PC Games Are Outselling Console Games, According to New Industry Report
PC gaming has been a bright spot in an industry that has struggled against stagnation.
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Modern consoles are locked pre-built PCs. You have to pay for online. Why get a console at this point in time?
Because you can just plug it in to your TV and play. That's the target demographic.
Because you can buy a consol3, plig it into the back of your TV, and be confident that it will work. You don't have to worry about system requirements, storefronts, launchers, driver updates fucking you up, etc.
Power Cable, HDMI cable, and connect to wifi - that's it.
I've been PC gaming since the mid-80s, and even I sometimes just want to sit on the couch, push the Xbox button on my controller, and get going. Is it lazy? Yes. But I work 2 jobs and get to be lazy when I get home.
Steam Deck has turned that around somewhat. It's pretty close to an easy console experience, amd you can play on your couch, in bed, or on a plane.
That's because it's a console.
One rebuttal: Steam Deck.
Yes. The Steam Deck.
A dedicated piece of hardware with limited upgradablity designed and sold by the company that runs the marketplace/launcher/operating system that can't run all games because of its OS, but performs beyond its specs because developers are designing products with is exact, known specifications in mind.
How is the deck not a console?
Lol... You can do same with pc. Just needs configured 1 time.. Using a linux distribution you could boot into same interface like steam deck. You can emulate the consoles too well not newest gen but who cares. You can configure the whole PC for lazy using too...
Just install one of 300 distributions of an unfamiliar operating system not designed specificallyfor you use case along with drivers for all the hardware (that you also have to learn about), learn to use the OS to the point you can actually use it, install custom software so you can install games, then hope the games work or don't get updated with anti-cheat software that keeps you from playing.
Or just buy the "plays games" machine and play the games.
What nonsense. Yes, there are countless linux distributions, but of course the focus is still only on a few. These can be quickly narrowed down to how much you want to take care of the OS yourself. From arch linux to Bazitte/cachyos etc.
At distrowatch.com you can also browse through the top 10.
Drivers? out-of-the-box or with Nvidia 1-2 steps... even the biggest laymen can manage the changeover without any problems.
Software? Open the app store and install - done...
Anti-cheat would be no problem and what a coincidence that after steamdeck has brought so much growth under Linux, publishers have thought "remove check mark and disable support, leagues that it is due to linux etc pp" which has all been refuted. Well if MS ... known for their market manipulating and criminal methods... didn't let black bags wander... without games Windows would have disappeared on private computers a long time ago...
I haven't worried about a driver update fucking something up since before win XP.
I have however repeatedly encountered crashes of games on my ps5 in the last year, which kind of defeats your point. Consoles had that worry free stability factor to them in the 90s or early 2000s, but that's long gone.
You can get a steam deck then if you are worried about all of this and it would still be cheaper than console as well as portable.
The console argument just doesnt make any kind of logical sense.
A steam deck is a custom gaming device with a custom gaming OS, custom, pre-defined hardware, limited upgradability, and launches into a gaming interface for a specific company's game store and launcher.
How is it not a console?
Not worrying about system requirements just translates into the game not being sold for your generation of the console, and requiring multiple generations of one console to enjoy both new and old titles.
The optimization of console games really is impressive. If you took the best gaming PC possible from 2005 when the 360 launched and tried to run late-gen 360 games like Tomb Raider on it, it simply wasn't possible.
Having set hardware allowed devs to design to limitations and get a lot more performance out of the machines.
Heck - look at anything from Nintendo. I'm pretty sure my watch has more horsepower than a Switch, but Tears of the Kingdom is gorgeous.
What does that have to do with now in the age of extremely cheap, large, and fast storage.
It wasn't just storage. A 2005 PC can't handle TR on minimum settings. 360 handled it on what was essentially medium despite being a less powerful machine because the devs were able to optimize for that specific hardware instead of trying to guess.
You know, like they're doing with the Steam Deck, which is absolutely a console.
Are you talking about the tomb raider that came out in 2013?
Besides plug and play safety as mentioned, two other cool things: