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45% of enthusiasts 'seriously considering' leaving Sony for PC

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Re: 45% of enthusiasts 'seriously considering' leaving Sony for PC

#31

Post by everdrive »

parineum wrote: post #16
CodingJeebus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a function of growth at all costs (or to put more bluntly, capitalism). TVs need to continuously improve to keep selling, as do video game systems, etc. And graphics are the easiest benchmark to advertise progress, but also some of the most taxing systems to build because they're so complex that there are huge markets of commercial game engines to address this. Good gameplay requires taste, nuance, exper…

> TVs need to continuously improve to keep selling All while getting cheaper in the process. Thanks capitalism!

>All while getting cheaper in the process.

All while getting worse; advertisements, terrible interfaces, privacy invasions, frame gen, weird color options, etc. I don't hate capitalism or anything, but new TVs are dumb as heck.

Re: 45% of enthusiasts 'seriously considering' leaving Sony for PC

#32

Post by nubinetwork »

nottorp wrote: post #11
nubinetwork wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of that announcement, but its just words until they have a console to back it up with.

They will drop discs for the ps5 too starting 2028. They don't need a new console.

They tried dropping discs when they launched the ps5, but I don't think many people bought the online only version because North American internet still sucks.

Re: 45% of enthusiasts 'seriously considering' leaving Sony for PC

#33

Post by onion2k »

everdrive wrote: post #5

Gaming is getting too expensive. This feels like sort of an accident of complex systems. Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing. But, some of the most fun games in the world were made 30 ago. From a pure "can we have good entertainment?" standpoint there's no reason for this cost creep. In practice, companies are pushing it, and although it probably does not apply to the HN crowd,…

consumers are also demanding better graphics

I don't think many consumers (outside of hardcore games) could tell the difference between the graphics of a game from 10 years ago to the graphics from a game of today. Things have hardly moved on at all. As an example to illustrate the point: GTA:V is 13 years old.

Re: 45% of enthusiasts 'seriously considering' leaving Sony for PC

#34

Post by password54321 »

everdrive wrote: post #5

Gaming is getting too expensive. This feels like sort of an accident of complex systems. Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing. But, some of the most fun games in the world were made 30 ago. From a pure "can we have good entertainment?" standpoint there's no reason for this cost creep. In practice, companies are pushing it, and although it probably does not apply to the HN crowd,…

It is not really about graphics as it is about the scale of a game. Many studios don't even create their own custom engines like they used to to push the most out of hardware and use Unreal Engine. Games take long now because they are much larger in scope and are typically open world. Even the sequel to Breath of the Wild took 6 years and the graphics aren't exactly staggering but the scope of these games have improved a lot which isn't a bad thing. You can get lost in some for dozens of hours. I would imagine studios like From Software even enjoy the ambition of creating games like Elden Ring.

Re: 45% of enthusiasts 'seriously considering' leaving Sony for PC

#35

Post by everdrive »

onion2k wrote: post #33
everdrive wrote: post #5

Gaming is getting too expensive. This feels like sort of an accident of complex systems. Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing. But, some of the most fun games in the world were made 30 ago. From a pure "can we have good entertainment?" standpoint there's no reason for this cost creep. In practice, companies are pushing it, and although it probably does not apply to the HN crowd,…

consumers are also demanding better graphics I don't think many consumers (outside of hardcore games) could tell the difference between the graphics of a game from 10 years ago to the graphics from a game of today. Things have hardly moved on at all. As an example to illustrate the point: GTA:V is 13 years old.

I could be wrong, but my personal impression is that much like on HN, it's the enthusiasts who are quite into niche stuff like indie games and bemoan the graphics race, where as the silent mass of "average" gamers are more like "oh man, the new Call of Duty has even better graphics! I can't imagine playing the old one anymore."

Re: 45% of enthusiasts 'seriously considering' leaving Sony for PC

#36

Post by zetanor »

miiiiiike wrote: post #6

Sure. Until the first FromSoftware PS6 exclusive is released. Child, six, seriously considering running away from home after parents refuse to serve dinner on dinosaur plate. People realize that Steam doesn't use physical media, right? The real issue is the lack of consumer friendly regulation, not the medium.

