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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

#51

Post by darth_avocado »

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,…

> but consumers are also demanding better graphics.

Modern games have visually worse graphics than games that came out 10+ years ago. Beyond that, the success of a lot of games recently with non AAA budgets shows that gamers aren’t demanding anything from the industry beyond playable games that don’t treat them as a perpetual revenue stream.

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

#52

Post by mikenew »

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,…

Current top 5 played games on the Steam Deck are: Slay the Spire 2, The Binding of Isaac, Dave the Diver, Stardew Valley, and Baldur's Gate 3. BG3 is the only one you can consider AAA, but Larian is hardly an EA or Blizzard.

The big AAA studios recycle the same formulas and push graphical quality (mostly downstream of Unreal Engine improvements) because they are risk averse. Similar to big comic-book-hero films. It's not what consumers want and it's increasingly starting to show. AAA is struggling badly while indie has been on an absolute tear the past few years.

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

#53

Post by michaelbrave »

I would only buy consoles after they had been out a few years, mid to late lifetime of the console, the primary benefit was it's nice to have in the living room instead of on a desk. Most of the games I bought were used or on sale. All of my purchases have been long tail distribution of a system. If a console goes digital only I won't buy the console. Most of my games are on pc now anyway, none of the modern games are way better than older ones, the only reason to keep up with the times is for community and discussion around the current events of the game, but I prefered single player games in the first place. But even now I have a backlog I can never finish in my lifetime, most of which are considered good.

So long story short, if Sony goes digital only, I will go back to retro and pc and I won't feel like I'm missing out that much if at all.

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

#54

Post by weezing »

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.

Steam provides awesome services tho. PSN is utter shit.

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

#55

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

everdrive wrote: post #29
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder if a studio that made a lot of smaller games with less technical specs but spent all the money in fun gameplay design and character design and stories would outcompete major AAA game studios. I think I'm just describing mobile game studios pre-gachafication

It's very interesting. I played that new-ish Marvel: Cosmic Invasion game and recently played Fight 'N Rage. I believe both are built in the exact same game engine. Fight 'N Rage, which is undoubtedly the better of the two games (although both are quite fun) had a tiny roster. I think there was a single primary developer, and then one guy did the music and maybe 1-2 other people helped with things. The Marvel game wa…

> Doom and Quake were made by quite small teams

Doom came out in 1993, all teams were "small" by 2026 standards.

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

#56

Post by miiiiiike »

zetanor wrote: post #36
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 certain…

You could buy, sell, trade, loan, and backup games with the right regulation. Discs are irrelevant.

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

#57

Post by gibberish678678 »

mhurron wrote: post #27
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 was always an expensive hobby. But this - > Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing Is unrelated. AAA Gaming companies relied so heavily on technical improvements when things were new and genuine leaps in ability that when we hit the graphics are good enough instead of just making great games that are fun, they had to do stupid graphics tricks. Did every strand of hair need t…

> Did that thing that basically no one will ever see need to be created over the course of 9 months?

As an engineer, I worry so much about writing perfect code even when I know it is temporary script for one off job. In my home, I painted top of the doors that no one will see. But I know it is painted.

It is nice that people care about these small things.

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

#58

Post by haunter »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #44
haunter wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>an i7 box and really anything from that generation That doesn't mean anything at all. The i7 is a family of CPUs which can be anything from a 2009 i7-860 (with DDR3 support only) to a 2023 i7-14700k (with DDR5 support). Insane performance difference.

I think the point is that an i7, even from ~15 years ago, is probably sufficient for most gaming needs, especially if the game is primarily GPU-bound. As long as you give the older CPU enough RAM, an SSD, and a good GPU, it probably is sufficient unless your doing sim-heavy games where you want the simulation speed to be maxed out (e.g. HoI4 later years max speed simulation)

The CPU will be a bottleneck even if you use ~7 years old RTX 2060. Anything newer just wouldn't work.

Honestly buying a 15 years old CPU is just an own goal when it will be outperformed by any modern budget i3

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

#59

Post by jsbisviewtiful »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #28
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,…

I hear people complaining nonstop about the state of gaming but man, I stopped playing AAA years ago organically and started playing AA and indie and it's been wonderful. Between Steam & GoG sales and using Epic Game Store only for all of their free stuff, my backlog grows and grows. Obviously this is subjective, but try some of that $5-10 stuff on Steam or GoG and you might be surprised how much there is to play out…

I’ll pick up a AAA game every few years and only after it’s on steep sale. This method has been working well for me but I’ve also considered myself as having my foot out the door for being a “gaming enthusiast” for 5-8 years now. I got tired of AAA games being so much money and not being very fun. Most recently, finally bought GoW Ragnarok for like $26 USD, ended up really not liking it and putting it down after 8 or so hours. Hurts a lot less when on steep sale.

I play a lot less than I used to thanks to cost, game quality and time - and the PS5 will be my last Sony console, regardless of the newest happenings. It’ll be PC and maybe a Nintendo console here and there unless prices go up even higher next gen, at which point I’d be done with consoles entirely and just use Steam and probably play indie and older games only. The industry just isn’t what it used to be.

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

#60

Post by emdash »

michaelbrave wrote: post #53

I would only buy consoles after they had been out a few years, mid to late lifetime of the console, the primary benefit was it's nice to have in the living room instead of on a desk. Most of the games I bought were used or on sale. All of my purchases have been long tail distribution of a system. If a console goes digital only I won't buy the console. Most of my games are on pc now anyway, none of the modern games ar…

I just have a desktop computer plugged into the TV in the living room.
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