Because the equivalent graphics card is about $450, and you still need to buy a CPU, storage, RAM, PSU, and case. And it’s only the up-front cost that’s cheaper.
What the hell, Boots used to sell PCs? Or is that a fricky coincidence that there’s a PC store somewhere with the same name and logo as a popular pharmacy?
Well I have a PC also but for me I wanted to play with a specific friend who I’ve always played games with growing up.
It was cheaper for me to buy two PS5’s and give him one than it was to buy us both PCs that could run new games at the same fps as the PS5.
Also, Sony let’s you gameshare not only individual games but the PS plus subscription service as a whole as well.
What that means is when I buy a game, me and him can play the game together at the same time (steams game sharing doesn’t do that only one can be online playing it at a time) AND he doesn’t even have to pay for online as long as I have PS plus and have his console set up as my primary and vice versa.
That still comes out miles ahead from the cost it would have taken to get us both a decent gaming PC and games on top of it. Every single time you both want to play, boom two copies of the game have to be bought.
And since we share PS plus it really still makes it cheaper than gaming on PC. Especially now like yeah ps5 went up but you have to practically be a drug dealer or something to afford a new PC now (kidding of course, but not far off) so its still a lot cheaper to just get a ps5.
Also the exclusives on PlayStation are absolute titties. God of War and the Ghost of Tsushima series are my jam but there’s several others too.
Xbox though, yeah I don’t know why anyone would buy an Xbox anymore. I had one and when they raised game pass 50% I sold it and will never fuck with Xbox or any other Microsoft product ever again, minus using my friends computer to update my Garmin when it needs it since its windows only.
Edit: also forgot to add I can play anything on it without having to install kernal level “anticheat” on my computer. Linux won’t support it anyway, but the point still stands.
Mat Piscatella of Circana makes a good argument that they haven’t proven that. A lot of Xbox titles became all-time PS5 best-sellers immediately after getting ported. People who wanted to play those games could have bought an Xbox at any point to play them before the multiplatform strategy was announced, but they didn’t. He would argue that people have already settled into their platform of choice and just wait for the games they want to come there. Something like a third of all console players (at least Xbox/PS) are only playing multiplatform live service games on those consoles, not any of the marquis exclusives.
And to be honest, that makes sense. In the grand scheme of things, there aren’t even that many exclusives anymore, compared to the deluge that there might have been in the 5th/6th gens.
And I don’t have data for this, because I’m not an analyst, and Piscatella shares what he shares, so all I’ve got are anecdotal observations.
Some Nintendo properties have extremely strong moats, as Warren Buffet might call them. Pokemon, Mario, and Zelda especially. Even if a new property like Splatoon does well, it doesn’t mean it’s a system seller the way old exclusives used to be. The lower bound for this moat is clearly what the Wii U did in sales.
Switch 1 was very popular with children, as the machine is cheaper and more durable than handheld PC equivalents. It was very easy to end up with multiple Switch 1s per household. The industry outside of mobile and Nintendo has done, from what I can tell, a horrendous job of catering to children compared to how it used to.
Speaking for myself, even if I wasn’t pissed off at how Nintendo operates as a company and decided not to be a customer of theirs anymore, they’re still running into the same problems that caused me to lose interest in PlayStation. They can’t put out enough exclusives to justify a $500 machine to play them, since I’m going to be playing everything else, at better settings, for the same or lower price, on PC.
I find it hard to argue with that as I also don’t have data one way or another.
I’ve personally decided that I’m not going to be purchasing any games on console that are available for PC. I was always a console gamer, from the (really dating myself here) Mattel Electronics IntelliVision to the PS5. But more and more they don’t feel worth it to me, and I’ve absolutely loved gaming on my Steam Deck.
Of course, Nintendo is almost certainly never going to bring their games to PC. I am a sucker for Zelda or Metroid, so I usually have a Nintendo console of some sort.
Of course, Nintendo is almost certainly never going to bring their games to PC. I am a sucker for Zelda or Metroid, so I usually have a Nintendo console of some sort.
Also I feel like Nintendo is losing its stranglehold on really good games in their own niche of wimsical platformers that are accessible and fun, but still provide some challenge if you seek it out.
See Astrobot. Hoping for more games in this same vein because its a winner.
People who wanted to play those games could have bought an Xbox at any point to play them before the multiplatform strategy was announced,
But then they would have had to use an Xbox. 😋
Something like a third of all console players (at least Xbox/PS) are only playing multiplatform live service games on those consoles, not any of the marquis exclusives.
PC totally makes sense for them, if they can afford the min. requirements.
what console exclusives for the PS5? it has 7. that’s it. only 7 that you can ONLY play on the PS5. (used to be 8 but Death Stranding 2 just came out on PC). and of those 7 maybe ONE of which is a console seller, maybe, and that’s Astro Bot and while it’s a good game I say that as a massive stretch that it’s worth a $650 point of entry.
the ps5 doesn’t have any exclusives that drive sales. none.
