Honestly all of this bullshit is why I went with a Steamdeck a few years ago. As a working adult with a family I have different economic obligations and priorities.

I need to build a new PC soon (mine is now 10 years old) but I can't justify spending $5K on a gaming rig. If I built now with a flagship card, just the card itself would cost more than I spent on my entire rig when I built it in 2014/2015. Pair that with Microsoft's ridiculous operating system enshittification, and the PC situation gets even more complicated for me.

Consoles have gotten to be a bad value proposition for me as well. Paper launches, scalping during the pandemic, DRM etc., services going offline. All that garbage leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm having a decent enough time with Steam sale games, Indy games, and retro emulation.

[–] Thatuserguy@lemmy.world 31 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Microsoft not shooting themselves in the foot every chance they get challenge (impossible)

[–] Hyphlosion@lemm.ee 2 points 5 days ago

But we got Candy Crush Solitaire now, right?

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 40 points 6 days ago (6 children)

TBH, I can't remember the last time I turned on any of my consoles for anything other than 4K movies.

This generation has just been awful for games, the Covid drop just never recovered.

Will look at Avowed, but not feeling great about it. Dumping games in Jan/Feb generally is not a good look (OTOH you get the occasional Hi Fi Rush instead of Forspoken).

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 23 points 6 days ago

There have been so many great games in the last few years that it's been hard to keep up, but they haven't required those new consoles.

[–] icecreamtaco@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Just get a switch, the entire crisis about this gen causing a second industry crash is nonexistent over there. We got like six new games for xmas

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 25 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Or a Steam Deck.

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago

Like 95% of my games now just target SD. Its so easy to work. And it works with emulation, its very open.

[–] But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

I have been a patient gamer and for the last 2 years with psplus and a library card I have burned through every ps4 title worth playing and decided to finally upgrade to a ps5.

3 months in and I’m struggling to find games that look good to me. I keep trying unknown titles and they’re meh.

I can’t believe that years into the ps5 life and I don’t have a backlog of like dozens of ps5 games to play.

[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Avowed is reviewing decently, at least. I trust Obsidian

[–] But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I actually liked outer worlds by them despite how short it was

[–] tal@lemmy.today 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I didn't hate it, but it just wasn't Fallout: New Vegas, and I walked away a little disappointed after hoping for a new Fallout-like game.

Some of the major elements from Fallout just weren't there:

Fallout provided neat perks/traits that substantially-impacted how one played; that's a signature part of the series. The great bulk of the perks in The Outer Worlds were things like small percentage increases. They didn't have a significant impact on how the game played out.
The weapons didn't "feel" very different other than across classes, with the exception of the "science weapons", so there wasn't a lot of variety in gunplay over the course of a game.
While the world was open in that one could technically always backtrack, there wasn't much reason to do so.
Most of the content was in "cities". Yeah, sure, there was wilderness, and maybe that added a sense of scale, but it was mostly just filler between cities. If you're wandering around in Fallout: New Vegas or Fallout 4, there was interesting content all over to just stumble into. One only really got that in cities.
Not a lot by way of meaningful, world-affecting decisions. Okay, you can also criticize Fallout 4 on these grounds, but if you were hoping for a Fallout: New Vegas...

There were some things that I did like. In particular:

It was pretty stable and bug-free. The Fallout series has had entrants from a number of teams, but one consistent element has been a lot of bugs at release.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

In a lot of ways, I liked it because of how short it was.

[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Same. Definitely had its limitations but it was decent fun. Figure if they can pull that off on a shoestring budget they can make a great fantasy rpg

[–] TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

If Avowed is bad I'm going to be really disappointed. I love Pillars of Eternity and played hundred of hours of Grounded.

[–] Flamekebab@piefed.social 2 points 6 days ago

I'm still waiting for enough titles to come out on either platform to make the jump from my Xbox One X.

[–] Hyphlosion@lemm.ee 13 points 5 days ago

This whole generation has been messed up from the word go. Scalpers ruined my chances of getting a PS5 (and I went with Xbox for the very first time since they had a payment program) and I’m still very sore about that. Anyone remember “Oh Deer”?

Nintendo doing whatever the fuck they want, making the Switch last the Wii U’s latter-half of a generation and then it’s own generation. The Switch 2 coming in so late to this generation that you have to wonder if we can even call them Nintendo/PlayStation/Xbox generations anymore and instead it’s PlayStation/Xbox with Nintendo it’s own category of generations now.

Xbox making a high-end console with a mid console and forcing the same games to be released for both. Sounds extremely consumer friendly, but made things a headache for developers who probably felt held back by it.