Some people like disc cases and the actual disk itself, but the main gripes I've seen with digital only games on consoles were: 1) without a disc you can't give/trade/sell the game, 2) without a disc the game can be taken away from you, 3) if you can't make an offline backup copy of the game and transfer it from console to console, most/every copy of a game will eventually disappear.

Steam has issues, and you certainly can't (legally) trade or sell your library, but nearly no single player games on the platform have DRM. Thus, you can have as many off-Steam backups as you want (which can't be remotely deleted/disabled), and you could certainly "give" the game to a friend (but don't copy that floppy), or otherwise preserve it for posterity.

Re: 45% of enthusiasts 'seriously considering' leaving Sony for PC

#37

Post by TulliusCicero »

everdrive wrote: post #5

Gaming is getting too expensive. This feels like sort of an accident of complex systems. Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing. But, some of the most fun games in the world were made 30 ago. From a pure "can we have good entertainment?" standpoint there's no reason for this cost creep. In practice, companies are pushing it, and although it probably does not apply to the HN crowd,…

> Gaming is getting too expensive.

Gaming is so much cheaper than when I was growing up that I'm kind of blown away.

SNES games went for $60-70. That's like $130-150 in today's money. And they usually had less content than today's games, even if you never do microtransactions today!

In contrast, major AAA titles today are half the price, and you can find indie games packed with content for a paltry $20. Hell, with Steam sales, you can find them even cheaper than that! Some free to play games like Dota 2 make all of their core gameplay content free!

If you check when games like Quake were released, their minimum requirements were absolutely INSANE compared to today. We're talking about mid to high-end CPUs released within the last two or three years, none of this "oh yeah something lower-middle from 5 years ago is fine". Average prices for computers were much higher too (well, maybe the current RAM/SSD crisis has equalized that a bit, but other than that).

Controllers? 8bitdo and the like make highly competent gamepads for $30, which would've been $15 in the 90's. You couldn't even get terrible third-party shitpads for that little back then! It's disgustingly cheap.

If you want to game these days, you can spend a very reasonable amount of money on a mid-range gaming PC* and have it last at least a good 5-6 years. You can then buy games for a steal on Steam, and get surprisingly decent peripherals like gaming monitors and mechanical keyboards for almost no money. The idea that gaming is "too expensive now" is itself laughable.

* Well, other than the memory crisis fucking things up, but before AI companies ate all the RAM, things were very reasonable

Re: 45% of enthusiasts 'seriously considering' leaving Sony for PC

#38

Post by [deleted] »

nottorp wrote: post #7
nubinetwork wrote: post #4

Why? It makes no sense really... you buy into a console and stay with it until the next release... Last time I checked, the ps6 hasn't been announced, there probably won't be a Xbox one X/S/pro/whatever successor any time soon, and PC hardware is expensive or hard to get right now. Just stay the road for 6 months and see how the market shakes out.

You missed the part where Sony is going download only, which means any attempt to collect playstation games in the long run becomes impossible.

[deleted]

Re: 45% of enthusiasts 'seriously considering' leaving Sony for PC

#40

Post by benbristow »

Don't really have the room for a gaming PC anymore after moving, I've got my old one but it needs some fixing up (RTX 3080). 1TB Xbox One Series X I got second hand for about $400 (also added a storage expansion for about $130) is doing me sound for any gaming needs (currency converted from GBP). All the games optimised, usually 60fps, no messing about with settings other than the quality/performance switches. Looks great on the TV with 4K/HDR. Laptop for the day to day workstation stuff. Lovely controller. Been enjoying Forza Horizon 6 and just started playing Star Wars Outlaws.

Used to be pretty 'PC Master Race' but then life got in the way.

I do miss stuff like modded Valve games and keyboard & mouse, but can run them somewhat on my laptop.

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