It’s funny how we never count the thousands of games you can only play on PC as exclusives. If we throw in emulators and backwards compatibility, there’s just absolutely no contest.
Not to say that there aren’t great exclusives for the consoles, just that the PC ones seem to always get ignored.
I think a lot of the conversation around exclusives comes from the standpoint of what keeps a console player from switching from one console to another (whether that’s a PC, a PS5, an Xbox, etc.), so PC exclusives don’t really factor into it because PC players are almost always a PC gamer plus a console player rather than somebody who is switching from a PC to a console.
That said, I think a lot of people in the industry (and console gamers) really underestimate the vastness of PC exclusives that exist thanks to the indie scene. Most people will think of PC exclusive genres like RTS games, but few people think of Bloodborne Nightmare Kart or all the tiny indie RPG/horror/etc. projects that come out all the time as a reason to switch from a console.
Can’t speak for other people, but as a patient gamer it’s a combination of cost and longevity - I can get about 15 years out of a console.
I only upgraded from an original xbox to an xbox 360 because I found it in a dumpster (I did have to fix it and buy a controller, so it wasn’t ideal). My wife’s PS4 is now 11 years old and still works.
Edit: I forgot that I found my old DS in storage awhile back and it turned on immediately still had battery charge in it. Could not believe that shit. Still can’t.
Consoles are just specialized computers but they are made with longevity in mind.
There are fewer and fewer reasons as time goes on, but the big one is that it’s usually a lower up-front cost (in a lot of cases, still is) and just works without any fuss. We might find the fuss on PC to be pretty minimal, but on console, it approaches 0. PCs have gotten easier to work with, people have become more literate in how to use them, and the long-term savings on PC with a significantly sized library have become more apparent, but there will always still be a market for something like a console, even if that means they abandon some of their defining traits in order to survive the future.
Yup. I wanted to play FF VII Rebirth, but apparently SE can’t be assed to optimize their flagship game for PC, so I stuck with the PS5 version because it just works. I don’t want to deal with stuttering and downloading weird drivers to get it to maybe not stutter. I don’t care about mods and ultimate graphics. I just want to play the game.
Unless you bought an Xbox One/Xbox One X and found out the software was total shit and you can find yourself forcing system software repairs and having video cut out issues on the One X. The amount of times I had to download a repair tool to a flashdrive for the Xbone is embarrassing even for Microslop.
It’s a bit cheaper than pcs with similar performance, I believe. Some people have enough for a console, but not a decent pc. I’ve never had to buy a pc, so I’m not certain, but I think I’ve heard that before.
Yeah, consoles are normally (except when an idiot is in charge at Microslop) what they call a “loss leader” - an item that you sell at a loss because you’ll make up for it in other purchases now that the customer is in the store.
With a console, the idea up until recently had always been that you lose money on the console but make up for it several times over with game sales, generally making it more affordable than a PC of similar specs.
There was a period of time where you could build a PC with better specs for the same price as a console, but hardware prices going up in the past 10-15 years meant that that really hasn’t been the case for a while.
some of us just want to play games. we don’t care about 120 fps bragging rights or spending hours resolving driver issues. console is superior experience for that.
Look, I won’t argue that console gaming is easier, but if you think you need to spend hours resolving driver issues on PC, you must not have owned one in a decade. I’m on Linux and playing Windows games without driver issues these days. On the dreaded nvidia drivers that everyone says are awful on Linux (they CAN have issues, but it’s not that common these days). On Windows there should be even fewer issues with gaming in particular since the games are actually made for that platform.
Idk man I’ve been a PC gamer for decades, and in my long career in IT have been a subject matter expert on both Linux and Windows systems and this is just straight up cope.
Drivers and compatibility issues and such are much better now than they were 15 years ago, but at the end of the day you buy a console and you get a guaranteed 8-10 years of running every game with zero problems. Thats something we will never, ever get on PC. It’s just not possible.
i was trying to game on my pc a few months ago and just gave up due to the constant crashes on top of hours of wasted time trying to ‘resolve the issue’.
you can keep telling me how stupid and wrong i am, but my experience of PC gaming is it’s the same as it was in the 90s. the only games i don’t have tehcnical issues with are the indie ones, that don’t even need gpu to run.
right, and if it doesn’t happen to you it happens to nobdoy else right?
literally any game that requires a GPU for me. across several PCs. I am too old to waste time with that shit anymore. Console gaming is way better for me, it just works.
and if PC gaming was so ‘cheap’ y’all wouldn’t be screaming and crying on here everyday about component prices going up
Simple, I can’t play Kirby Air Riders or Splatoon 3 on PC. And while I still prefer the form factor of Nintendo’s old smaller dedicated handhelds, I think the Switch (2) is still at least a little bit better at being a handheld than the much bulkier Steam Deck.
(Don’t say emulation, because even then I still can’t play online on official servers.)
