongoing memory crisis. Other than exclusive games, the rationale to get a console is gone for me. The PS5 is going to be my last console as far as I'm concerned.
It feels like this piece is written by a long-term PC gamer who seems to share thier fellows' inability to imagine any appeal to consoles. The cost is negligible. It is a piece of tech that I put...
It feels like this piece is written by a long-term PC gamer who seems to share thier fellows' inability to imagine any appeal to consoles.
The cost is negligible. It is a piece of tech that I put thousands of hours on. They generally last me close to 5 years and I have to buy a new one halfway through the generation's 10-year life cycle. (Also, this is what the pro version is in my opinion, mid-generation repurchase. Not 'woah check out these new graphics').
$600 or $1200 makes a little difference to me.
I buy all my games on physical media (but I don't sweat it if it only comes digitally) and I use my PS5 optical drive for my extensive Blu-ray and DVD collection. The loss of the optical drive will be missed and require me to complicate my home entertainment center with a second media source. Not ideal but not a biggie.
If I think about it deeply the main reasons I buy consoles is simplicity, consistency, and integration in my home entertainment setup. I don't want a tower in my living room. I don't want to sit at a desk like I do all day for work. I don't want to have to select computer parts that work together or configure settings between components. I don't want to worry about malware. And I certainly don't need the bleeding edge of technology.
I want one power cable, one HDMI cable, and one ethernet cable. Plug & Play. Proper controller and have it last for 4 to 10 years. I get that from consoles and consoles I will stay with even when they screw me out of my optical drive.
Many PC gamers seem to have a superiority complex that has changed little in the last two decades but regardless methinks consoles are here to stay.
Honestly it always surprises me how cost sensitive (or, at least, performatively cost sensitive - based on sales numbers, people may not be as sensitive as they portray themselves as) games...
The cost is negligible.
Honestly it always surprises me how cost sensitive (or, at least, performatively cost sensitive - based on sales numbers, people may not be as sensitive as they portray themselves as) games media/social media is.
Obviously everyone has their own financial situation and all that, but whether a game cost $30 or $60 or $80 has like zero bearing on whether or not I'll buy it. Time is my bottleneck. I don't want to waste time playing a game I don't like playing. The costs are so negligible as to not really matter.
Same for console prices. $400, $450, $500, $600, like it really doesn't matter that much to me. What matters is: what the form factor is, what games can it play, and how well can it play them.
Steam sales are neat, but I'd rather pay $90 to get a single game I want to play on the Switch 2 than 10 games on steam sale I don't really care about.
Frankly I find it strange that people even spend $60 on video games. I've almost never bought a game for that price. The few times I had, I ended up being disappointed. Video games, once digital,...
Exemplary
Frankly I find it strange that people even spend $60 on video games. I've almost never bought a game for that price. The few times I had, I ended up being disappointed.
Video games, once digital, are a class of good that doesn't really "exist" and therefore has "no monetary value" because it's not a tangible object that you can put in your hands. In the best case, it's just data that can be copied forever for free, and in the worst case, it's locked down to a DRM scheme that prevents it from being sold even if it did have value. There is no in-between in which digital video games have value. Heck, the earliest PC games had the problem of being sold against simple copies of the floppy disks for little more than the cost of the disk itself.
So I don't see why it's hard to understand why people are so price sensitive. Any price you put on a video game is essentially arbitrary, and different people will be willing to pay for a game depending on what price is on it. There are many who will refuse to purchase at any price.
If I may be frank, the comments you and the person you were responding to both smell like financial privilege to me. My income has dried up over the summer break, and my total income for the last month will barely cover the cost of electricity and my other monthly expenses, and I'm worried that I may not have budget for food. We live in a world of vast wealth inequality, so not everyone is able to afford to pay for "full price" games regardless of the exact number they choose for it.
On the other side as someone with more than enough money video games can have an outrageous utility per dollar. Eating at a restaurant can easily cost as much as a video game, can easily be...
On the other side as someone with more than enough money video games can have an outrageous utility per dollar. Eating at a restaurant can easily cost as much as a video game, can easily be replaced with delicious food I could make on my own by spending an hour cooking, and as an experience only lasts at most a couple of hours. Compare with a great game - something that could take thousands of hours to create on my own - that only lasts 5 hours and that $60 price tag looks acceptable. On the other hand games go on such extreme sales with high regularity. A little patience will save you a lot of money.
If anything video games are in an unstable value position just like fast food was before the pandemic. If people can be forced to admit this then prices could double.
I don't know about you but I'd rather spend that 230 zł going somewhere for a couple of hours with my partner, my best friend, or another close friend than spend the same 230 zł on a game
I don't know about you but I'd rather spend that 230 zł going somewhere for a couple of hours with my partner, my best friend, or another close friend than spend the same 230 zł on a game
I purchase a lot of games specifically to have fun with friends. Me and some buddies all met up to play Meccha Chameleon a few times in the last week and had a blast. Granted that’s only $6.
I purchase a lot of games specifically to have fun with friends. Me and some buddies all met up to play Meccha Chameleon a few times in the last week and had a blast. Granted that’s only $6.
Supplier marginal cost doesn't have anything to do with the price and the value of the good to the consumer. Unless you're trying to argue that the cost of stamping out the cdrom or the cost of...
Supplier marginal cost doesn't have anything to do with the price and the value of the good to the consumer. Unless you're trying to argue that the cost of stamping out the cdrom or the cost of the transmission of the game are the only 'real' thing that price should be based upon in some platonic idealized truth.
Consumers will buy the game if the utility they get from it exceeds the price that they have to pay subject to their budget. It doesn't matter if the game is delivered on cdrom, 1000 floppy disks, a USB thumb drive, or via the internet.
Of course they don’t have anything to do with the cost of the game. That was the point of my comment. Money is a thing without objective value. It is a thing that people are given as a fraction of...
Of course they don’t have anything to do with the cost of the game. That was the point of my comment. Money is a thing without objective value. It is a thing that people are given as a fraction of the actual value they generate on an extremely subjective basis.
That was the lie told by disc manufacturers as we moved towards digital titles. Somehow Steam is rising in popularity because it's the only one that kept the facade up for any reasonable amount of...
Supplier marginal cost doesn't have anything to do with the price and the value of the good to the consume
That was the lie told by disc manufacturers as we moved towards digital titles. Somehow Steam is rising in popularity because it's the only one that kept the facade up for any reasonable amount of time.
Consumers will buy the game if the utility they get from it exceeds the price that they have to pay subject to their budget.
Sure, but as anyone working with websites know, any amount of fritction, even fractions of a second from an extra click, can cost you a surprising amount of traffic. Attached consumers value something highly, but those that aren't attached are fleeting.
(now once you capture the market; go for it. Let Twitter take 20 seconds to load some nazi posts and steer you to an app that sucks your battery like a vampire. You won, your value is at critical mass).
I think that this either might be a very privileged opinion, or an opinion by someone who values gaming as a primary expenditure to their budget. I'm upper middle class and I hardly ever but games...
I think that this either might be a very privileged opinion, or an opinion by someone who values gaming as a primary expenditure to their budget.
I'm upper middle class and I hardly ever but games at MSRP if they're over $50 because I just can't justify that. Sure I might get 100 hours of gameplay out of it and that's only $.50/c an hour but you really don't know what game is gonna be a 10 hour game and what will be a 200 hour game until after you start to play it. The only time I'm really ever able to justify MSRP is 1) a Nintendo game that I know will never go on sale bc Nintendo and I know I want to play anyway, or 2) a game I have 90% confidence I'll get 100+ hours out of. That's few and far between, maybe once every year or two.
PlayStations and Xboxes will always go on sale eventually. My spouse begged for the newest Xbox when it first came out and I gave the thumbs down for 6 months and by the end of the 6 months it was almost 50% of the original price at some retailers and we purchased it. Knowing that, how could I NOT be price sensitive for future consoles? It happens every time. Personally I think paying full retail for the newest consoles that only have like 2 AAA games released for them is financially irresponsible. Giving time allows for prices to meet the true market price, the manufacturer to get the kinks out, and for a variety of games to release... It just makes rational sense to me.
It's definitely dependent on what you value spending your money on for sure. Not saying you're incorrect, but from my perspective, this is a consumerist FOMO mindset for the majority of people.
Are you saying that buying games and consoles is taking up most of their disposable income? I'm definitely not upper middle class but if you are buying 3 $1,000 console every 5 years and three...
I think that this either might be a very >privileged opinion, or an opinion by >someone who values gaming as a >primary expenditure to their budget.
Are you saying that buying games and consoles is taking up most of their disposable income? I'm definitely not upper middle class but if you are buying 3 $1,000 console every 5 years and three games every single month @$80 each that's ~$200 a month. Are you considering that a primary expenditure? Am I underestimating games per month?
Again maybe this is my blessed DINK status but that is what more than I spend and well within and acceptable entertainment spending.
Not quite what I mean. I more meant "primary hobby", as in, you don't really have any other hobbies and it's the only thing you spend your money on for entertainment purposes. $1000 a year isn't...
