Failing Manufacturers Are Pushing the Narrative That Consoles Are Dying, Says Ex-Xbox Exec
"They'll never die in my opinion"
Ex-Xbox Exec
X Xbox Xec Series X|S
This seems nsfw
Or muskrat having an aneurysm
Yeah their stupid naming convention is exactly what was going through my mind reading that.
People have been telling me that consoles are dying and everyone will play on PC instead for over 30 years. The convenience factor of the all-in-one hardware, and the supported lifetime of the platform, can't be understated. I can see docked phones being a replacement at some point. But I'd be surprised if PCs ever squash out consoles.
Aside from convenience, the price really is a lot cheaper than equivalent PCs. An RTX 4070 alone costs as much as a playstation 5 (with disc), and that comes with a controller too.
But you don't really need a 4070 for gaming. Just like you don't need a F150 to drive to work (most people don't at least). Plenty of lower end hardware does the job well. Over the course of the systems lifetime a PC can be very competitive in terms of prices for games. And it can be used for more than just gaming.
That's not really a fair comparison though. The ps5 has nowhere near the gpu power of a 4070. The PS5 is equal to like a low-mid range PC. Also console players are paying yearly subscription fees to play multiplayer. Plus you can think of the display as a cost as well. You need a monitor or TV, just like a PC. PC is likely more expensive overall, but not by as much as people think. Plus PC gives you so many perks over consoles. So you're getting a ton more functionality for your money. It's really not a HUGE DEAL to get a console once you factor these things in. Deal, sure. But not a huge deal.
PC is already larger than active users on both PlayStations combined, and it didn't used to be that way. Given the Steam Deck and what Microsoft have been saying about handhelds and their next console(s), you're looking at a very real possibility that the next Xbox is just a PC with a different UI, like the Steam Deck.
Yeah, but now you can buy an all-in-one convenient PC to plug on your TV with almost 100% retro compatibility, it's called the Steam Deck and it's awesome.
Im with you except for the "supported lifetime," I have a PC that can play the original Doom alongside Cyberpunk 2077 with raytracing, and literally everything in between.
My PS3 can play at most a decade worth of games. It is obsolete.
The improvements of steam and proton, steamlink and big picture mode make it possible to run great games on your TV. Its not „just turn on“ yet but we‘re getting there. I wanted a PS5 when they were unavailable but I since managed to play my favorite games on my tv with a ps4 controller and dont see the point to buy back into a locked up computer with a fancy case for games that have microstransactions gallore.
Not to mention that if you're already playing PS4 games, a PS5 isn't opening up a lot more games for you and many PS4 ports to PS5 run worse than their PS4 counterparts.
Its not „just turn on“ yet but we‘re getting there
I think we are 99% there. If you make a decent AMD based machine, install Bazzite on it, you can set it to "Open in Big Picture mode on startup". After the initial configuration in desktop mode (you need to do this only once during installation), you can just start the PC and sit in your couch. No need to download drivers or any desktop shenanigans. You control it using any standard game controller. No need for a mouse/kb; just start and play.
And 99 times out if 100 will get a PC release anyways...
And 100 out of 100 times, we build emulators that run on PC. They can take years to make with the complexity of newer systems, but they'll get there.
As long as there are killer 1st party titles exclusive to a console platform, there’s a reason to buy one.
Personally, I love Zelda, Mario, and most recently I’ve been excited about the new Astro Bot game about to come out.
Outside of Steam Deck emulation, you need a console to play those, and I do enjoy the convenience.
The last Xbox worth buying was the 360, because all Xbox titles are released on other platforms now - eliminating the need for an Xbox console.
As long as there are killer 1st party titles exclusive to a console platform, there’s a reason to buy one.
Counterargument: some of us consider this kind of arbitrary BS a reason NOT to buy one.
And that's before you even consider the additional crap consoles pull, like Nintendo making the only way to back up your saves a fucking subscription service.
Especially now that there are maybe 2 or 3 "killer apps" per the life cycle of a console at this point. Why would I pay $600 to buy a console, just for 3 exclusives?
If there was an entire panel of awesome exclusives like back in the PS3/360 era, it would make more sense. But as it stands, the amount of good games on PC just dwarfs what's on any console.
I would agree with your last statement, but in the case of Xbox i think it is by design. They already excitedly talk about windows handhelds being the future and its because the console market has almost always been a loss, even back to the Sega selling massively under production cost to try and take ground from Nintendo. Games were always what made the profit.
In the case of Xbox, their business model for a long time has been moving to a live service streaming model, i don't think they want to be in the console market. If they can move their app on all kinds of devices, they can skip the investment of the console and instead focus on what the real profit driver was all along.