The “bulk” of that Steam Deck compared to Switch 2 is what I’d call ergonomics. I was actually shocked that Nintendo didn’t reevaluate their joycon design more, because the Switch sucks to hold for long periods of time, and alternate joycons are one of the most prominent third party peripherals.
The third party joycons are essentially necessary because of how easily they break and get unplayable amounts of stick drift. I believe that I went through 3 sets of them (including the originals) in less than 3 years.
Which is frankly ridiculous for the price of a switch. I can feel a switch 2 in my future because someone gave my kids a switch lite and there’s a few games they’ll get more out of on a big screen, but I will resent it.
Because I like sitting down after a long day and playing games on my big ass oled tv.
I don’t like sitting down and turning on my computer so that it can update Windows, then the game itself needs to be updated. Then the game runs like shit because my graphics drivers updated to a newer version that doesn’t work well with the game I’m playing. So then I have to do some research to find the best driver version to downgrade to. So then I finally get the driver issue fixed and start the game, but now my controller isn’t working because the windows update broke the Logitech drivers my controller needs. So now it’s been two hours, I’m tired, I didn’t get to play any games, and I still have more work to do tomorrow to get things working.
This comment. But now imagine not beeing computer literate. While consoles lost a bit of their appeal in ease of use the last two generation they’re still a nice little walled garden where most of the stuff is just working for you in the background.
I havent bought a current-gen console since the 360 for various reasons. But i get why somebody just wants a playstation and not a gaming pc.
It’s more cost efficient, and less of a headache to deal with anomalous problems like bugs and driver issues that can be as specific to your unique combination of PC hardware.
I recently bought RE Requiem and updated my graphics card drivers for it. They introduced a bug that would stop 2/3 of my GPUs fans from spinning at random. People who bought that game and played it on their PS5 didn’t have that problem.
In addition to being more cost efficient, square footage is at a premium. I bought a PC when things were going well for me, but then my living situation changed and it sat in the closet for a couple years. The old Playstation doesn’t take up any additional space because it can sit behind the TV that’s always being used anyways.
Now that I’ve finally organized my space enough to fit a computer desk I’ve gotta deal with either using Windows or taking up Linux as a full-time hobby and learning how to make an Nvidia card work with it. It’d literally be easier to just sell it and buy a ps5 if I only cared about gaming.
I don’t anymore, ps5 was my last and I barely use it. It wasn’t worth buying, but I use my ps4 incredibly heavily.
I used to do console because it was easier. You know a game put out for a system is compatible with your hardware. You don’t have to fiddle with things to get them to work properly, much less well.
It used to be a decent value proposition. It was worth it enough that I’ve had every non-handheld console for decades. The games would be sold cheap used, they always worked, and used consoles were cheap. If you stuck with the secondhand market you could get a system and like 20 games for the price of buying the system and one game of $50 value new. But you could also resell the games if needed for some reason. It was an investment, and it definitely paid off. My collections is worth almost 10 grand now, and I certainly didn’t spend half that much on it, when each game was $10 or less.
Those value propositions changed when physical media stopped being the main thing. Now used games sell for near what new ones do, because they just didn’t make that many. And why would they continue to make them when everyone downloads?
So now your question is valid, but it didn’t used to be in the same way.
Yeah, I think that the Series S not having a disc drive is really bad. I’ll probably want to replay most of the games I currently own in the future, but it’d be nice to have the option to resell the ones I won’t.
Same thing with the ps5, most of them aren’t disc systems, they chose that to kill the resale market. They chose to be glorified computers with drm and destroy the value proposition for any but people who don’t have the knowledge or desire to PC.
I have games I’ve never even played from ps2 era that I bought for $5 used that are worth hundreds now for whatever reason. It’s dumb, but that’s what collecting physical media does. And you can’t do that with files. You can try, but it doesn’t work.
I mean honestly I don’t think it’s the companies choice to raise the prices on this. When you look at the cost of the materials to make it and the fact that all the other companies have raised their costs unfortunately I think this is a massive side effect to that. I mean I’m still not going to buy it I didn’t want to buy it in the first place because it was already incredibly expensive and I’m definitely not buying it. I’ve been waiting for the price to drop on it and I’ve been seeing them sitting in Walmart unsold as they are with the current prices.
PS5 has 16 gigs of GDDR6. I have no idea how it compares to DDR5 price-wise when bought in bulk, but 16 gigs of DDR5 has gone up by like 150 dollars over the last 9 months or so.
That’s some big bullshit there. The parts needed for the PS5 are already produced or planned/bought to fixed prices. So Sony just found an excuse to earn more money and hoping for customers to not realize it.
RAM, HDDs, etc are magically not going up in price for them? You think they got some sort of deal that the much bigger manufacturers couldn’t negotiate somehow?
Have you any sorts of idea how that business works? How long before production you need to order such large quantities? And that especially because of this the client does not want to end up taking all the risks and demands steady pricing for a very long period?
Analysts have been calling that this price increase would come to consoles too, and it’s already come for the Xbox. What firm do you work for that your data is telling you otherwise?