Not quite what I mean. I more meant "primary hobby", as in, you don't really have any other hobbies and it's the only thing you spend your money on for entertainment purposes. $1000 a year isn't much if that's really the only thing fun/extraneous you regularly spend money on, but if you have two or three other hobbies also taking up $1000 a year each, now you're spending $3000-$4000 a year on hobbies. That's not chump change. But if you don't have any other hobbies, then you're right, $1000 a year on hobbies isn't much.
I'm the opposite; I'm quite scared of games that have 100 hours of gameplay these days. That's just a lot of time commitment, especially if it's a mediocre 100 hours. I was quite delighted to...
Sure I might get 100 hours of gameplay out of it and that's only $.50/c an hour but you really don't know what game is gonna be a 10 hour game and what will be a 200 hour game until after you start to play it.
I'm the opposite; I'm quite scared of games that have 100 hours of gameplay these days. That's just a lot of time commitment, especially if it's a mediocre 100 hours.
I was quite delighted to spend $80 on Pragmata, for example, for a solid 15 hours of gameplay, as opposed to something like Black Desert. I would much rather prefer a solid 15-20 hour, mostly linear story than a sprawling open world game.
but from my perspective, this is a consumerist FOMO mindset for the majority of people.
What makes it FOMO? It's more that I don't consider games a fungible experience. If I want to play XYZ, I want to play XYZ. I can't just swap it out to something cheaper like it's gasoline powering a car. It's an experience, they're just different things.
On cost, I suppose it depends on where you live. Eating a single dinner out (which I do, regardless) is in the $60-80 range. For an entire video game? No brainer.
These days I finish like, maybe 10 games a year? Usually less? If they're all $80, that's like a cap of $800. Compared to all the other expenses, and leisure activities, that's a rounding error.
800 dollars a year is most certainly not a rounding error for a big portion of the world's population. I hope you have the self-awareness that this is an extremely privileged position to be in.
800 dollars a year is most certainly not a rounding error for a big portion of the world's population. I hope you have the self-awareness that this is an extremely privileged position to be in.
You can call it what you want, but the point is that whenever these articles come out, there's the air of "who are all these people buying the PS5/GTA6/etc. at $550/$90/etc!?" and it's like, it's...
You can call it what you want, but the point is that whenever these articles come out, there's the air of "who are all these people buying the PS5/GTA6/etc. at $550/$90/etc!?" and it's like, it's me, and all the other working adults I know, who had plenty of disposable income and not very much free time.
The very article this post is about is about that. In the end, the PS6 will sell well, because there's just enough people that aren't price sensitive about consoles or games. The sales numbers should not be surprises, and it's not because of people being financially irresponsible, it's just different priorities.
I can barely predict how September will look. 2028/2029 may very well be an official or unofficial depression by that point. or escalation into a larger war. Other industries and US consumer...
The very article this post is about is about that. In the end, the PS6 will sell well, because there's just enough people that aren't price sensitive about consoles or games.
I can barely predict how September will look. 2028/2029 may very well be an official or unofficial depression by that point. or escalation into a larger war.
The sales numbers should not be surprises, and it's not because of people being financially irresponsible,
Other industries and US consumer spending doesn't make me confident about that, on a macroeconomic level. American households are taking enormous debt for credit, cars, and even some absurd mortgage plans. Something's gotta give.
I don't think a $90 game or $1000 console will be the cause of analysis 20 years from now, but it'll certainly be jammed in as a little tidbit in the grand history of 2020's consurmerism.
It's great that you don't care about price, but if you really believe "the PS6 will sell well, because there's just enough people that aren't price sensitive about consoles or games", then you're...
It's great that you don't care about price, but if you really believe "the PS6 will sell well, because there's just enough people that aren't price sensitive about consoles or games", then you're nuts. Price has nearly always been the dominant factor in determining the winners and losers in console generations. Fairly far after price tends to be features... the removal of which is what we're talking about here. If only people that don't care about prices buy a company's console, they're screwed and they know it.
At $399 the Saturn was announced. At $299, announced the next day, PlayStation was that generation's winner. Price is absolutely a factor, if not one of the most important. We're in this weird...
At $399 the Saturn was announced. At $299, announced the next day, PlayStation was that generation's winner.
Price is absolutely a factor, if not one of the most important.
We're in this weird time period where people are accepting high prices across the board but it's not going to last.
Households are over leveraged, the market is inflated and the big pinch is coming. Give it two years.
The same thing happened again with the Xbox One launching at $499 and the PS4 launching at $399. MS made some other mistakes too, but the lower price was huge.
The same thing happened again with the Xbox One launching at $499 and the PS4 launching at $399. MS made some other mistakes too, but the lower price was huge.
...when it's well below 5% of average rent for a single bedroom, then yeah, that's within the range of discretionary income for most households...perhaps you're fortunate not to have been caught...
...when it's well below 5% of average rent for a single bedroom, then yeah, that's within the range of discretionary income for most households...perhaps you're fortunate not to have been caught up in recent cost-of-living inflation, but money isn't worth nearly what it was even ten years ago, let alone three decades ago when the modern retail price of videogames first crystalised...
...where do you live?..stateside average, housing starts around $1600 per month and an inexpensive meal runs about $15, which is quadruple what i paid in the nineties when my take-home pay was...
...where do you live?..stateside average, housing starts around $1600 per month and an inexpensive meal runs about $15, which is quadruple what i paid in the nineties when my take-home pay was $800 per month and new AAA games first retailed for $60-70...
...were games a self-indulgent luxury then?..absolutely, but the entertainment value per dollar still beat pretty much everything other than public libraries, and since retail pricing of videogames hasn't significantly changed in three decades, games are cheaper than they've ever been relative to inflation, and stupid-cheap on sales...
Median household income is also close to $80K in the US, which would put an $800 console at 1/100 of a year's income. Not an impulse buy, but also not beyond what I'd expect for a computing device...
Median household income is also close to $80K in the US, which would put an $800 console at 1/100 of a year's income. Not an impulse buy, but also not beyond what I'd expect for a computing device that will be used for years. And probably not far off from the same ratio when the PS5 or PS4 launched. Though Sony will also have a strong pressure to keep the price as low as possible due to Japan's weaker currency and recent bout of (rare) inflation affecting domestic sales.
A $60 game is three people eating out at a typical restaurant, or fast food for five people. (If you DoorDash Five Guys for five people, you'll be close to the price for two games...) Rent is easily $1600 in fairly low CoL areas, and completely wild in the nice coastal states.
As someone in the software industry, I find it personally offensive that people would value a luxury good that represents the work of hundreds or thousands of professionals over a multiple year period as less than a dinner.
I don't talk myself into buying them often, because they're money that could go elsewhere, and I only have so much free time, but they absolutely should cost more than they do. (I'm at, what, $2/hour on Final Fantasy Rebirth so far? Lower on the "Ghost of" games and Baldur's Gate 3? That's like two years of gaming time right there.) Bargain bin mentality does real harm to the industry, which is already among the poorest paying and layoff-prone in the software field. (And here we are again with Microsoft doing huge layoffs at studios they own.)
Those hundreds of thousands of professional hours spent designing the game should be divided by the number of people playing the game. You can't copy paste a burger thousands of times, you have to...
I find it personally offensive that people would value a luxury good that represents the work of hundreds or thousands of professionals over a multiple year period as less than a dinner.
Those hundreds of thousands of professional hours spent designing the game should be divided by the number of people playing the game. You can't copy paste a burger thousands of times, you have to start again from scratch every time.
Per consumer hours of enjoyment, a dinner is much more work intensive than video games, and much more of a luxury item.
Bargain bin mentality does real harm to the industry, which is already among the poorest paying and layoff-prone in the software field.
You have my sympathies, I love video games and usually think they are worth every penny, but I'm reticent to just send more money to the game industry indiscriminately... that rarely improves working condition in any industries, it just provides more return for investors.
Wouldn't you say condition are bad because a lot of people enter into the industry by passion, regardless of work condition, providing a large pool of expandable labor surplus. That and also the winner-takes-all unpredictability of game development.
Unionize? demand more regulation?
Going from a 160k/yr job to hoping your freelance gigs hold up through the year sure does change how you view costs. The 20k credit card debt helps too. Went from having some 3-400 dollars a...
Honestly it always surprises me how cost sensitive (or, at least, performatively cost sensitive - based on sales numbers, people may not be as sensitive as they portray themselves as) games media/social media is.
Going from a 160k/yr job to hoping your freelance gigs hold up through the year sure does change how you view costs. The 20k credit card debt helps too. Went from having some 3-400 dollars a months is subscriptions (which included some hundred dollars of patreons) to basically only subsisting on YouTube premium, even cancelling some unexpected ones like Discord and Google Drive. Gaming spending plummeted less from cost and more because all my energy diverted into the job search.
I'm sure I'm not unique. Especially given Monday's news.
Agree. In my opinion games are generally worth a lot more than they sell for. Now I grew up poor. Buying a game for me was quite rare back then and I didn't get more than one or two games a year....
Agree. In my opinion games are generally worth a lot more than they sell for.
Now I grew up poor. Buying a game for me was quite rare back then and I didn't get more than one or two games a year. BUT back then renting a game was a major part of gaming.
I suppose many families will find their gaming options limited by increased cost of games and the destruction of the secondary market. That is a shame. Still though, doesn't seem like going from 60 to 80 is it going to be a huge impact on game purchases.
I dunno, maybe I'm just spoiled in my DINK life.
