I thought PS5 and switch were some of the best selling consoles of all time? Just because they are in the later part of their generation now doesn’t change that.
Outside of handhelds, I don’t really see the use-case of consoles anymore, to be honest.
Consoles aren’t going anywhere so long as GPU manufacturers keep scalping their userbase. A console costs less than just a GPU these days, with mostly comparable performance.
Mid-range GPUs still exist, they just dont get the same coverage as the top-end cards. An RTX 4060 is set at $300 which is much cheaper than a PS5 or Series X
$300 for the GPU only. You still need the rest of the PC to play games. The CPU will be at least $150 for anything that will run newer games basically at all, and then your RAM will be at least another $50. Now add on the case, fans, cooler, and any other accessories and for a mid-to-low range PC you’ve already passed the price of a premium console.
I’ve been a PC gamer for 3 decades. Most budget conscious PC gamers I know upgrade individual components as needed. Done this way, you can easily get more for your money than having to buy a new console every cycle.
Yes, but if you don’t have a PC, or one even remotely good enough, that cost is all up front.
Either way, you end up spending more on PC hardware than console hardware. For the price and for a person that isnt an enthusiast, they really don’t have a need to go to PC, when console does everything they want.
Don’t forget that games are significantly cheaper on PC, especially if you wait for the first sale (which’ll come much quicker on PC). The upfront cost is indeed higher, but depending on how many games you buy you’ll probably recoup that cost within one console generation.
A Ryzen 5600 is less than that and already beats the CPU in the PS5/X1X, especially in gaming.
The “mid-to-low range PC” already beats both consoles and when you consider that games are generally cheaper on PC and you don’t have to subscribe to a service just to play online, you’re quickly arriving at a point where PC gaming is cheaper while offering superior performance.
The “mid-to-low range PC” already beats both consoles
But not for the money. The console manufacturers sell their systems at a loss, which is something PC part manufacturers can’t do.
Steamdeck has shown that the age of the general purpose computer is very popular.
I think most people don’t care how their games run, just that they run.
Consoles were a way to have games “work” out of the box, even if you didn’t have a high powered computer. Now everyone has a high powered computer (phone).
Nintendo will never die, but I think open platforms like stramdeck with their HUGE libraries will be more popular until even cell phones take over that space.
I think most people don’t care how their games run, just that they run.
Honestly, this is why I game almost exclusively on console. I can download a game, press play, and it just works.
I have a Steam Deck too but I find myself not using it a lot. I loved it when I got it, but anymore it seems like there are just too many quirks(?) to make it an enjoyable experience. I swear even some verified games I have to do this tweak or that tweak to make it run right.
I’m married with kids and a house and 4 cars to maintain and when I get time to game I just want to play. I don’t want to think about if there is something special I need to do or some driver I need to update or whatever.
Yeah as a PC gamer of several decades I feel like this is easily the biggest weakness of the platform.
The Steam Deck did a pretty good job of trying to make things easy but it sounds like it still has a ways to go. Hopefully things get better and we can all get a “best of both worlds” experience at least when it comes to handhelds.
Preference. It is preference. It always was and it probably will be fir the foreseeable future. There are perks or arguments for either but imo you are either a PC-type or Console-type (subject to change over time lfc).
Put me in the both camp. They’re fundamentally different experience and there are different games that I prefer to have on PS5 and other on PC
Oh yeah totally forgot to add this as an option. I should have put it like: Those are different things with different aspects to like/dislike about each.