I doubt they have a contract for endless memory at X price forever. Memory and storage prices have gone up so much that the memory and storage of a PS5 has for sure risen 200+ dollars in price over the last 9 or 10 months if you buy them as separate modules as a consumer.
Cost of 2 TB SSD and 16 gigs of RAM (what you get in a PS5 Pro at 900 EUR once the price hike kicks in) if bought as a consumer, is about 450 EUR in my country. That’s without anything else (motherboard, CPU, GPU, power supply) that the device contains. Of course it has shared memory so perhaps you should be looking at 8 gigs of memory (still 100+ EUR) and an 8 gig graphics card of roughly equivalent TFLOPS since it’s kinda hard to put a value tag on the other features its’ GPU has - The RX 7600 starts at 300 EUR. So that’d be like 250+100+300 for storage + RAM + GPU. Still without a CPU, power supply, or any other electronics. Shit, the cheapest wi-fi 7 module I can find on sale in my country alone is 80 euros.
Worst part is, RAM and storage prices aren’t really even showing any signs of slowing down.
All things considered, I reckon they still have pretty low margins for their hardware compared to PC parts manufacturers. Which they can afford because they make it back on the game store margins.
if y’all are still buying consoles, you’re a big chud. stop giving billion dollar companies your pennies. emulators are free and everywhere! fuck off nintendo too!!
Thing is, nor PayStation 4 nor 5 really had many exclusives to justify buying em. Gran Turismo Sport was meh game of the entire series, and past that it was Horizon and then new Spidey series.
Here’s the thing with story-only games, these days - everyone and their brother’s cousin’s grandfather makes playthrough vids and story recaps to a point where if you wanted the story, its free and easy to access. Balancing single and multiplayer just about went out the window the past 10 years.
But what can you do with $800 PayStation besides play games? Nothing. $1200 PC gets you up-to PS3 era console games AND pc games to date, all for free. PC is just a very lucrative of a purchase these days when games are 70-90 Nintendorra.
The PS2 launched at £299. Got reduced to £199 the week the Xbox came out (and stuck the nails in the coffin just as it was being born) and finished somewhere around £79.
If only there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you left them.
This is also from a period of time where manufacturing genuinely got cheaper over time. Die sizes shrunk for the CPUs, so you could make the system smaller with less waste heat. There pretty much haven’t been those kinds of revisions for modern consoles
It’s the stand that comes with the console. I didn’t notice them at first and was wondering why my ps5 was a bit unstable. Just a clear little clip thing that hides underneath.
Its because they’ve already burned through all the good ideas and iterative designs have reached the point of diminishing returns. What’s something 2026 tech can do that six-year-old 2020 tech couldn’t? With the introduction of AI, a lot of tech has become objectively worse with no replacements in sight.
Xbox hasn’t quite left the market, they’re just slowly sleepwalking down a pier. We’ll see if they wake up before they walk off the end and end up drowning. I’m certainly not holding my breath.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
So that’s $899.99. How is console gaming cheaper then PC again?
Well for a start that’s the PS5 Pro and absolutely nobody is buying that.
That would be like me saying you can’t make a gaming PC without a 5090.
Because the equivalent graphics card is about $450, and you still need to buy a CPU, storage, RAM, PSU, and case. And it’s only the up-front cost that’s cheaper.
Premade desktops with a good enough you can still be found for shit 1200$ / 1000€.
And the savings from buying on Steam/GoG instead will probably make up the difference.
And you get a full PC as well
The, what now?
That’s why I said it was the up-front cost that’s cheaper. This is how it’s been for a long, long time now.
Uhhh, have you looked at pc prices recently?
I’m struggling to even find a PC that expensive.
What the hell, Boots used to sell PCs? Or is that a fricky coincidence that there’s a PC store somewhere with the same name and logo as a popular pharmacy?
Why do people buy a console instead of a PC? I just can’t understand, seriously.
The cost of building a gaming PC has also gone up dramatically.
A whole ps5 is about the current price of just a decent “value” video card. Toss in your ram and storage and you’re looking at three times the price.
Well I have a PC also but for me I wanted to play with a specific friend who I’ve always played games with growing up.
It was cheaper for me to buy two PS5’s and give him one than it was to buy us both PCs that could run new games at the same fps as the PS5.
Also, Sony let’s you gameshare not only individual games but the PS plus subscription service as a whole as well.
What that means is when I buy a game, me and him can play the game together at the same time (steams game sharing doesn’t do that only one can be online playing it at a time) AND he doesn’t even have to pay for online as long as I have PS plus and have his console set up as my primary and vice versa.
That still comes out miles ahead from the cost it would have taken to get us both a decent gaming PC and games on top of it. Every single time you both want to play, boom two copies of the game have to be bought.
And since we share PS plus it really still makes it cheaper than gaming on PC. Especially now like yeah ps5 went up but you have to practically be a drug dealer or something to afford a new PC now (kidding of course, but not far off) so its still a lot cheaper to just get a ps5.