I assume that is because you are an adult person with an adult job paying adult money, who therefore also has to follow an adult schedule with limited time for video games. That is not the same...
I assume that is because you are an adult person with an adult job paying adult money, who therefore also has to follow an adult schedule with limited time for video games.
My slightly less charitable way of putting this in the past is that consoles are more ergonomic for functional adults. They allow you to be out in your living room, around people and pets, instead...
If I think about it deeply the main reasons I buy consoles is simplicity, consistency, and integration in my home entertainment setup. I don't want a tower in my living room. I don't want to sit at a desk like I do all day for work. I don't want to have to select computer parts that work together or configure settings between components. I don't want to worry about malware. And I certainly don't need the bleeding edge of technology.
My slightly less charitable way of putting this in the past is that consoles are more ergonomic for functional adults. They allow you to be out in your living room, around people and pets, instead of living in a bedroom cave. They're easier to get up from and change a load of laundry or dishes, or answer the door. You exist in the world still instead of entering cyberspace and ignoring the world.
And yes, I agree, I want an appliance that plays games. No different from a microwave. It has a job it must do, with no fiddling with anything. I already build complex computer systems at work. There's no joy in fiddling with a Linux box or having having a Microsoft product in my house...just an infuriating obstacle eating limited free time. I've built plenty of gaming computers before...and I don't want one.
I'm 100% in the Apple ecosystem for computery things at home, and consoles for games. (Modulo playing Final Fantasy XIV on my Mac...but my fiancée plays it on the PS5.) And 90% downloads, because they're far more convenient. The only physical games I've played in the past year were Ghost of Yōtei, because it was a wrapped gift, and Donkey Kong Banaza, because we have multiple Switch 2s in the household and it's easier to swap it. (And we all got the Mario Kart bundle, so we all have that digitally.)
I care more about the future loss of BluRay playback capability, without a separate device taking up space.
Not in this economy and clown job market. I put off buying a Switch 2 with more games that I want and that's half the predicted price. It's not just that these electronics got more expensive,...
The cost is negligible.
Not in this economy and clown job market. I put off buying a Switch 2 with more games that I want and that's half the predicted price.
It's not just that these electronics got more expensive, people's quality of life got worse. lots of people out of a job, graduating into a very stale market. are struggling with everything else around them that is more necessary rising in cost, and ovarall morale is simply down. There'd be a time enthusiasts would happily buy 2 or 3 different consoles and that's reduced down to picking and choosing what works for them.
If I think about it deeply the main reasons I buy consoles is simplicity, consistency, and integration in my home entertainment setup.
I bought games for exclusives, cost, and (a minor kickback) the ability to display the collection like any other kind of library. I have one bookshelf of books and another of game cases; it's just neat being able to have friends take a glance and ask or mock my taste,
Playstations exclusives appeal has dwindled down to Astro Bot and Ratchet this gen. the cost is so high that I'm questioning why I don't just triple down with a workstation I can use for my professional work as well as playing games with better performance.
Many PC gamers seem to have a superiority complex that has changed little in the last two decades but regardless methinks consoles are here to stay.
I don't really consider myself a PC gamer. But as a software engineer, all those downsides were never a barrier for me; I was just accustomed to a certain way of play. It wouldn't be the first time I changed my habits to fight enshittification, and it probably won't be the last.
I don't think consoles will die out. Nintendo plays the long game and has reset the industry once long ago. But Xbox is definitely teetering and Sony is going down a rocky road. They seem to want their own super game at all costs, and I worry they may try to go for broke next generation. Broke that makes Concord seem like a rounding error. They want a game like Roblox or Minecraft without the decades of investment needed, and we all know how that will end.
I think that's quite an out of date view now. My perspective is that malware stopped really being a problem around 10 years ago. As far as my experience has gone, operating systems now come with...
I think that's quite an out of date view now. My perspective is that malware stopped really being a problem around 10 years ago. As far as my experience has gone, operating systems now come with excellent threat protection (Microsoft Defender and equivalents), and I can't remember the last time I had to deal with a virus or any kind of malware.
I have a PS5 with a disc drive. I do not have any physical PS5 games. The disc drive is a UHD Blu-ray player, nothing more. I understand that it's frustrating to not fully own any games. I really...
I have a PS5 with a disc drive. I do not have any physical PS5 games. The disc drive is a UHD Blu-ray player, nothing more. I understand that it's frustrating to not fully own any games. I really don't expect to play PS5 games many years from now. If I really want to play older games at that time, I can play my GameCube or N64 games. I don't even really have any interest in playing my Wii or physical PS4 games in the future. New games have a lot of appeal, but it's less enduring than that of older Nintendo games, IMO. Even PlayStation games from the same eras don't have the appeal to me of (sometimes the exact same) games on the Nintendo console. Maybe the controllers make it easier to slip into that era's mindset?
Anyway, I already have a UHD Blu-ray player in my PS5. I do not need a new one until my PS5 dies. I can hopefully then get a new, dedicated UHD Blu-ray player. If not, I can get a used one. If I'm interested in it, I can get a PS6 or PS7. 🤷
I've seen people argue that consoles are so much easier than PC when it comes to just sitting down and playing something without fussing over software updates and whatnot, but I wonder how true...
I've seen people argue that consoles are so much easier than PC when it comes to just sitting down and playing something without fussing over software updates and whatnot, but I wonder how true that actually is. My console gaming over the last decade or so has consisted solely of visiting my friend's house and playing something on PS4, and it never seemed any easier to me. I recall waiting for console updates damn near every time (he's not as into games as I, so it might never have even booted when I wasn't around), and performance never seemed so much better to me.
I wonder if a little of the antipathy console players hold for PCs is down to having had issues in the '00s and not much recent experience with the PC gaming environment. I also remember vividly how deeply entwined console ownership and identity were for kids back in the '80s and '90s, and wonder how much of the kinda abusive relationship some people have with console manufacturers stems from that.
I don't mean to be dismissive of people who feel their use-case is better served by consoles, but whenever I see arguments to that effect, I can't help but feel they aren't terribly persuasive. I've seen people say things like, "I just want to plop on the couch and start playing." Then I compare my own experiences with PC gaming: I plop down in my computer chair and can be actively playing within 30 seconds from a cold start. I could even set it up so my computer boots directly to Big Picture Mode to navigate with my controller, should the spirit take me.
As a PS4 owner who doesn't boot it up too often (I seriously need to move it out of the basement, I want to game in a space with windows), there are typically some updates when you don't play for...
As a PS4 owner who doesn't boot it up too often (I seriously need to move it out of the basement, I want to game in a space with windows), there are typically some updates when you don't play for a while. They haven't been a big issue though, usually takes like... 5 minutes tops, if even that. When I play it more actively, updates aren't a concern at all.
I think the biggest advantage of consoles is that the performance of the games is (usually) more guaranteed. PC setups can vary so wildly, which means performance can also vary. But consoles have specific specs for developers to work with, so they can optimize that version/port (as apparently seen with Cyberpunk for Switch 2). I remember a couple years back there was a string of highly-anticipated releases that performed fine on consoles, but the PC versions were disastrous.
Basically: if a game is released on a console, you can trust it should at least run consistently across all consoles barring some outliers for better or worse. So that means less research into how a high-power game runs for various specs or upgrading your setup.
Not only that but if sitting on the couch in your living room is paramount, it is so extremely easy to connect your computer to your living room tv even without a single cable (steam remote play,...
Not only that but if sitting on the couch in your living room is paramount, it is so extremely easy to connect your computer to your living room tv even without a single cable (steam remote play, parsec, moonlight, etc.). That means you not only get to enjoy kicking back on the couch, you don't even take up any extra space in the living room. Building a dedicated PC just for your living room is completely unnecessary.
And no, you don't need to walk all the way to where your PC is to turn it on if it's off. Pretty much every modern motherboard has the Wake on LAN feature which lets you remotely wake up your pc as long as it's connected to a router in your home, so it literally is just kick back on your couch and play.
I have a PS5 and happily use it, but it takes me the exact same amount of time to boot into it and play a game than it does to boot into my pc and play a game. And it also has to deal with random updates. I fail to see how one is more convenient than the other, they are both just as convenient.
It has never been easier to play PC games in your living room.
I don’t play on consoles because the gaming experiences I enjoy don’t exist there. Modded Minecraft servers. Modded well moderated DayZ community servers. Geoguessr. Meccha Chameleon! Most of the...
I don’t play on consoles because the gaming experiences I enjoy don’t exist there. Modded Minecraft servers. Modded well moderated DayZ community servers. Geoguessr. Meccha Chameleon! Most of the console games I hear about and try are way too AAA (stuff like God of War - it’s like trying to watch House of the Dragon). The money’s all in the polished execution, less so a scrappy team with a crazy idea taken in a bold new direction. Naughty Dog is an exception. Loved the latest Uncharted and TLoU 1.
I’d rather spend an hour getting DayZ to launch than an hour getting railroaded by some mediocre narrative.
Personally, I think it's not about the hardware, it's about the slow death of high quality media (games, much like movies and TV). I cannot remember the last time I bought a game and enjoyed it in...
Personally, I think it's not about the hardware, it's about the slow death of high quality media (games, much like movies and TV). I cannot remember the last time I bought a game and enjoyed it in the way I enjoyed Wind Waker or other games from my childhood.
