Modern consoles are locked pre-built PCs. You have to pay for online. Why get a console at this point in time?
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
303 points (97.8% liked)
Games
17247 readers
480 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
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.
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.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Console updates and game updates are a thing. It will work, true, it just might be downloading and installing updates for a day before it does.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.
load more comments
(7 replies)
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...
load more comments
(12 replies)
load more comments
(18 replies)
Because you can just plug it in to your TV and play. That's the target demographic.
I do that with my steam deck
Edit: I actually never bought a steam deck have a PC set up to be like one but you can just dock the steam deck and use it that way
I've thought about getting a dock for my Steam Deck, but honestly, I just either play on my desktop or Steam Deck, almost never on my TV. I also have a Switch for the TV, and I only really use it for party games.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(9 replies)
Man i was just told pc gaming would be dead in 5 years
Huh, I'm kind of surprised that's a new thing. I would assume way more people own computers than consoles in modern times so you would think that would always mean more sales
Thoughout history a typical gaming machine could run you over $1000, game consoles often cost under $400. Consoles are very often sold as loss leaders to promote software sales, PCs are not. Oh and that's just the cost of the box itself; a console is usually designed to attach to a television which has built-in speakers and consoles usually have at least one controller packed in. Computer monitors are sold separately as are any sound equipment. Normie PCs like Dell ~~Inspiron~~ Basic Plus machines might come with a keyboard and mouse but gaming PCs sometimes don't because they expect you're going to buy premium peripherals. You've got a desk to put this on, right?
Oh also there just isn't much of a PC gaming culture in Japan. It may be increasing now but in the land of Nintendo, Sega and Sony they play console games.
On the other hand, a PC is good for things that aren't gaming, like work or something.
People are less likely to own a TV already these days though than they used to be so the price calculation for consoles favors them a lot less if you take that into account. Not to mention that console games tend to be more expensive than PC games, especially indie PC games now that triple A is more of a warning label than an indicator of quality.
People have been buying Madden and Call Of Duty reliably for decades now. Doesn't matter if they're good or cheap, there are people who identify as "a person who buys Madden and Call Of Duty."
load more comments
(5 replies)
I mean yeah but you don't need an expensive computer to play games. In the mid 2010s I spent loads of time playing games on my ~$200 something Asus netbook, and more recently I was using an old Dell Precision from 2011 I got for $25 and put a $75 GPU into from like 2018 until 2023.
I guess maybe the difference is that people who don't buy expensive consoles or computers also don't buy expensive games. For the most part I don't buy things unless they have a sale for like under $30, so even though I've bought a lot of games I've probably paid less total money for games than the average console player.
TVs are also sold separately though if you are gonna count monitors as extra for PC, wtf. Also you literally have to pay to play online for consoles, thats a joke. Ive saved an insane amount of money by gaming on PC for decades and forgoing consoles overall and its not even close.
For most of the history of home video gaming, a television was primarily purchased for viewing broadcast, cable or satellite TV programming and/or watching movies on tape or DVD. A household that was going to buy a video game machine almost certainly already had at least one television and a game console would be one of the things attached to it. The investment would be considered already made.
That has been true of PC gaming for very small stretches of its existence; PCs have rarely worked on the living room couch so you usually set up a desk scenario with a dedicated monitor. The average PC buyer of the last 30 years would buy a monitor along with the computer.
Yes, if you have no AV equipment at all and want to get into video games you will have to buy some kind of monitor. The typical unwashed mass who has absolutely no AV equipment and wants to play video games will likely buy a Nintendo Switch because he hasn't heard of a Steam Deck.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Piracy is a lot more accessible on PCs than consoles
Piracy doesn't really decrease sales though, in fact it might increase them since it generates word of mouth from people who wouldn't have bought it.
How about we equate the nebulous uncertainty of those claims, since piracy arguments never have reliable motivator data.
“Piracy might not decrease sales. In fact it might increase them.”