Also the exclusives on PlayStation are absolute titties. God of War and the Ghost of Tsushima series are my jam but there’s several others too.
Xbox though, yeah I don’t know why anyone would buy an Xbox anymore. I had one and when they raised game pass 50% I sold it and will never fuck with Xbox or any other Microsoft product ever again, minus using my friends computer to update my Garmin when it needs it since its windows only.
Edit: also forgot to add I can play anything on it without having to install kernal level “anticheat” on my computer. Linux won’t support it anyway, but the point still stands.
I mean, when it comes to console exclusives, some can’t be beat. Nintendo and Sony have proven that console exclusives still drive sales.
Mat Piscatella of Circana makes a good argument that they haven’t proven that. A lot of Xbox titles became all-time PS5 best-sellers immediately after getting ported. People who wanted to play those games could have bought an Xbox at any point to play them before the multiplatform strategy was announced, but they didn’t. He would argue that people have already settled into their platform of choice and just wait for the games they want to come there. Something like a third of all console players (at least Xbox/PS) are only playing multiplatform live service games on those consoles, not any of the marquis exclusives.
And to be honest, that makes sense. In the grand scheme of things, there aren’t even that many exclusives anymore, compared to the deluge that there might have been in the 5th/6th gens.
This is a good point, but leaves Nintendo out of the consideration
And I don’t have data for this, because I’m not an analyst, and Piscatella shares what he shares, so all I’ve got are anecdotal observations.
Speaking for myself, even if I wasn’t pissed off at how Nintendo operates as a company and decided not to be a customer of theirs anymore, they’re still running into the same problems that caused me to lose interest in PlayStation. They can’t put out enough exclusives to justify a $500 machine to play them, since I’m going to be playing everything else, at better settings, for the same or lower price, on PC.
I find it hard to argue with that as I also don’t have data one way or another.
I’ve personally decided that I’m not going to be purchasing any games on console that are available for PC. I was always a console gamer, from the (really dating myself here) Mattel Electronics IntelliVision to the PS5. But more and more they don’t feel worth it to me, and I’ve absolutely loved gaming on my Steam Deck.
Of course, Nintendo is almost certainly never going to bring their games to PC. I am a sucker for Zelda or Metroid, so I usually have a Nintendo console of some sort.
There’s always emulators
Absolutely. Been there since Nesticle.
There are always a few games that I don’t want to wait for emulation to get right, and the majority of those are Nintendo’s
Also I feel like Nintendo is losing its stranglehold on really good games in their own niche of wimsical platformers that are accessible and fun, but still provide some challenge if you seek it out.
See Astrobot. Hoping for more games in this same vein because its a winner.
Don’t worry, if they just add an empty soulless open world to every franchise (Metroid?) that’ll surely make their games great again.
pokemon is pretty much slop now, because masuda was “burn out” from making the game for decades
Yup see palworld!
One of the best platformers ever made. Absolutely blew me away.
But then they would have had to use an Xbox. 😋
PC totally makes sense for them, if they can afford the min. requirements.
what console exclusives for the PS5? it has 7. that’s it. only 7 that you can ONLY play on the PS5. (used to be 8 but Death Stranding 2 just came out on PC). and of those 7 maybe ONE of which is a console seller, maybe, and that’s Astro Bot and while it’s a good game I say that as a massive stretch that it’s worth a $650 point of entry.
the ps5 doesn’t have any exclusives that drive sales. none.
Gran Turismo sells incredibly well, as such I’ve given up on it coming to PC lol
It’s funny how we never count the thousands of games you can only play on PC as exclusives. If we throw in emulators and backwards compatibility, there’s just absolutely no contest.
Not to say that there aren’t great exclusives for the consoles, just that the PC ones seem to always get ignored.
I think a lot of the conversation around exclusives comes from the standpoint of what keeps a console player from switching from one console to another (whether that’s a PC, a PS5, an Xbox, etc.), so PC exclusives don’t really factor into it because PC players are almost always a PC gamer plus a console player rather than somebody who is switching from a PC to a console.
That said, I think a lot of people in the industry (and console gamers) really underestimate the vastness of PC exclusives that exist thanks to the indie scene. Most people will think of PC exclusive genres like RTS games, but few people think of
BloodborneNightmare Kart or all the tiny indie RPG/horror/etc. projects that come out all the time as a reason to switch from a console.Can’t speak for other people, but as a patient gamer it’s a combination of cost and longevity - I can get about 15 years out of a console.
I only upgraded from an original xbox to an xbox 360 because I found it in a dumpster (I did have to fix it and buy a controller, so it wasn’t ideal). My wife’s PS4 is now 11 years old and still works.
You won’t believe how much time I can get out of a PC, if I wanted to. Backwards compatibility plus frequent sales, plus emulators and mods.
There’s a bunch of reasons why someone might prefer one over the other, but longevity absolutely goes to PC, no question.
Idk man I still play my PS3 online to this day.
Not kidding. It has held up quite well.