I mainly game on PC so the vast majority of my experience of modern games is the Steam store, but there is so much bloat of low quality games to sift through to find anything worth putting my time into.
The reason I loved games like Wind Waker was because it was a really enjoyable, tight narrative experience. Every part of that game was designed to be fun, and the game as a whole was designed as a cohesive experience that taught you how to play as you went, keeping things interesting at every turn. Even looking at Breath of the Wild, so much of that game was endless "content" (shrines, korok seeds, equipment attrition and replacement) that - for me - did not make for fun gameplay. I use the comparison because it's one of the few examples of games I can directly compare with something from the same series I played decades before.
I think the quality of top end games has nosedived, from what I can see, because big studios chase profits so hard they kill authorship of games, much like other forms of media. I think if console producers want future generations of consoles to be successful, they need to cultivate high quality game producers, i.e. either in house or external game designers who are given the scope to produce really high quality games without the imperative to stuff more "content" in to the game to increase the "value" of the game (I think it has the opposite effect) and without insane deadlines that rush so many games and don't give them the space to be perfected.
Much like the movie industry has slowly killed itself by putting out so many terribly written milquetoast films in an attempt to appeal to the broadest audience possible (Marvel, for instance) or TV which now excels at writing a great first season or concept and nosedives the quality as soon as the title sees any form of success as studios run headfirst into a wall trying to cash grab, I see games as having been choked of quality because quality is expensive and requires talented people be given the scope to make great art, something that does not fit nicely with businesses driving growth.
I think the people who excel at running profitable companies also have little overlap with people that are able to make high quality art. If you treat the production of art as solely a profit making machine and try and run production like a business, you will not get art and you will contribute to the death of your industry.
I've enjoyed plenty of games in recent years, but I recently had a similar revelation playing Pokopia. That was the first time I'd genuinely lost track of time playing a game in years. I genuinely...
I've enjoyed plenty of games in recent years, but I recently had a similar revelation playing Pokopia. That was the first time I'd genuinely lost track of time playing a game in years. I genuinely can't recall the last game that absorbed my attention that much.
I think the people who excel at running profitable companies also have little overlap with people that are able to make high quality art. If you treat the production of art as solely a profit making machine and try and run production like a business, you will not get art and you will contribute to the death of your industry.
This reminds me of Roy Disney. Walt was the dreamer and artist of course, while his brother Roy handled all the financial aspects of the company. I read his biography years ago so can't remember many specifics, but Roy basically kept the company running smoothly. He handled the logistics and costs involved with running a company, and would handle damage control if he knew a film would flop (turns out Alice in Wonderland was originally really poorly received, which is a shock given how it's revered today).
The big trick to their success was that they didn't overstep into the other's area of expertise. Walt had no interest in the business side, and Roy just worked to make sure Walt could focus on the creative parts and make them a reality. And the result was genuinely magic. Even with the decline in quality in recent years, Disney is still revered and successful, and thoroughly embedded in western culture.
We don't see that in companies anymore. The financial side has too much power while the creative side has almost none. The best setup genuinely is for the financial side to focus on enabling the creative side to craft their vision. After all, Disney is a perfect example of how immensely successful and profitable that model is.
I've had the same thought, but I don't know if it's due to nostalgia, the novelty of being a kid, or because games are truly getting worse. Breath of the Wild is a great attempt at an open world...
I cannot remember the last time I bought a game and enjoyed it in the way I enjoyed Wind Waker or other games from my childhood.
I've had the same thought, but I don't know if it's due to nostalgia, the novelty of being a kid, or because games are truly getting worse.
Breath of the Wild is a great attempt at an open world game, and Echoes of Wisdom was enjoyable, though short. But ultimately, they're both still providing the same experience of running around a map, collecting things, and exploring dungeons. Does that add enough novelty to the formula of Wind Waker or Ocarina of Time? I personally did not enjoy and never finished Tears of the Kingdom, because it just felt like I was playing BotW again (and I somewhat agree with you that even BotW felt repetitive at times). Maybe there's just too much "reuse" (for lack of a better term) in all new Zelda games, and it'll never eclipse the first one we played as children because it's not novel anymore.
Its nostalgia. I have a lot of games I really loved as a kid. Doom, quake, tribes, StarCraft. They were a nightmare to even get running, and tedious to play. For the time, they were amazing and...
Its nostalgia. I have a lot of games I really loved as a kid. Doom, quake, tribes, StarCraft.
They were a nightmare to even get running, and tedious to play. For the time, they were amazing and completely mind blowing, but people older than me had a similar experience with Mario Bros, or Space Invaders, or Pong. People younger than me had similar experiences with Minecraft or Fortnite. As those kids grow up, they'll lament that games aren't as good anymore.
I just don't have the time or will to sink 200+ hours into exploring every nook and cranny into a game anymore. I have better things to do with my time. I've also played probably thousands of games at this point in my life, and it's very difficult for anything to feel novel or interesting anymore.
That wasn't the case when I was 10 years old playing through Doom. It was exciting, new, and I had all the time in the world to devote to that game.
There are kids doing the same thing now with some game I've never even heard of which will be considered iconic in a decade or two. Its just the way things go.
I resonate with your main point. But I do find it funny that your comparison points are Wind Waker vs BOTW. The former where you are autopiloting as you sail for minutes on end between...
I resonate with your main point. But I do find it funny that your comparison points are Wind Waker vs BOTW. The former where you are autopiloting as you sail for minutes on end between destinations and then by endgame you are listlessly finding a whopping 21 mcGuffins needed to access the final boss. The QoL of a faster sail was much needed in the HD version.
But in some ways I feel that is the spirit of most Zelda's; spending some time to just navigate around the over-world and take in the wild between the towns and dungeon crawling. Be it being completely lost in Zelda 1, failing to catch the drawbridge in time in Ocarina of Time, or fooling around in the massive map of Tears of the Kingdom. That downtime was your time to absorb the world.
Yeah, I completely agree with the downtime thing, I hadn't considered that aspect when I wrote my comment. I think it highlights a really interesting point though, I remember Wind Waker feeling...
Yeah, I completely agree with the downtime thing, I hadn't considered that aspect when I wrote my comment. I think it highlights a really interesting point though, I remember Wind Waker feeling great in even in the downtime; great music, so much personality and soul in the boat and the environment, it felt like you were a pirate captain sailing the almighty ocean; for me, Breath of the Wild did not have the magic in the downtime, it was often running or climbing through similar terrain, fighting the same monsters in different locations, trying to do that all whilst fighting the entropy of weapon degradation and food supply issues, etc. The world felt crafted in Wind Waker, in Breath of the Wild it felt like setpiece carefully and lovingly crafted bits placed into a vast, repetitive world.
Perhaps this is hugely influenced by my ages and outlook on life when I played both games, I don't know! Perhaps I remember Wind Waker as being far better than it actually was and Breath of the Wild I remember as worse than it was!
There are a few cohorts of people who I think consoles will always appeal to, regardless of how enshittified and/or PC-like they become: Users who don't already have or need a state-of-the-art...
There are a few cohorts of people who I think consoles will always appeal to, regardless of how enshittified and/or PC-like they become:
Users who don't already have or need a state-of-the-art computer. Like if your primary PC is a MacBook Air, or an el-cheapo 5 year old desktop that works just fine for everything else you need it for, or even a tablet or smartphone, but you still want to play AAA games, then buying a console is a much simpler (and typically cheaper) option than researching and buying or building out a new gaming PC.
Users who may have a PC but are couch gamers. If you just want to kick back and play games on your TV with a controller instead of being hunched over your keyboard because you already do that all day for your job, then plugging a console in is again much simpler and/or cheaper than figuring out how to set up game streaming, buying a second PC to plug into your TV, or doing what a friend of mine did for a while with an insane cabling setup using HDMI-over-ethernet to wire his TV up to his desktop in a completely different room.
I feel like the whole "consoles are just PCs now anyway so just buy a PC instead" attitude overlooks the whole appeal of consoles where you don't have to buy or build a PC, which can be very confusing for non-technical people who just want to play games on their TV with as little friction as possible.
While there is definitely something to be said the simplicity of consoles, you can in fact just plug in a controller, connect HDMI and use a PC like a console these days with not many more steps....
While there is definitely something to be said the simplicity of consoles, you can in fact just plug in a controller, connect HDMI and use a PC like a console these days with not many more steps. Going even further you have things like the Steam Deck and now Steam Machine which essentially are consoles with standard PC functionality as a secondary mode.
I don't expect the majority of people to give up consoles, but most of the big time console players I know are all physical games and they have full shelves of them. They, along with myself, are out. I suspect that the removal of physical games combined with the expected higher prices for both consoles and games (and the general enshittifcation of these platforms) will make people further retreat from consoles and move to some combination of mobile gaming and PC gaming.
Agreed. I have plenty of digital games on my consoles, but I like physical games. I have a few games that I plan to get for my Switch as physical versions, even though they may have Steam versions...
Agreed. I have plenty of digital games on my consoles, but I like physical games. I have a few games that I plan to get for my Switch as physical versions, even though they may have Steam versions that could be cheaper, because I'd historically played them on consoles with physical copies. (Also, the Rune Factory and Story of Seasons still have booklets!!!)
