Modern consoles are locked pre-built PCs. You have to pay for online. Why get a console at this point in time?
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.
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.
And windows updates are done when you’re asleep these days… There are tons of pre-built computers and laptops for people who don’t care to get the best value or performance.
Steam Deck has turned that around somewhat. It’s pretty close to an easy console experience, amd you can play on your couch, in bed, or on a plane.
That’s because it’s a console.
A console that’s also a fully functional PC you can install mods on.
PCs can do all of this and much more.
It’s the “and much more” that’s the problem. A console is a deli slicer where a PC is a chef’s knife.
The knife can do so much more than the deli slicer, but if you just want to slice some meat and don’t care about the rest, then the deli slicer is perfect.
Huh? This analogy is wild. Deli slicers are a specialist, commercial-level piece of equipment. It’s basically the antithesis of everything a console strives for, other than the fact that it’s a unitasker.
Deli slicer aren’t all commercial.
I have a $60 deli slicer on the counter. I also have chef’s knives that cost way more.
The knives can do everything the slicer can, but the untrained person can slice meat faster and neater with the slicer. They don’t need to k ow how to use a knife properly or how to sharpen a blade. It just works.
That’s a console. They’re cheaper than PCs that can run equivalent games for a lot of their lifespan, and they’re specialist devices that just fucking work.
But they can’t run cad, use excel, or do anything else but play games and videos just like a deli slicer can’t debone a chicken.
I’ve been PC gaming since 8-bit computers. I eventually bought an Xbox One as my first console and a Switch some years ago. I just couldn’t get into either of them after the initial novelty wore off. PC gaming is so much more convenient for me. I’m already at my PC, I just need to start a game. And I can multi-task with other apps in the background or on my second monitor. Going to the living room to play on a console on the TV, or switching inputs if I keep it attached to my PC monitor, both are too much hassle. I only ever use the XBox for Just Dance (nothing beats Kinect for it) and I’ve played many more hours of Switch games on an emulator on my PC than on the actual Switch.
Another big thing for me is that I’ve worked on computers as part of my job for the last 15yrs. The last thing I wanted to do was come back home to sit again at a computer chair on another computer. Now that I work remotely, there is even less of a separation of my life since I am in my office a lot. I mentally can’t have my work station also be my gaming station, it’s just not healthy for me, I’d never move from the same place. Maybe one day when one of my laptops is old I’ll finally install steam, but for now having a switch and ps5 works wonders for the separation.
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.
A steam deck is a custom gaming device with a custom gaming OS, custom, pre-defined hardware, limited upgradability, and launches into a gaming interface for a specific company’s game store and launcher.
How is it not a console?
It is a lot like a console, but there’s a huge catalog.
You answered your own question.
Because you can just plug it in to your TV and play. That’s the target demographic.
Besides plug and play safety as mentioned, two other cool things:
- Monthly Netflix-style rental service. For people who want to try a lot of games to find their niche, PS+ and Game Pass are great.
- Sleep mode. Being able to pause a game for days on end is incredibly convenient. PCs have attempted to have this feature, but very inconsistently, and it often means you cannot web browse when finished playing.
PCs have all of this and much more.
Gamepass is on Windows and Linux too
I’m sorry, what? Windows yes, I used PC Game Pass for a while before swearing off Xbox. But for all its emulation advances, Linux has always had huge struggles running UWP apps, which accounts for everything on Game Pass. Even on Windows, Game Pass isn’t always the best experience compared to just using a console.
Game Pass works through streaming, unfortunately running natively is impossible due to UWP crap. But next to that there is also EA Play and Ubisoft+ as well as free games from Amazon, Epic, etc.
I definitely wouldn’t count Game Pass streaming as an option to validate PC gaming; since that can run on old Android Phones too. Plus, many of the games are only going to support controller, and you need to upgrade to Ultimate to get access.
I admit I’d forgotten about EAP and U+; to my knowledge they’re pretty unpopular because of their cost-benefit ratio.
I got EA Play for 20€ a year so the cost part wasn’t really that much of a factor anymore.
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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
InspironBasic 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.”
Those are individual games though, console games are just much more expensive on average. There isn’t as much available on the cheaper end of the market.
So? How many people bought a Switch to play Breath of the Wild and basically nothing else?
Probably very few among the people who carefully weighed which system gives them the better bang for their buck.
Nah, a lot of people just buy whatever their friends have, and only own a handful of games (Madden, FIFA, etc) and just don’t think about it.
Look at how many people can’t afford the cars they own and roll negative equity into the next one, or look at how much credit card debt people have on average. People just buy without thinking too much.
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.
Your point makes the case for PC gaming, not consoles lol
I’m not sure how you arrive at that conclusion, “most people already have a TV so it’s not considered an additional purchase, a computer monitor almost always is.”