Sony…where do I begin. I guess my main gripe with them is that they’re still giving the middle finger to PS3 backwards compatibility on PS5. (Yes I know about the Cell and blah blah blah. Don’t care. Make it happen, get my money. Capice?) The PS5 Pro might’ve been where I finally hopped on, but eh. My PS4 Pro is still going strong and they don’t have anything that entices me to make the leap after I invested in Xbox Series X.

And so many games being cross-gen this time around. Holly hell. I understand why that is, but I feel like this is the most blah generation ever. There have been some awesome games for sure, but overall it felt not very exciting.

And Microsoft not really seeming to care about all this because they feel they’re on a different plane of existence now and consoles are trivial to them since your toaster can now play Xbox games.

So instead of having a 3-way drumline competition, they’re just parading off in different random directions through town.

[–] Venicon@lemmy.world 27 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I am lucky enough to have both the PS5 and the Xbox and personally find very little to pick out between them. I prefer XB controller but think the PS5 one is better quality with the haptic feedback. I love Game Pass and have found tremendous value in it, more so than in PlayStations version though PS still manage to get exclusives.

Mind you the way some of these articles sound is that the whole Xbox gaming division is on its knees and doesn’t sell a machine or make a penny.

[–] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 22 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Mind you the way some of these articles sound is that the whole Xbox gaming division is on its knees and doesn’t sell a machine or make a penny.

It does feel like they're using excessively narrow defintions and picking facts to create the narrative they want.

Okay, the smaller of Microsoft's gaming platforms isn't selling as well as the PS5, while the other one is growing so fast even Sony is porting all of their exclusive games to it.

Doesn't really feel like a complete market failure to me?

[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 18 points 6 days ago

This article does smell of console war nonsense.

[–] Venicon@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

What @NOT_RICK@lemmy.world said. Console war nonsense. Any excuse to make it look like one side is winning or whatnot but then again it made people click on the article and see the adverts which apparently is all it takes these days to churn out BS articles.

[–] shadowedcross@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago

I don't care for the quality of either controller tbh. The haptic feedback for the PS5 controller is nice, but until official controllers start using HE sticks, they're pretty much worthless to me.

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 5 days ago

Consoles have essentially become obsolete, while PC gaming is at an all-time high.

Consoles are more expensive than video cards, except you can't upgrade them. GPU processing power hasn't been jumping exponentially, like it had in the past, so you can still play most anything with a decent 5-year-old card. Hell, with AAA gaming falling behind indie games, there's not really a point in investing so much in graphical output, and you have far far more indie game options with PC.

Console exclusives are a thing of the past, so everybody has the option to jump ship to a PC version. While some of the console->PC ports can be pretty bad, most are starting as PC-first and then moving to console, which ends up with bad porting quality happening in the other direction. Exclusives used to be a huge driver of buying a console (like Metroid Prime for GameCube or FF7 for Playstation), and now PCs have the most access to almost every game.

Steam Decks are starting to drive the industry, pushing Linux gaming to the highest its ever been, and is making Nintendo worried enough to push Switch 2 as a competitor. A vast vast majority of PC games are on Steam, and a vast majority of games in general are on PC. So, accessibility to play just about anything you want on both PC and on a portable Steam Deck makes it way more attractive than anything the consoles could provide.

Consoles are already dead. They just need another 10-15 years before their respective industry leaders finally realize that. At best, Nintendo would carve a market with their own brand of exclusivity and first-party titles, but even that will fall.

[–] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 days ago

Were they trying to shove AI into it?

[–] atrielienz@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Just about everyone I know who has the latest gen Xbox had trouble acquiring one. The pandemic messed up the launch of both games and the manufacture/availability of the consoles and unlike the switch and PS5 (which have worldwide popularity), the Xbox just never seems to have recovered because Americans went from a point in time where they had a lot more free time and potentially money (with the stimulus), right back to the grind with stagnant wages and housing crisis etc. Can't say I'm surprised that it's not selling well these days.

[–] makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Got a retroid pocket 5.

Wish I'd done it years ago. Never had more accessible gaming.

And not just retro titles. Stardew Valley, modern metroidvanias, etc are amazing on it.

[–] PanArab@lemm.ee 2 points 5 days ago

I have an XBox Series S that I purchased using Microsoft Rewards points, but over the past year I decided to boycott Microsoft for a myriad of reasons and stopped buying games for it and switched to Playstation, Switch and Steam as my platforms of choice for new game purchases. I still have a massive library for XBox so I will still be playing on it for years to come.

[–] Kng@feddit.rocks 2 points 5 days ago

Still hardly use my Xbox one despite it being my most current console. Still don't really have a reason to upgrade. Its even compatible with the newer controllers and it can play 4k discs.

[–] But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

I saw like a dozen Xbox series s for like $250 at an overstock sale near me and was wondering if it was real