And I really like going to stores and actually browsing games. We went to a local store selling used (and some new) games last week, and I could've happily spent an hour or two just looking at the games even if I didn't buy any. It was fun to look up games on my phone to see what they were like and try to figure out if I'd be interested. It acts as a filter that digital storefronts lack, making it easier to find good games.
And I like being able to put video games on my Christmas and birthday lists because that's easier for my mom to find. (I've kinda given up on her recognizing a Steam gift card. I've pointed them out multiple times when I see them in stores, but Steam in general is just not sticking in her head.) Actually the present aspect is probably the biggest reason I like physical games: not for myself, but for kids. It's way more exciting to unwrap a game than a gift card.
I don't think consoles will fully die out. I particularly expect Nintendo will keep making physical games. But the complete removal of physical games as an option may be a bigger hit than Sony thinks. Or... Maybe it won't. Pretty sure the current digital-only consoles still sell fairly well right now just for being the cheaper option, so people may just keep buying it anyway.
I've said in other comments, but I think the biggest selling point for consoles really is just consistency. PC specs can vary wildly, but consoles are generally the same barring the occasional outlier. So devs can optimize versions/ports for those specific specs, and there's less setup and finagling for a user to make sure their setup can handle a game. Theoretically, if a game is made for a console, you can generally expect it to work. Even when a game runs poorly, you can find that out from basic reviews and decide immediately whether you want it anyway, rather than try to figure out what the minimum specs needed are for optimal performance and whether your setup can handle it.
Yeah, I didn't mentioned before, but the present issue is huge. Ever since I was a kid, a game would have always been my "big gift" for Christmas or my birthday, and it is a tradition that I have...
Yeah, I didn't mentioned before, but the present issue is huge. Ever since I was a kid, a game would have always been my "big gift" for Christmas or my birthday, and it is a tradition that I have tried to carry over to my kids. Also, I'm not sure if you saw, but Steam is no longer doing gift cards due to them being some sort of fraud vector. It will literally be no longer viable for me to give or receive games as presents anymore in a meaningful way, and that makes me really sad.
I'm obviously an adult now, I don't need games as gifts, but my kids really love picking one out for me for Christmas and vice versa. With all going on in the world, this is a very low stakes "First World Problem" as they say, but it still sucks.
I do wonder if next generation that beings the Steam machine into serious consideration for some players. The cost isn't great, but it might still be competitive if the rumored pricings of the...
Users who may have a PC but are couch gamers. If you just want to kick back and play games on your TV with a controller
I do wonder if next generation that beings the Steam machine into serious consideration for some players. The cost isn't great, but it might still be competitive if the rumored pricings of the consoles are close to true. If ram prices do come down that might also be a chance to hit a much more attractive price point as well. One where a Steam Machine + Deck combo might still be cheaper than a PS6.
When the PS4 and the PS5 launched, their performance-to-price ratio were really good though. I remember thinking at the time that I couldn't have built a competitive PC for the same price. Sony...
When the PS4 and the PS5 launched, their performance-to-price ratio were really good though. I remember thinking at the time that I couldn't have built a competitive PC for the same price. Sony has scales of economy and they subsidize consoles and make up for it via games. I think that strategy will remain popular.
Steam Big Picture mode has also been mentioned a few times. I love Steam and the UI is better than PS or Xbox IMO, but it's still not a perfect console experience. Sometimes a Windows nag window will grab focus and ask for me to enable a Microsoft cloud account. Or Dragon Quest XI S launches a separate window that Steam won't automatically switch to focus on. Both cases necessitated I put the controller down, find my keyboard, then alt-tab to the correct window. It works 95% of the time, but the normies want their console to work 100% of the time.
The performance to price ratio has actually gotten better. The steam machine is a perfect example. It’s actually slower than the base PS5, while being twice the price.
The performance to price ratio has actually gotten better. The steam machine is a perfect example. It’s actually slower than the base PS5, while being twice the price.
Maybe if they promise to make the consoles fully AI they'll get that sweet-sweet AI investment money and they can sell the consoles at a loss and promise that the consoles will create the games...
Maybe if they promise to make the consoles fully AI they'll get that sweet-sweet AI investment money and they can sell the consoles at a loss and promise that the consoles will create the games with some prompting and assets from the IP creators. Yeah, that's the ticket...
With the end of physical media, the PlayStation is just a worse PC to me. I only buy console games second hand because I never pay full price for games, so if that's no longer possible I'll just not own consoles anymore.
Not only will it be a worse PC, it is almost certainly going to start being priced like a PC due to the ongoing memory crisis. Other than exclusive games, the rationale to get a console is gone for me. The PS5 is going to be my last console as far as I'm concerned.
I agree, it will just be a worse PC. I only buy physical games and I never buy used, so they just pushed me and people like me away probably forever.
It feels like this piece is written by a long-term PC gamer who seems to share thier fellows' inability to imagine any appeal to consoles.
The cost is negligible. It is a piece of tech that I put thousands of hours on. They generally last me close to 5 years and I have to buy a new one halfway through the generation's 10-year life cycle. (Also, this is what the pro version is in my opinion, mid-generation repurchase. Not 'woah check out these new graphics').
$600 or $1200 makes a little difference to me.
I buy all my games on physical media (but I don't sweat it if it only comes digitally) and I use my PS5 optical drive for my extensive Blu-ray and DVD collection. The loss of the optical drive will be missed and require me to complicate my home entertainment center with a second media source. Not ideal but not a biggie.
If I think about it deeply the main reasons I buy consoles is simplicity, consistency, and integration in my home entertainment setup. I don't want a tower in my living room. I don't want to sit at a desk like I do all day for work. I don't want to have to select computer parts that work together or configure settings between components. I don't want to worry about malware. And I certainly don't need the bleeding edge of technology.
I want one power cable, one HDMI cable, and one ethernet cable. Plug & Play. Proper controller and have it last for 4 to 10 years. I get that from consoles and consoles I will stay with even when they screw me out of my optical drive.
Many PC gamers seem to have a superiority complex that has changed little in the last two decades but regardless methinks consoles are here to stay.
Honestly it always surprises me how cost sensitive (or, at least, performatively cost sensitive - based on sales numbers, people may not be as sensitive as they portray themselves as) games media/social media is.
Obviously everyone has their own financial situation and all that, but whether a game cost $30 or $60 or $80 has like zero bearing on whether or not I'll buy it. Time is my bottleneck. I don't want to waste time playing a game I don't like playing. The costs are so negligible as to not really matter.
Same for console prices. $400, $450, $500, $600, like it really doesn't matter that much to me. What matters is: what the form factor is, what games can it play, and how well can it play them.
Steam sales are neat, but I'd rather pay $90 to get a single game I want to play on the Switch 2 than 10 games on steam sale I don't really care about.
Frankly I find it strange that people even spend $60 on video games. I've almost never bought a game for that price. The few times I had, I ended up being disappointed.
Video games, once digital, are a class of good that doesn't really "exist" and therefore has "no monetary value" because it's not a tangible object that you can put in your hands. In the best case, it's just data that can be copied forever for free, and in the worst case, it's locked down to a DRM scheme that prevents it from being sold even if it did have value. There is no in-between in which digital video games have value. Heck, the earliest PC games had the problem of being sold against simple copies of the floppy disks for little more than the cost of the disk itself.
So I don't see why it's hard to understand why people are so price sensitive. Any price you put on a video game is essentially arbitrary, and different people will be willing to pay for a game depending on what price is on it. There are many who will refuse to purchase at any price.
If I may be frank, the comments you and the person you were responding to both smell like financial privilege to me. My income has dried up over the summer break, and my total income for the last month will barely cover the cost of electricity and my other monthly expenses, and I'm worried that I may not have budget for food. We live in a world of vast wealth inequality, so not everyone is able to afford to pay for "full price" games regardless of the exact number they choose for it.
On the other side as someone with more than enough money video games can have an outrageous utility per dollar. Eating at a restaurant can easily cost as much as a video game, can easily be replaced with delicious food I could make on my own by spending an hour cooking, and as an experience only lasts at most a couple of hours. Compare with a great game - something that could take thousands of hours to create on my own - that only lasts 5 hours and that $60 price tag looks acceptable. On the other hand games go on such extreme sales with high regularity. A little patience will save you a lot of money.
If anything video games are in an unstable value position just like fast food was before the pandemic. If people can be forced to admit this then prices could double.
I don't know about you but I'd rather spend that 230 zł going somewhere for a couple of hours with my partner, my best friend, or another close friend than spend the same 230 zł on a game
I purchase a lot of games specifically to have fun with friends. Me and some buddies all met up to play Meccha Chameleon a few times in the last week and had a blast. Granted that’s only $6.
Ah, makes sense. I almost never play games with my irl friends, so that tracks.
Supplier marginal cost doesn't have anything to do with the price and the value of the good to the consumer. Unless you're trying to argue that the cost of stamping out the cdrom or the cost of the transmission of the game are the only 'real' thing that price should be based upon in some platonic idealized truth.
Consumers will buy the game if the utility they get from it exceeds the price that they have to pay subject to their budget. It doesn't matter if the game is delivered on cdrom, 1000 floppy disks, a USB thumb drive, or via the internet.