The new-gen console is actually trending 7 per cent ahead of the PS4 in the United States launch aligned.
And how much do you think the drop in Xbox is? It's way more than 7 percent. The problem for Sony isn't that its console is dying; it's that they're approaching market saturation. They've got their market cornered in a way that they never have, and they've only got a 7 percent lead off of the last generation. Peak dollars spent on consoles was back in 2009, when all three consoles were in very healthy competition. Many PS4 users are happy to stay on PS4, because the games they play are over 10 years old, like Grand Theft Auto V and Minecraft, so there's no need to upgrade.
Meanwhile, a console that launched with some idea of every game running at 60 FPS is now compromising on that (it was inevitable, but people believed otherwise). Games that used to be console exclusive are now coming out on PC, where you don't need to pay a subscription fee to play online and your library always comes with the assumption that every game you have will be forward compatible. Even if you buy the new PlayStation, there's no promise that your old games will run at better resolutions and frame rates. The controller you bought 10 years ago still works on PC, but Sony says you need to buy the new one, even if the game you're playing uses none of its new features. The VR system you bought before doesn't play the new VR games. For all sorts of economic realities, not the least of which are certification processes and licensing fees, there's a good chance that game you really want to play is on PC long before it's on console, in early access or otherwise. There are no competing storefronts for digital releases, so you can only pay what Sony says you have to pay. Consoles also aren't even significantly cheaper than an equivalent PC anymore, and they run basically the same hardware under the hood, so the reasons for a console as we know them today to exist are fewer and fewer as time goes on.
60fps PS5 games were only ever 60fps because they were really just PS4 games running on faster hardware.
Now that we're finally getting games that aren't cross-gen with the 10-year-old PS4, we're back to 30fps-ville.
Sont forget that pc games have faster, more frequent and longer updates, cross storefront multiplayer and quickly cost a lot less than at launch.
Oh, the Ex-Xbox Exec? I hear is now a Court Reporter with a unique sense of fashion, the jet-setting jort-sporting Court Reporter.
Failing manufacturers in this case mean manufacturers who've sold twice your product count?
Clearly Xbox have a weird definition of the word "fail".
Consoles will be around until the tech is sufficiently advanced as to negate their usefulness. There will come a day when a phone does everything a modern high end PC can. Bluetooth to a TV and play whatever you want.
Graphic fidelity is almost to a point where there isn't much more needed in the way of processing power. Another decade. Maybe 2. Consoles will still exist for decades yet. But they're going to become increasingly unnecessary.
Steam is futureproof. But nothing else.
I think it's a bit shortsighted to assume gaming will have no use for significantly more powerful hardware in the future. even if not for graphics or VR, it could be greater use of AI, or something else we could never foresee.
I disagree. Your phone can happily do that today as long as you're willing to play old games. This will always be the case, even when phones are able to play things today are now considered AAA, Desktop computers will be leaps ahead in what they can do.
Dedicated hardware still has benefits, having your phone notifications separate from gaming, if your phone breaks having your console break would suck, and imo a touchscreen will never surpass physical buttons on controllers so you'd still want those.
I personally hope the future looks more like a steam deck than a gaming phone.
In terms of touch screen control. The phone will just be the processing unit. It will wirelessly Stream the video to your tv while accepting controllers and other ik devices via bluetooth. Maybe with a switch like cradle. And I can't play a lot of games with a controller.. but my kids play fine with one.. also on the touch screen. It's what you are used to I guess.
Can things that are true be a "pushed narrative"?
Is this when they realise that infinite growth isn't actually infinite? There's always a place for a device for entertainment. Be that pen and paper or electronic.
Well, maybe there's some truth to that. my phone is basically a Switch when I slide it into a controller. The biggest problem it's facing is the limited library of non-shitty games and storage space. Once I can store a terabyte on my phone and can link it up to my steam library, I don't think I'd even consider buying a console again. To me, the only thing a playstation has over a steam deck is its exclusives.
And exclusive titles is an asshole move to force users to buy a whole platform for a single game. It's anti competitive. It's anti consumer. It should be illegal.
Your console is failing doesnt mean Nintendo and playstation are failing. As a matter of fact they are killing it. Xbox has lost the console wars!
I think the biggest competition to consoles is tablets. A lot of Gen Alpha doesn't even know how to use a controller. EDIT I guess noone on Lemmy actually pays attention to kids these days...
What the fuck gen am I? Millenials, Z and all this shite. Everytime I get on here there is a new generation. Im only 30.
'94 is considered a Millennial typically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#/media/File:Generation_timeline.svg