Edit: I forgot that I found my old DS in storage awhile back and it turned on immediately still had battery charge in it. Could not believe that shit. Still can’t.
Consoles are just specialized computers but they are made with longevity in mind.
I was too damn patient and missed the end of the steam sale this week FFS.
At this stage of the game, it’s pure ignorance.
There are fewer and fewer reasons as time goes on, but the big one is that it’s usually a lower up-front cost (in a lot of cases, still is) and just works without any fuss. We might find the fuss on PC to be pretty minimal, but on console, it approaches 0. PCs have gotten easier to work with, people have become more literate in how to use them, and the long-term savings on PC with a significantly sized library have become more apparent, but there will always still be a market for something like a console, even if that means they abandon some of their defining traits in order to survive the future.
Yup. I wanted to play FF VII Rebirth, but apparently SE can’t be assed to optimize their flagship game for PC, so I stuck with the PS5 version because it just works. I don’t want to deal with stuttering and downloading weird drivers to get it to maybe not stutter. I don’t care about mods and ultimate graphics. I just want to play the game.
“…and just works without any fuss”
Unless you bought an Xbox One/Xbox One X and found out the software was total shit and you can find yourself forcing system software repairs and having video cut out issues on the One X. The amount of times I had to download a repair tool to a flashdrive for the Xbone is embarrassing even for Microslop.
Otherwise your statement is correct
It’s a bit cheaper than pcs with similar performance, I believe. Some people have enough for a console, but not a decent pc. I’ve never had to buy a pc, so I’m not certain, but I think I’ve heard that before.
Yeah, consoles are normally (except when an idiot is in charge at Microslop) what they call a “loss leader” - an item that you sell at a loss because you’ll make up for it in other purchases now that the customer is in the store.
With a console, the idea up until recently had always been that you lose money on the console but make up for it several times over with game sales, generally making it more affordable than a PC of similar specs.
There was a period of time where you could build a PC with better specs for the same price as a console, but hardware prices going up in the past 10-15 years meant that that really hasn’t been the case for a while.
because pc gaming is a huge pain in the ass.
console gaming is not.
some of us just want to play games. we don’t care about 120 fps bragging rights or spending hours resolving driver issues. console is superior experience for that.
Look, I won’t argue that console gaming is easier, but if you think you need to spend hours resolving driver issues on PC, you must not have owned one in a decade. I’m on Linux and playing Windows games without driver issues these days. On the dreaded nvidia drivers that everyone says are awful on Linux (they CAN have issues, but it’s not that common these days). On Windows there should be even fewer issues with gaming in particular since the games are actually made for that platform.
Idk man I’ve been a PC gamer for decades, and in my long career in IT have been a subject matter expert on both Linux and Windows systems and this is just straight up cope.
Drivers and compatibility issues and such are much better now than they were 15 years ago, but at the end of the day you buy a console and you get a guaranteed 8-10 years of running every game with zero problems. Thats something we will never, ever get on PC. It’s just not possible.
i was trying to game on my pc a few months ago and just gave up due to the constant crashes on top of hours of wasted time trying to ‘resolve the issue’.
you can keep telling me how stupid and wrong i am, but my experience of PC gaming is it’s the same as it was in the 90s. the only games i don’t have tehcnical issues with are the indie ones, that don’t even need gpu to run.
my ps5… just works. everytime.
…What game? I haven’t had that experience in at least a decade.
right, and if it doesn’t happen to you it happens to nobdoy else right?
literally any game that requires a GPU for me. across several PCs. I am too old to waste time with that shit anymore. Console gaming is way better for me, it just works.
and if PC gaming was so ‘cheap’ y’all wouldn’t be screaming and crying on here everyday about component prices going up
The fact that you can’t name a single game makes you sound like you’re making it up. You’re just a hater lmao
Simple, I can’t play Kirby Air Riders or Splatoon 3 on PC. And while I still prefer the form factor of Nintendo’s old smaller dedicated handhelds, I think the Switch (2) is still at least a little bit better at being a handheld than the much bulkier Steam Deck.
(Don’t say emulation, because even then I still can’t play online on official servers.)
The “bulk” of that Steam Deck compared to Switch 2 is what I’d call ergonomics. I was actually shocked that Nintendo didn’t reevaluate their joycon design more, because the Switch sucks to hold for long periods of time, and alternate joycons are one of the most prominent third party peripherals.
The third party joycons are essentially necessary because of how easily they break and get unplayable amounts of stick drift. I believe that I went through 3 sets of them (including the originals) in less than 3 years.
Which is frankly ridiculous for the price of a switch. I can feel a switch 2 in my future because someone gave my kids a switch lite and there’s a few games they’ll get more out of on a big screen, but I will resent it.
Because I like sitting down after a long day and playing games on my big ass oled tv.
I don’t like sitting down and turning on my computer so that it can update Windows, then the game itself needs to be updated. Then the game runs like shit because my graphics drivers updated to a newer version that doesn’t work well with the game I’m playing. So then I have to do some research to find the best driver version to downgrade to. So then I finally get the driver issue fixed and start the game, but now my controller isn’t working because the windows update broke the Logitech drivers my controller needs. So now it’s been two hours, I’m tired, I didn’t get to play any games, and I still have more work to do tomorrow to get things working.
Feels like linux can fix some of your problem, but then it creates some other. So, fair.
And it feels like the upcoming Steam Machine fit right into your case.
This comment. But now imagine not beeing computer literate. While consoles lost a bit of their appeal in ease of use the last two generation they’re still a nice little walled garden where most of the stuff is just working for you in the background.
I havent bought a current-gen console since the 360 for various reasons. But i get why somebody just wants a playstation and not a gaming pc.
I’d argue that they’ve gotten even easier to use, at least with Xboxes. The 360-ONE UI is dumbed down even further.
Give me the 360 blades UI or give me death!
It’s more cost efficient, and less of a headache to deal with anomalous problems like bugs and driver issues that can be as specific to your unique combination of PC hardware.
I recently bought RE Requiem and updated my graphics card drivers for it. They introduced a bug that would stop 2/3 of my GPUs fans from spinning at random. People who bought that game and played it on their PS5 didn’t have that problem.
It’s not more cost efficient when you include paying for games and 2nd internet.
As a matter of fact, it is.
No it’s not.
It is, but go off.
In addition to being more cost efficient, square footage is at a premium. I bought a PC when things were going well for me, but then my living situation changed and it sat in the closet for a couple years. The old Playstation doesn’t take up any additional space because it can sit behind the TV that’s always being used anyways.
Now that I’ve finally organized my space enough to fit a computer desk I’ve gotta deal with either using Windows or taking up Linux as a full-time hobby and learning how to make an Nvidia card work with it. It’d literally be easier to just sell it and buy a ps5 if I only cared about gaming.
This is a big reason why I’m hyped for Steam machine.
Linux is not that hard. These days it’s easier than Windows in some ways.
Console is easier (plug in and play). But console gaming is more expensive in the long term.
I don’t anymore, ps5 was my last and I barely use it. It wasn’t worth buying, but I use my ps4 incredibly heavily.
I used to do console because it was easier. You know a game put out for a system is compatible with your hardware. You don’t have to fiddle with things to get them to work properly, much less well.
It used to be a decent value proposition. It was worth it enough that I’ve had every non-handheld console for decades. The games would be sold cheap used, they always worked, and used consoles were cheap. If you stuck with the secondhand market you could get a system and like 20 games for the price of buying the system and one game of $50 value new. But you could also resell the games if needed for some reason. It was an investment, and it definitely paid off. My collections is worth almost 10 grand now, and I certainly didn’t spend half that much on it, when each game was $10 or less.
Those value propositions changed when physical media stopped being the main thing. Now used games sell for near what new ones do, because they just didn’t make that many. And why would they continue to make them when everyone downloads?
So now your question is valid, but it didn’t used to be in the same way.
Yeah, I think that the Series S not having a disc drive is really bad. I’ll probably want to replay most of the games I currently own in the future, but it’d be nice to have the option to resell the ones I won’t.
Same thing with the ps5, most of them aren’t disc systems, they chose that to kill the resale market. They chose to be glorified computers with drm and destroy the value proposition for any but people who don’t have the knowledge or desire to PC.
I have games I’ve never even played from ps2 era that I bought for $5 used that are worth hundreds now for whatever reason. It’s dumb, but that’s what collecting physical media does. And you can’t do that with files. You can try, but it doesn’t work.
Since the Sega MegaDrive, I’ve always been a console kid.
It is memory prices? Or is it just the “we don’t have any real competition” increase?
Memory. Xbox raised their prices already.
That could indicate a duopoly if the Xbox brand wasn’t struggling so hard.
Th prices of every component involved in making a PS5 have exploded.
They made a fifth one?
God, these companies are all so evil and shitty in their own special way.
I mean honestly I don’t think it’s the companies choice to raise the prices on this. When you look at the cost of the materials to make it and the fact that all the other companies have raised their costs unfortunately I think this is a massive side effect to that. I mean I’m still not going to buy it I didn’t want to buy it in the first place because it was already incredibly expensive and I’m definitely not buying it. I’ve been waiting for the price to drop on it and I’ve been seeing them sitting in Walmart unsold as they are with the current prices.
PS5 has 16 gigs of GDDR6. I have no idea how it compares to DDR5 price-wise when bought in bulk, but 16 gigs of DDR5 has gone up by like 150 dollars over the last 9 months or so.
That’s some big bullshit there. The parts needed for the PS5 are already produced or planned/bought to fixed prices. So Sony just found an excuse to earn more money and hoping for customers to not realize it.
RAM, HDDs, etc are magically not going up in price for them? You think they got some sort of deal that the much bigger manufacturers couldn’t negotiate somehow?
Have you any sorts of idea how that business works? How long before production you need to order such large quantities? And that especially because of this the client does not want to end up taking all the risks and demands steady pricing for a very long period?