Of course they don’t have anything to do with the cost of the game. That was the point of my comment. Money is a thing without objective value. It is a thing that people are given as a fraction of the actual value they generate on an extremely subjective basis.
That was the lie told by disc manufacturers as we moved towards digital titles. Somehow Steam is rising in popularity because it's the only one that kept the facade up for any reasonable amount of time.
Sure, but as anyone working with websites know, any amount of fritction, even fractions of a second from an extra click, can cost you a surprising amount of traffic. Attached consumers value something highly, but those that aren't attached are fleeting.
(now once you capture the market; go for it. Let Twitter take 20 seconds to load some nazi posts and steer you to an app that sucks your battery like a vampire. You won, your value is at critical mass).
I think that this either might be a very privileged opinion, or an opinion by someone who values gaming as a primary expenditure to their budget.
I'm upper middle class and I hardly ever but games at MSRP if they're over $50 because I just can't justify that. Sure I might get 100 hours of gameplay out of it and that's only $.50/c an hour but you really don't know what game is gonna be a 10 hour game and what will be a 200 hour game until after you start to play it. The only time I'm really ever able to justify MSRP is 1) a Nintendo game that I know will never go on sale bc Nintendo and I know I want to play anyway, or 2) a game I have 90% confidence I'll get 100+ hours out of. That's few and far between, maybe once every year or two.
PlayStations and Xboxes will always go on sale eventually. My spouse begged for the newest Xbox when it first came out and I gave the thumbs down for 6 months and by the end of the 6 months it was almost 50% of the original price at some retailers and we purchased it. Knowing that, how could I NOT be price sensitive for future consoles? It happens every time. Personally I think paying full retail for the newest consoles that only have like 2 AAA games released for them is financially irresponsible. Giving time allows for prices to meet the true market price, the manufacturer to get the kinks out, and for a variety of games to release... It just makes rational sense to me.
It's definitely dependent on what you value spending your money on for sure. Not saying you're incorrect, but from my perspective, this is a consumerist FOMO mindset for the majority of people.
Are you saying that buying games and consoles is taking up most of their disposable income? I'm definitely not upper middle class but if you are buying 3 $1,000 console every 5 years and three games every single month @$80 each that's ~$200 a month. Are you considering that a primary expenditure? Am I underestimating games per month?
Again maybe this is my blessed DINK status but that is what more than I spend and well within and acceptable entertainment spending.
Not quite what I mean. I more meant "primary hobby", as in, you don't really have any other hobbies and it's the only thing you spend your money on for entertainment purposes. $1000 a year isn't much if that's really the only thing fun/extraneous you regularly spend money on, but if you have two or three other hobbies also taking up $1000 a year each, now you're spending $3000-$4000 a year on hobbies. That's not chump change. But if you don't have any other hobbies, then you're right, $1000 a year on hobbies isn't much.
I'm the opposite; I'm quite scared of games that have 100 hours of gameplay these days. That's just a lot of time commitment, especially if it's a mediocre 100 hours.
I was quite delighted to spend $80 on Pragmata, for example, for a solid 15 hours of gameplay, as opposed to something like Black Desert. I would much rather prefer a solid 15-20 hour, mostly linear story than a sprawling open world game.
What makes it FOMO? It's more that I don't consider games a fungible experience. If I want to play XYZ, I want to play XYZ. I can't just swap it out to something cheaper like it's gasoline powering a car. It's an experience, they're just different things.
On cost, I suppose it depends on where you live. Eating a single dinner out (which I do, regardless) is in the $60-80 range. For an entire video game? No brainer.
These days I finish like, maybe 10 games a year? Usually less? If they're all $80, that's like a cap of $800. Compared to all the other expenses, and leisure activities, that's a rounding error.
800 dollars a year is most certainly not a rounding error for a big portion of the world's population. I hope you have the self-awareness that this is an extremely privileged position to be in.
You can call it what you want, but the point is that whenever these articles come out, there's the air of "who are all these people buying the PS5/GTA6/etc. at $550/$90/etc!?" and it's like, it's me, and all the other working adults I know, who had plenty of disposable income and not very much free time.
The very article this post is about is about that. In the end, the PS6 will sell well, because there's just enough people that aren't price sensitive about consoles or games. The sales numbers should not be surprises, and it's not because of people being financially irresponsible, it's just different priorities.
I can barely predict how September will look. 2028/2029 may very well be an official or unofficial depression by that point. or escalation into a larger war.
Other industries and US consumer spending doesn't make me confident about that, on a macroeconomic level. American households are taking enormous debt for credit, cars, and even some absurd mortgage plans. Something's gotta give.
I don't think a $90 game or $1000 console will be the cause of analysis 20 years from now, but it'll certainly be jammed in as a little tidbit in the grand history of 2020's consurmerism.
It's great that you don't care about price, but if you really believe "the PS6 will sell well, because there's just enough people that aren't price sensitive about consoles or games", then you're nuts. Price has nearly always been the dominant factor in determining the winners and losers in console generations. Fairly far after price tends to be features... the removal of which is what we're talking about here. If only people that don't care about prices buy a company's console, they're screwed and they know it.
At $399 the Saturn was announced. At $299, announced the next day, PlayStation was that generation's winner.
Price is absolutely a factor, if not one of the most important.
We're in this weird time period where people are accepting high prices across the board but it's not going to last.
Households are over leveraged, the market is inflated and the big pinch is coming. Give it two years.
The same thing happened again with the Xbox One launching at $499 and the PS4 launching at $399. MS made some other mistakes too, but the lower price was huge.
...when it's well below 5% of average rent for a single bedroom, then yeah, that's within the range of discretionary income for most households...perhaps you're fortunate not to have been caught up in recent cost-of-living inflation, but money isn't worth nearly what it was even ten years ago, let alone three decades ago when the modern retail price of videogames first crystalised...
800 dollars is an entire month's salary for me. How "fortunate" I am.
...where do you live?..stateside average, housing starts around $1600 per month and an inexpensive meal runs about $15, which is quadruple what i paid in the nineties when my take-home pay was $800 per month and new AAA games first retailed for $60-70...
...were games a self-indulgent luxury then?..absolutely, but the entertainment value per dollar still beat pretty much everything other than public libraries, and since retail pricing of videogames hasn't significantly changed in three decades, games are cheaper than they've ever been relative to inflation, and stupid-cheap on sales...
Median household income is also close to $80K in the US, which would put an $800 console at 1/100 of a year's income. Not an impulse buy, but also not beyond what I'd expect for a computing device that will be used for years. And probably not far off from the same ratio when the PS5 or PS4 launched. Though Sony will also have a strong pressure to keep the price as low as possible due to Japan's weaker currency and recent bout of (rare) inflation affecting domestic sales.
A $60 game is three people eating out at a typical restaurant, or fast food for five people. (If you DoorDash Five Guys for five people, you'll be close to the price for two games...) Rent is easily $1600 in fairly low CoL areas, and completely wild in the nice coastal states.
As someone in the software industry, I find it personally offensive that people would value a luxury good that represents the work of hundreds or thousands of professionals over a multiple year period as less than a dinner.
I don't talk myself into buying them often, because they're money that could go elsewhere, and I only have so much free time, but they absolutely should cost more than they do. (I'm at, what, $2/hour on Final Fantasy Rebirth so far? Lower on the "Ghost of" games and Baldur's Gate 3? That's like two years of gaming time right there.) Bargain bin mentality does real harm to the industry, which is already among the poorest paying and layoff-prone in the software field. (And here we are again with Microsoft doing huge layoffs at studios they own.)
Those hundreds of thousands of professional hours spent designing the game should be divided by the number of people playing the game. You can't copy paste a burger thousands of times, you have to start again from scratch every time.
Per consumer hours of enjoyment, a dinner is much more work intensive than video games, and much more of a luxury item.
You have my sympathies, I love video games and usually think they are worth every penny, but I'm reticent to just send more money to the game industry indiscriminately... that rarely improves working condition in any industries, it just provides more return for investors.
Wouldn't you say condition are bad because a lot of people enter into the industry by passion, regardless of work condition, providing a large pool of expandable labor surplus. That and also the winner-takes-all unpredictability of game development.
Unionize? demand more regulation?
Going from a 160k/yr job to hoping your freelance gigs hold up through the year sure does change how you view costs. The 20k credit card debt helps too. Went from having some 3-400 dollars a months is subscriptions (which included some hundred dollars of patreons) to basically only subsisting on YouTube premium, even cancelling some unexpected ones like Discord and Google Drive. Gaming spending plummeted less from cost and more because all my energy diverted into the job search.
I'm sure I'm not unique. Especially given Monday's news.
Agree. In my opinion games are generally worth a lot more than they sell for.
Now I grew up poor. Buying a game for me was quite rare back then and I didn't get more than one or two games a year. BUT back then renting a game was a major part of gaming.
I suppose many families will find their gaming options limited by increased cost of games and the destruction of the secondary market. That is a shame. Still though, doesn't seem like going from 60 to 80 is it going to be a huge impact on game purchases.
I dunno, maybe I'm just spoiled in my DINK life.
I assume that is because you are an adult person with an adult job paying adult money, who therefore also has to follow an adult schedule with limited time for video games.
That is not the same story for many gamers.