If you put yourself in the shoes of an average parent Christmas shopping for their 9 year old at some point in the last 30 years, well there’s a Playstation 2 for $299, a controller is included, a memory card is $40, and then we’ll buy 3 games for $60 each, so that’s about $520. We’ll hook it up to the living room TV we already own, it comes with the cable we need to do that, that’s all we need to buy. Or, let’s go over to the computer store and buy a gaming PC. We chose the PS2 era so ~2002, we’re looking at a Windows XP machine with probably a Pentium 4 processor, 512MB of RAM, a 256GB hard drive, a CD-RW drive and a DVD-ROM drive, plus an earlier Nvidia graphics card. Buy it from HP, Compaq, Dell or someone like that, you’re probably looking at $800 to $1000 for the PC itself, then you’re going to need to buy a computer monitor because the graphics card probably only has VGA out and your TV doesn’t have VGA in, so that’s another few hundred bucks you’re going to spend. It likely ships with a basic keyboard and mouse so you’ll get by with those.
Here’s a picture of a computer catalog circa 2000 of Pentium III grade systems advertising prices just shy of $1500 AFTER a $500 discount for a complete desktop setup, probably including the OS and probably some shovelware. And now it’s time to buy some games.
So if you started with the Playstation, you’d have to spend a thousand dollars on a television before you broke even on cost with an equivalent era gaming PC and accoutrements. Oh and you’re going to have to set up the OS and install the games you buy from CD, which has a chance of just not working at all because Windows is flaky. Oh no, that Windows 98 era game that’s still on store shelves in 2002 doesn’t work on Windows XP because of something called NT, you don’t know what that means and little Joshua is pissed. Maybe I should have just bought him a Furby.
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That said, I am a PC gamer, in fact I’m a Linux gamer. I’m typing this on my Ryzen 7700X/Radeon 7900GRE system with a 34 inch 1440p 144Hz monitor and 5.1 surround sound system. I play some hardware intensive games like Satisfactory, I also do my CAD design work on this box. It’s a vastly superior toy to any game console ever made and it’s also a profoundly useful tool.
I felt the need to reach back to the PS2 era because I don’t believe the current crop of game consoles offers the same value proposition. As I think you’re trying to point out, TV and movies nowadays are fucktrash and people are abandoning them, and it’s increasingly likely you don’t own a TV at all because why? The consoles are getting more expensive even though they are still sold as loss leaders, and their making everything they can into a subscription, they’re gonna wring the cash out of you somehow.
If someone with no AV equipment at all asked ME how to get into PC gaming, I’m gonna recommend a Steam Deck. It’s got everything you need to start playing, no accessories required, excellent UX, repairable hardware, can run LibreOffice, you can plug it into a monitor or television when/if you get one, and you don’t have to be a lizard people oligarch to afford it. Oh and at this exact moment in history it isn’t the flickering stub of a once tall candle with its successor waiting in the wings like the Nintendo Switch.
Also with things like Steam Deck now as well, consoles to me seem like one of the worst purchases for gaming you can make.
It’s not like there needs to be a winner here. Console or PC gaming is just a personal preference and will always coexist.
There doesn’t need to be a winner, but this was a very, very slow trend over the past 20 years for one line to cross the other line, and it didn’t used to be close.
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.
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.
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My man, if you read what I said on this thread, you’d understand that I’ve recently moved from mainly gaming on a traditional desktop setup to gaming on a couch. I was only voicing my new feelings I’ve developed about gaming on my desk instead of couch. For a long time I didn’t mind it but the past year or so I’ve had a different opinion. I was talking about making a little setup for using keyboard and mouse on my couch on a different comment. Sorry if I didn’t clarify this well enough.
I know. I commented before finishing your comment and immediately deleted it, but it didn’t actually delete. Happens to me all the time on Lemmy.
My bad; please ignore that comment.
All good! Brothers in (couch) gaming!
Time always marches on. Nothing is immune.
True, but I would like to prevent anything I can from happening in the name of longevity and preservation. Simple steps now could prevent bigger issues later when it comes to what I’m trying to accomplish here.
It might still be best just to convert your desktop into a couch and tv device at that point. Or a steamdeck.
I still have my desk setup for when I want to use it, but I’ve ran a HDMI cable under couches and rugs to my TV to use as well. Variety is the spice of life I guess lol. I don’t HATE playing certain things on my desktop setup, but I would much rather my couch setup if possible.
My next thing is to figure out how to use a keyboard/mouse while on the couch. Thought of making a little wooden contraption to sit over my lap with one of those bigger mouse pads glued onto it.
There are mouse and keyboard devices made for using from a couch too, they usually have some sort of track ball type thing for the mouse. Usually the tricky part is making it so you can even see your mouse on such a big screen.
That might be good for browsing the internet but that seems like hell for gaming
Ive never tried it that way, I usually use a controller from the couch but theres some games that doesnt work well. I dont think I would do well with satisfactory on a couch and tv setup with kbm, even if it was a normal mouse.
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