Yeah. Thought so.
Analysts have been calling that this price increase would come to consoles too, and it’s already come for the Xbox. What firm do you work for that your data is telling you otherwise?
Dude you’re just embarrassing yourself.
I doubt they have a contract for endless memory at X price forever. Memory and storage prices have gone up so much that the memory and storage of a PS5 has for sure risen 200+ dollars in price over the last 9 or 10 months if you buy them as separate modules as a consumer.
Cost of 2 TB SSD and 16 gigs of RAM (what you get in a PS5 Pro at 900 EUR once the price hike kicks in) if bought as a consumer, is about 450 EUR in my country. That’s without anything else (motherboard, CPU, GPU, power supply) that the device contains. Of course it has shared memory so perhaps you should be looking at 8 gigs of memory (still 100+ EUR) and an 8 gig graphics card of roughly equivalent TFLOPS since it’s kinda hard to put a value tag on the other features its’ GPU has - The RX 7600 starts at 300 EUR. So that’d be like 250+100+300 for storage + RAM + GPU. Still without a CPU, power supply, or any other electronics. Shit, the cheapest wi-fi 7 module I can find on sale in my country alone is 80 euros.
Worst part is, RAM and storage prices aren’t really even showing any signs of slowing down.
All things considered, I reckon they still have pretty low margins for their hardware compared to PC parts manufacturers. Which they can afford because they make it back on the game store margins.
deleted by creator
if y’all are still buying consoles, you’re a big chud. stop giving billion dollar companies your pennies. emulators are free and everywhere! fuck off nintendo too!!
I’m a PC gamer as much as the next person, but there’s no real PS5 emulator and even the PS4 ones aren’t very good yet, and that came out in 2013.
If you actually want to play PS exclusives past PS3 titles, you’ll need to buy a PS.
Thing is, nor PayStation 4 nor 5 really had many exclusives to justify buying em. Gran Turismo Sport was meh game of the entire series, and past that it was Horizon and then new Spidey series.
Here’s the thing with story-only games, these days - everyone and their brother’s cousin’s grandfather makes playthrough vids and story recaps to a point where if you wanted the story, its free and easy to access. Balancing single and multiplayer just about went out the window the past 10 years.
But what can you do with $800 PayStation besides play games? Nothing. $1200 PC gets you up-to PS3 era console games AND pc games to date, all for free. PC is just a very lucrative of a purchase these days when games are 70-90 Nintendorra.
no ones forcing you to play the latest games. just play your back catalog of games while you wait, the shit is free after all.
Nobody’s forcing you to play games at all, let people choose which games they want to play
And there are so many YouTube video asking why 3ds consoles are selling for so much.
Maybe things why.
lol no thanks, next
I know everyone expected prices to go up but $650 for a regular PS5? OOOFFFFF.
But it’s a whole console for the same price as 64GB memory, what a deal!
Again?
Remember when consoles would get cheaper not more expensive over time!? This thing is five years old at this point.
The PS2 launched at £299. Got reduced to £199 the week the Xbox came out (and stuck the nails in the coffin just as it was being born) and finished somewhere around £79.
If only there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you left them.
This is also from a period of time where manufacturing genuinely got cheaper over time. Die sizes shrunk for the CPUs, so you could make the system smaller with less waste heat. There pretty much haven’t been those kinds of revisions for modern consoles
these are atypical times.
Whats that little kickstand thing in the thumbnail?
It’s the stand that comes with the console. I didn’t notice them at first and was wondering why my ps5 was a bit unstable. Just a clear little clip thing that hides underneath.
Back in my day console prices went down with time…
Back then we didn’t have another bubble inflating prices every other year. :/
Consoles were also a lot simpler then. And we were finding lots of ways to reduce cost ( chip count reduction, etc) as technology evolved rapidly
Hey! My ColecoVision kicks your Atari ass. Don’t you be mouthing off about ‘simple!’
Were consoles really simpler then? Seems like consoles today are just like PCs whereas decades ago they all had custom shit.
Yes
Same with RAM, HDD space, GPUs, Phones… Shit the whole tech industry really sucks today.
Its because they’ve already burned through all the good ideas and iterative designs have reached the point of diminishing returns. What’s something 2026 tech can do that six-year-old 2020 tech couldn’t? With the introduction of AI, a lot of tech has become objectively worse with no replacements in sight.
Great news for the steam machine. The price difference gets smaller as they raise closing the gap.
Thanks xbox for leaving the market to allow this.
Xbox hasn’t quite left the market, they’re just slowly sleepwalking down a pier. We’ll see if they wake up before they walk off the end and end up drowning. I’m certainly not holding my breath.
But we still don’t even actually know what the steam machine is going to cost yet, do we? Could be a fucking fortune.
It almost certainly will be, but so is everything else.
I’m forecasting a 1250 pricetag, at that I will buy it.
Xbox had already begun raising prices for the same reason Sony’s doing so now.