My slightly less charitable way of putting this in the past is that consoles are more ergonomic for functional adults. They allow you to be out in your living room, around people and pets, instead of living in a bedroom cave. They're easier to get up from and change a load of laundry or dishes, or answer the door. You exist in the world still instead of entering cyberspace and ignoring the world.
And yes, I agree, I want an appliance that plays games. No different from a microwave. It has a job it must do, with no fiddling with anything. I already build complex computer systems at work. There's no joy in fiddling with a Linux box or having having a Microsoft product in my house...just an infuriating obstacle eating limited free time. I've built plenty of gaming computers before...and I don't want one.
I'm 100% in the Apple ecosystem for computery things at home, and consoles for games. (Modulo playing Final Fantasy XIV on my Mac...but my fiancée plays it on the PS5.) And 90% downloads, because they're far more convenient. The only physical games I've played in the past year were Ghost of Yōtei, because it was a wrapped gift, and Donkey Kong Banaza, because we have multiple Switch 2s in the household and it's easier to swap it. (And we all got the Mario Kart bundle, so we all have that digitally.)
I care more about the future loss of BluRay playback capability, without a separate device taking up space.
Not in this economy and clown job market. I put off buying a Switch 2 with more games that I want and that's half the predicted price.
It's not just that these electronics got more expensive, people's quality of life got worse. lots of people out of a job, graduating into a very stale market. are struggling with everything else around them that is more necessary rising in cost, and ovarall morale is simply down. There'd be a time enthusiasts would happily buy 2 or 3 different consoles and that's reduced down to picking and choosing what works for them.
I bought games for exclusives, cost, and (a minor kickback) the ability to display the collection like any other kind of library. I have one bookshelf of books and another of game cases; it's just neat being able to have friends take a glance and ask or mock my taste,
Playstations exclusives appeal has dwindled down to Astro Bot and Ratchet this gen. the cost is so high that I'm questioning why I don't just triple down with a workstation I can use for my professional work as well as playing games with better performance.
I don't really consider myself a PC gamer. But as a software engineer, all those downsides were never a barrier for me; I was just accustomed to a certain way of play. It wouldn't be the first time I changed my habits to fight enshittification, and it probably won't be the last.
I don't think consoles will die out. Nintendo plays the long game and has reset the industry once long ago. But Xbox is definitely teetering and Sony is going down a rocky road. They seem to want their own super game at all costs, and I worry they may try to go for broke next generation. Broke that makes Concord seem like a rounding error. They want a game like Roblox or Minecraft without the decades of investment needed, and we all know how that will end.
Wait why are you regularly worrying about malware?
I'm not, but it's been framed to me as a concern people have on their PCs. Perhaps due to illegal downloading or poor safety practices.
I think that's quite an out of date view now. My perspective is that malware stopped really being a problem around 10 years ago. As far as my experience has gone, operating systems now come with excellent threat protection (Microsoft Defender and equivalents), and I can't remember the last time I had to deal with a virus or any kind of malware.
I have a PS5 with a disc drive. I do not have any physical PS5 games. The disc drive is a UHD Blu-ray player, nothing more. I understand that it's frustrating to not fully own any games. I really don't expect to play PS5 games many years from now. If I really want to play older games at that time, I can play my GameCube or N64 games. I don't even really have any interest in playing my Wii or physical PS4 games in the future. New games have a lot of appeal, but it's less enduring than that of older Nintendo games, IMO. Even PlayStation games from the same eras don't have the appeal to me of (sometimes the exact same) games on the Nintendo console. Maybe the controllers make it easier to slip into that era's mindset?
Anyway, I already have a UHD Blu-ray player in my PS5. I do not need a new one until my PS5 dies. I can hopefully then get a new, dedicated UHD Blu-ray player. If not, I can get a used one. If I'm interested in it, I can get a PS6 or PS7. 🤷
I've seen people argue that consoles are so much easier than PC when it comes to just sitting down and playing something without fussing over software updates and whatnot, but I wonder how true that actually is. My console gaming over the last decade or so has consisted solely of visiting my friend's house and playing something on PS4, and it never seemed any easier to me. I recall waiting for console updates damn near every time (he's not as into games as I, so it might never have even booted when I wasn't around), and performance never seemed so much better to me.
I wonder if a little of the antipathy console players hold for PCs is down to having had issues in the '00s and not much recent experience with the PC gaming environment. I also remember vividly how deeply entwined console ownership and identity were for kids back in the '80s and '90s, and wonder how much of the kinda abusive relationship some people have with console manufacturers stems from that.
I don't mean to be dismissive of people who feel their use-case is better served by consoles, but whenever I see arguments to that effect, I can't help but feel they aren't terribly persuasive. I've seen people say things like, "I just want to plop on the couch and start playing." Then I compare my own experiences with PC gaming: I plop down in my computer chair and can be actively playing within 30 seconds from a cold start. I could even set it up so my computer boots directly to Big Picture Mode to navigate with my controller, should the spirit take me.
Am I missing something?
As a PS4 owner who doesn't boot it up too often (I seriously need to move it out of the basement, I want to game in a space with windows), there are typically some updates when you don't play for a while. They haven't been a big issue though, usually takes like... 5 minutes tops, if even that. When I play it more actively, updates aren't a concern at all.
I think the biggest advantage of consoles is that the performance of the games is (usually) more guaranteed. PC setups can vary so wildly, which means performance can also vary. But consoles have specific specs for developers to work with, so they can optimize that version/port (as apparently seen with Cyberpunk for Switch 2). I remember a couple years back there was a string of highly-anticipated releases that performed fine on consoles, but the PC versions were disastrous.
Basically: if a game is released on a console, you can trust it should at least run consistently across all consoles barring some outliers for better or worse. So that means less research into how a high-power game runs for various specs or upgrading your setup.
Not only that but if sitting on the couch in your living room is paramount, it is so extremely easy to connect your computer to your living room tv even without a single cable (steam remote play, parsec, moonlight, etc.). That means you not only get to enjoy kicking back on the couch, you don't even take up any extra space in the living room. Building a dedicated PC just for your living room is completely unnecessary.
And no, you don't need to walk all the way to where your PC is to turn it on if it's off. Pretty much every modern motherboard has the Wake on LAN feature which lets you remotely wake up your pc as long as it's connected to a router in your home, so it literally is just kick back on your couch and play.
I have a PS5 and happily use it, but it takes me the exact same amount of time to boot into it and play a game than it does to boot into my pc and play a game. And it also has to deal with random updates. I fail to see how one is more convenient than the other, they are both just as convenient.
It has never been easier to play PC games in your living room.
I don’t play on consoles because the gaming experiences I enjoy don’t exist there. Modded Minecraft servers. Modded well moderated DayZ community servers. Geoguessr. Meccha Chameleon! Most of the console games I hear about and try are way too AAA (stuff like God of War - it’s like trying to watch House of the Dragon). The money’s all in the polished execution, less so a scrappy team with a crazy idea taken in a bold new direction. Naughty Dog is an exception. Loved the latest Uncharted and TLoU 1.
I’d rather spend an hour getting DayZ to launch than an hour getting railroaded by some mediocre narrative.
Personally, I think it's not about the hardware, it's about the slow death of high quality media (games, much like movies and TV). I cannot remember the last time I bought a game and enjoyed it in the way I enjoyed Wind Waker or other games from my childhood.
I mainly game on PC so the vast majority of my experience of modern games is the Steam store, but there is so much bloat of low quality games to sift through to find anything worth putting my time into.
The reason I loved games like Wind Waker was because it was a really enjoyable, tight narrative experience. Every part of that game was designed to be fun, and the game as a whole was designed as a cohesive experience that taught you how to play as you went, keeping things interesting at every turn. Even looking at Breath of the Wild, so much of that game was endless "content" (shrines, korok seeds, equipment attrition and replacement) that - for me - did not make for fun gameplay. I use the comparison because it's one of the few examples of games I can directly compare with something from the same series I played decades before.
I think the quality of top end games has nosedived, from what I can see, because big studios chase profits so hard they kill authorship of games, much like other forms of media. I think if console producers want future generations of consoles to be successful, they need to cultivate high quality game producers, i.e. either in house or external game designers who are given the scope to produce really high quality games without the imperative to stuff more "content" in to the game to increase the "value" of the game (I think it has the opposite effect) and without insane deadlines that rush so many games and don't give them the space to be perfected.
Much like the movie industry has slowly killed itself by putting out so many terribly written milquetoast films in an attempt to appeal to the broadest audience possible (Marvel, for instance) or TV which now excels at writing a great first season or concept and nosedives the quality as soon as the title sees any form of success as studios run headfirst into a wall trying to cash grab, I see games as having been choked of quality because quality is expensive and requires talented people be given the scope to make great art, something that does not fit nicely with businesses driving growth.
I think the people who excel at running profitable companies also have little overlap with people that are able to make high quality art. If you treat the production of art as solely a profit making machine and try and run production like a business, you will not get art and you will contribute to the death of your industry.
I've enjoyed plenty of games in recent years, but I recently had a similar revelation playing Pokopia. That was the first time I'd genuinely lost track of time playing a game in years. I genuinely can't recall the last game that absorbed my attention that much.
