Game consoles are becoming pointless

Admin

Administrator
Moderator
Messages
4,056
#1
Let's take a look at advantages console gaming has offered and see if any of these are going to remain

0. Better hardware/$
1. Convenience.
2. Optimized for gaming in the living room.
3. Physical media still widely available.
4. Harder to cheat in competitive gaming
5. Being able to optimize games for a specific system.
6. Not having the operating system take up resources while gaming.

6 hasn't been true since the wii, after that consoles have had wasteful operating system (even morse wasteful than windows 10).

Due to APIs such as Vulkan and Direct X 12 consoles no longer offer much of an advantage when it comes to optimization for specific hardware. Furthermore making the game for specific hardware creates the issue of the game not being able to utilize future better hardware well, we see this a lot with games made for PS4/xbone, PS5 end up having to emulate the old inferior hardware to play these games (which it does well but still not ideal).

There is less of a point to physical media today on PC since people have a lot more freedom there. Almost all games are easy to pirate on PC and we are not looked to specific services. Furthermore increasingly the version of a game that is on a disk will typically end up obsolete quickly as a game is updated. Physical media just isn't very practical today due to games being released unfinished most of the time.
 

Admin

Administrator
Moderator
Messages
4,056
#2
What about gaming in the living room?
While you could argue that consoles still do this better it's increasingly hard to justify that position.

You can easily connect a PS5 controller to your PC to play games in the couch. You could also use wireless mouse+keyboard when you need that.

Valve did earlier push for steamOS with the goal of making it convenient to game in the living-room but this ended up flopping. Other people later worked on other project to optimize games for the living-room eliminating the need to use a mouse and keyboard to setup stuff.

The issue is that while it's possible to make a user-friendly linux operating system for gaming-only most games are only released for windows and proton doesn't always work, this is one of the issues with the steam deck (handheld PC).

One big issue with console gaming in the living-room however is that usually console games do not support gyro aiming (even though the dualsense has a good gyroscope), instead aim-assist or outright auto-aim is offered. With PC you are able to do fix these issues yourself to play the game the way you like it.

As we see console struggle to compete even for the task they are specifically made for while being much more restricted than PCs (not allowing for much if any productivity).
 

Admin

Administrator
Moderator
Messages
4,056
#3
Remember when you could just put in a game and play?
This was the case with older consoles. All you had to do was to insert the disk/cartridge and that was it, no need for installations, no need to download.

Modern consoles no longer offer that. Even if you buy the game on disk it still has to be installed with the Nintendo switch as the only recent exception.

We might see cartridges for the steam deck though https://gamerant.com/steam-deck-cartridge-games/
 

Admin

Administrator
Moderator
Messages
4,056
#4
Price/performance
Sony and microsoft are able to keep their consoles cheap relative to their performance since they do not need to make a profit on the console, they can make their money by having people pay for there bullshit services.

They still charge you to use your own internet.

Microsoft also rips people off with their propriatory storage solution for the Series X. Sony was afraid of taking that route themselves due to PSvita flopping (had propriatary storage) but that may have been a mistake since most people on xbox seem ok with being ripped off (they are often too dumb to realize they are paying more for less performance).
 

Admin

Administrator
Moderator
Messages
4,056
#5
Exclusives
Game consoles offer less and less in exclusive content. It started with microsoft porting all their exlusives to windows and after that sony followed releasing many of their exclusives to PC.

But 'exclusive' titles are not something new. It has existen for a long time and almost without exception these titles eventually make it to PC via emulation. Currently PC can play a lot of PS3 games while sony still hasn't provided for any PS3 emulation on PS5 even though their console is perfectly capable of it in terms of hardware and there are opensource emulators they could easily utilize for that purpose.-

https://www.pcworld.com/article/693256/sonys-latest-move-indicates-more-playstation-games-are-coming-to-pc.html

But they are not porting to competing consoles so unless you buy both XSX and PS5 you will end up missing out a lot (yes i ignore the series S because it's a shit system).