Here's a source on that claim. The uncertainty here is due to the large margin of error, so the takeaway is that it likely has no effect, or perhaps a small positive effect.
Here's the claim:
the study estimates that for every 100 games that are downloaded illegally, players actually legally obtain 24 more games (including free games) than they would in a world in which piracy didn't exist.
...
points out a number of caveats for this headline number, not least of which is a 45-percent error margin that makes the results less than statistically significant (i.e. indistinguishable from noise). That said, the same study finds that piracy has the more-expected negative effects on sales of films and books (and a neutral effect on music), singling out games as one area where piracy really does seem to work differently.
load more comments
(2 replies)
If i count all the media I've consumed in the last 8-9 years as savings, piracy has paid the price of my 1000$ ~~entertainment console~~ PC so, so many times over.
It's not like there needs to be a winner here. Console or PC gaming is just a personal preference and will always coexist.
Exactly. Consoles exist as a super low barrier to entry, value play for casual gaming. If you just want to have something on your living room tv, a console instantly achieves that, with no debugging or technical know-how required whatsoever.
I switched from a Series X to a living room gaming PC last year and absolutely adore it, but I'm also willing to spend hours tinkering with emulators, playnite, settings, etc. I actually enjoy messing with it, so this is way better for me, but I'm absolutely aware that it's been a massive amount of fiddling to get my experience this clean and integrated, and I'll never manage something like Quick Resume.
If you want it to "just work" absolutely go with a console. If you like to tinker, are bothered by nitpicky details, play a lot and need to cut costs, or just really care about features like higher refresh rates, and aren't put off by a lot of settings and performance testing, then 100% go for a PC.
I have a Series S and quick resume and backward compatibility are the best features. The current generation is generally underwhelming though so I'm not surprised if pc gaming is on the rise.
Personal preferences and experiences aside, consoles are a big source of e-waste - they come as an addition to your (presumably already existing) PC, can only be used to play certain games (you might need several different consoles to cover all of the exclusives), they can't be upgraded and lose their relevance over time as games stop being released for older models.
consoles are a big source of e-waste
Surely pc components are an equal source of e-waste? Personally I think PC gaming is in a weird place with all the unnecessary RGB obsession and endless consumerism of upgrades.
presumably already existing
I think you'd be surprised how uninterested the average person is in owning and using a pc nowadays so we can't easily assume that.
lose their relevance over time
Also applies to pc gaming... It's not like consoles stop working when a new one is released.
Anyway I'm not here to argue for one or the other as they can just happily coexist.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Also with things like Steam Deck now as well, consoles to me seem like one of the worst purchases for gaming you can make.
Is it weird that I'm about to go full circle? Started on consoles. Switched to PC around 2010, and now I'm kind of leaning towards consoles again. Maybe it's my setup for my rig, I can not stand headphones, a smallish monitor, or a computer chair to game in anymore. I've setup myself to be able to play games on my couch with my pc, but the fact that I never own a physical copy of a game bothers me so much - as I've gotten older I cherish the physical copies of games that I have and it's nice to go back and boot up my old console and play it no problem whenever I want. Can't really say that about PC barring GOG's attempt to preserve games. Because as it stands now, at some point a game played on PC will be rendered unplayable unless you really go through some hoops to get it running right. A small example would be Fallout 3 needs a mod to properly use RAM because it was only designed for a small amount (if I remember correctly).
Your physical copies are not immune to that. GOG is likely as good as it gets. Physical copies often still need patching out of the box, and the consoles that they run on are so inherently tied to the internet and their operating systems that it's a risky wager to bet that they'll last as long as your NES. For what it's worth, Fallout 3 is running quite well via Proton, but I did have to edit an INI file to lock it to 60 FPS on a monitor that exceeds that refresh rate; your console version would have its own compromises to wade through, because it's not exactly an immaculate piece of software.
load more comments
(6 replies)
There's no way I will ever get rid of my desktop PC (and my 3DS I guess).
Ya consoles suck. Not a surprise. It’s always been this way.
view more: next ›