This reminds me of Roy Disney. Walt was the dreamer and artist of course, while his brother Roy handled all the financial aspects of the company. I read his biography years ago so can't remember many specifics, but Roy basically kept the company running smoothly. He handled the logistics and costs involved with running a company, and would handle damage control if he knew a film would flop (turns out Alice in Wonderland was originally really poorly received, which is a shock given how it's revered today).
The big trick to their success was that they didn't overstep into the other's area of expertise. Walt had no interest in the business side, and Roy just worked to make sure Walt could focus on the creative parts and make them a reality. And the result was genuinely magic. Even with the decline in quality in recent years, Disney is still revered and successful, and thoroughly embedded in western culture.
We don't see that in companies anymore. The financial side has too much power while the creative side has almost none. The best setup genuinely is for the financial side to focus on enabling the creative side to craft their vision. After all, Disney is a perfect example of how immensely successful and profitable that model is.
I've had the same thought, but I don't know if it's due to nostalgia, the novelty of being a kid, or because games are truly getting worse.
Breath of the Wild is a great attempt at an open world game, and Echoes of Wisdom was enjoyable, though short. But ultimately, they're both still providing the same experience of running around a map, collecting things, and exploring dungeons. Does that add enough novelty to the formula of Wind Waker or Ocarina of Time? I personally did not enjoy and never finished Tears of the Kingdom, because it just felt like I was playing BotW again (and I somewhat agree with you that even BotW felt repetitive at times). Maybe there's just too much "reuse" (for lack of a better term) in all new Zelda games, and it'll never eclipse the first one we played as children because it's not novel anymore.
Its nostalgia. I have a lot of games I really loved as a kid. Doom, quake, tribes, StarCraft.
They were a nightmare to even get running, and tedious to play. For the time, they were amazing and completely mind blowing, but people older than me had a similar experience with Mario Bros, or Space Invaders, or Pong. People younger than me had similar experiences with Minecraft or Fortnite. As those kids grow up, they'll lament that games aren't as good anymore.
I just don't have the time or will to sink 200+ hours into exploring every nook and cranny into a game anymore. I have better things to do with my time. I've also played probably thousands of games at this point in my life, and it's very difficult for anything to feel novel or interesting anymore.
That wasn't the case when I was 10 years old playing through Doom. It was exciting, new, and I had all the time in the world to devote to that game.
There are kids doing the same thing now with some game I've never even heard of which will be considered iconic in a decade or two. Its just the way things go.
I resonate with your main point. But I do find it funny that your comparison points are Wind Waker vs BOTW. The former where you are autopiloting as you sail for minutes on end between destinations and then by endgame you are listlessly finding a whopping 21 mcGuffins needed to access the final boss. The QoL of a faster sail was much needed in the HD version.
But in some ways I feel that is the spirit of most Zelda's; spending some time to just navigate around the over-world and take in the wild between the towns and dungeon crawling. Be it being completely lost in Zelda 1, failing to catch the drawbridge in time in Ocarina of Time, or fooling around in the massive map of Tears of the Kingdom. That downtime was your time to absorb the world.
Yeah, I completely agree with the downtime thing, I hadn't considered that aspect when I wrote my comment. I think it highlights a really interesting point though, I remember Wind Waker feeling great in even in the downtime; great music, so much personality and soul in the boat and the environment, it felt like you were a pirate captain sailing the almighty ocean; for me, Breath of the Wild did not have the magic in the downtime, it was often running or climbing through similar terrain, fighting the same monsters in different locations, trying to do that all whilst fighting the entropy of weapon degradation and food supply issues, etc. The world felt crafted in Wind Waker, in Breath of the Wild it felt like setpiece carefully and lovingly crafted bits placed into a vast, repetitive world.
Perhaps this is hugely influenced by my ages and outlook on life when I played both games, I don't know! Perhaps I remember Wind Waker as being far better than it actually was and Breath of the Wild I remember as worse than it was!
There are a few cohorts of people who I think consoles will always appeal to, regardless of how enshittified and/or PC-like they become:
Users who don't already have or need a state-of-the-art computer. Like if your primary PC is a MacBook Air, or an el-cheapo 5 year old desktop that works just fine for everything else you need it for, or even a tablet or smartphone, but you still want to play AAA games, then buying a console is a much simpler (and typically cheaper) option than researching and buying or building out a new gaming PC.
Users who may have a PC but are couch gamers. If you just want to kick back and play games on your TV with a controller instead of being hunched over your keyboard because you already do that all day for your job, then plugging a console in is again much simpler and/or cheaper than figuring out how to set up game streaming, buying a second PC to plug into your TV, or doing what a friend of mine did for a while with an insane cabling setup using HDMI-over-ethernet to wire his TV up to his desktop in a completely different room.
I feel like the whole "consoles are just PCs now anyway so just buy a PC instead" attitude overlooks the whole appeal of consoles where you don't have to buy or build a PC, which can be very confusing for non-technical people who just want to play games on their TV with as little friction as possible.
While there is definitely something to be said the simplicity of consoles, you can in fact just plug in a controller, connect HDMI and use a PC like a console these days with not many more steps. Going even further you have things like the Steam Deck and now Steam Machine which essentially are consoles with standard PC functionality as a secondary mode.
I don't expect the majority of people to give up consoles, but most of the big time console players I know are all physical games and they have full shelves of them. They, along with myself, are out. I suspect that the removal of physical games combined with the expected higher prices for both consoles and games (and the general enshittifcation of these platforms) will make people further retreat from consoles and move to some combination of mobile gaming and PC gaming.
Agreed. I have plenty of digital games on my consoles, but I like physical games. I have a few games that I plan to get for my Switch as physical versions, even though they may have Steam versions that could be cheaper, because I'd historically played them on consoles with physical copies. (Also, the Rune Factory and Story of Seasons still have booklets!!!)
And I really like going to stores and actually browsing games. We went to a local store selling used (and some new) games last week, and I could've happily spent an hour or two just looking at the games even if I didn't buy any. It was fun to look up games on my phone to see what they were like and try to figure out if I'd be interested. It acts as a filter that digital storefronts lack, making it easier to find good games.
And I like being able to put video games on my Christmas and birthday lists because that's easier for my mom to find. (I've kinda given up on her recognizing a Steam gift card. I've pointed them out multiple times when I see them in stores, but Steam in general is just not sticking in her head.) Actually the present aspect is probably the biggest reason I like physical games: not for myself, but for kids. It's way more exciting to unwrap a game than a gift card.
I don't think consoles will fully die out. I particularly expect Nintendo will keep making physical games. But the complete removal of physical games as an option may be a bigger hit than Sony thinks. Or... Maybe it won't. Pretty sure the current digital-only consoles still sell fairly well right now just for being the cheaper option, so people may just keep buying it anyway.
I've said in other comments, but I think the biggest selling point for consoles really is just consistency. PC specs can vary wildly, but consoles are generally the same barring the occasional outlier. So devs can optimize versions/ports for those specific specs, and there's less setup and finagling for a user to make sure their setup can handle a game. Theoretically, if a game is made for a console, you can generally expect it to work. Even when a game runs poorly, you can find that out from basic reviews and decide immediately whether you want it anyway, rather than try to figure out what the minimum specs needed are for optimal performance and whether your setup can handle it.
Yeah, I didn't mentioned before, but the present issue is huge. Ever since I was a kid, a game would have always been my "big gift" for Christmas or my birthday, and it is a tradition that I have tried to carry over to my kids. Also, I'm not sure if you saw, but Steam is no longer doing gift cards due to them being some sort of fraud vector. It will literally be no longer viable for me to give or receive games as presents anymore in a meaningful way, and that makes me really sad.
I'm obviously an adult now, I don't need games as gifts, but my kids really love picking one out for me for Christmas and vice versa. With all going on in the world, this is a very low stakes "First World Problem" as they say, but it still sucks.
I do wonder if next generation that beings the Steam machine into serious consideration for some players. The cost isn't great, but it might still be competitive if the rumored pricings of the consoles are close to true. If ram prices do come down that might also be a chance to hit a much more attractive price point as well. One where a Steam Machine + Deck combo might still be cheaper than a PS6.
When the PS4 and the PS5 launched, their performance-to-price ratio were really good though. I remember thinking at the time that I couldn't have built a competitive PC for the same price. Sony has scales of economy and they subsidize consoles and make up for it via games. I think that strategy will remain popular.
Steam Big Picture mode has also been mentioned a few times. I love Steam and the UI is better than PS or Xbox IMO, but it's still not a perfect console experience. Sometimes a Windows nag window will grab focus and ask for me to enable a Microsoft cloud account. Or Dragon Quest XI S launches a separate window that Steam won't automatically switch to focus on. Both cases necessitated I put the controller down, find my keyboard, then alt-tab to the correct window. It works 95% of the time, but the normies want their console to work 100% of the time.
The performance to price ratio has actually gotten better. The steam machine is a perfect example. It’s actually slower than the base PS5, while being twice the price.
Maybe if they promise to make the consoles fully AI they'll get that sweet-sweet AI investment money and they can sell the consoles at a loss and promise that the consoles will create the games with some prompting and assets from the IP creators. Yeah, that's the ticket...
Quality journalism, Gamespot...
I only skim the article at first and thought you were joking…. it’s crazy how much this issue gets shoehorned into everything.