Nintendo does not release on PC at all but you can easily emulate these titles.

 

Admin

Administrator
Moderator
Messages
4,056
#6
Cheating is possible on consoles
You can 'cheat' by playing with keyboard and mouse by using a third-party adapter, then you get an advantage over the ones who are using the default controller.

This issue was caused by people more or less being forced to use unprecise control methods for shooters.

Ctrossplay is also becoming more and more standard so even if you are on a console you might still find yourself playing against PC players.
 

Admin

Administrator
Moderator
Messages
4,056
#7
A lot of console players simply don't make informed decisions
It's very much a mistake to assume that console players make rational well-informed decisions when it comes to their purchases. A lot of people simply continue playing on xbox because they used to play on xbox or buy a PS5 because they used to play on a PS4, people stick to what is familiar to them even if it is inferior.

It's important to recognize that a lot of people don't even know what a GPU is, they do not know how to build a computer, they are not proficient in using any PC operating system. For these technically illitarate people consoles can be appealing even if PC offer better performance for the same money (which isn't really the case now with games optimized for the new consoles).
 

Admin

Administrator
Moderator
Messages
4,056
#8
Console operating systems are bloated and highly restrictive
Not only does console operating systems prevent people from using the hardware they paid for to actually be productive (such as video editing) the console operating systems are also very wasteful in eating up ram that would have been needed for games.

PS5: 2GiB ram reserved for OS.
XSX: 2.5 GiB ram reserved for OS.

This while these consoles only offer 16 GiB ram in total (both for the GPU and CPU).

The very restrictive console operating systems are not for the benefit of the consumers in any way. The purpose is to milk the players out of money.

PS3 initially allowed people to install linux on the console despite taking a big loss on each unit sold.

Valve allow people to run desktop programs such as emulators on their steam decks, they even allow people to install windows. The simplistic default UI isn't something people are locked to there and it works just fine.

Microsoft devided to allow xbox users to stich to dev-mode after paying a small fee, sony of course doesn't allow anything like that which is a shame given their overall hardware superiority over XSX.

 

Admin

Administrator
Moderator
Messages
4,056
#9
Most PC-gamers do not have better GPU than PS5/XSX
It's unclear exactly which GPUs are better than the one in PS5 but 3060 and better can safely be considered as superior. That's slightly more than 16% of the steam user-base.

1655465327802.png


https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

It is worth nothing that PS5, XSX and PC GPUs have all been subjected to severe shortages, these figures doesn't represent what people actually want that well.

PC GPUs will become more clearly superior and affordable (relative to the performance) with the RTX 4000 launch likely coming this year.
 

Creamer

Well-known member
Messages
873
#10
the main downside to consoles is the censoring of visual novels, maitetsu is a prime example of this.

finding the good games is a hit or miss thing seeing as many game reviews are actually sponsored hiddenly.

still handheld consoles just feel more fun. less buttons, freedom of movement, taking it to bed, not having to
put in work to find the pirated game and worry about mallware or how to patch the game to get basic vital features like online play.

but I do agree that PS5 and Xbox type of consoles are obsolete
 

adolf512

Staff member
Moderator
Messages
374
#11
the main downside to consoles is the censoring of visual novels, maitetsu is a prime example of this.
Especially sony like to censor games.

finding the good games is a hit or miss thing seeing as many game reviews are actually sponsored hiddenly.
The sone 'exclusives' seem overrated to me, mostly third person advanture with mediocre gameplay.
still handheld consoles just feel more fun. less buttons, freedom of movement, taking it to bed, not having to put in work to find the pirated game and worry about mallware or how to patch the game to get basic vital features like online play.
Cannot you just buy games from steam/epic/whatever?
but I do agree that PS5 and Xbox type of consoles are obsolete
It was on the way out but especially sony (thanks to Mark Cerny) provided good hardware design giving consoles like these extended life.

One way forward might be to add PC functionality. The Steam Deck (handheld) is a great example of this.

But PC hardware will improve relative to the cost while consoles will not drop much in price
 
Top