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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

#111

Post by m463 »

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…

I don't know, "heavy technical improvements" might not be necessary, but I remember when skyrim first came out and it was sort of an amazing, immersive world.

I understand that maybe pixel graphics games can be really mindful and charming, but sometimes the AAA games have not only tech, but all the rest too.

Not that it's a sure thing. I also recall roger ebert reviewing transformers: revenge of the fallen

"Of course there will be many more CGI-based action epics, but never again one this bloated, excessive, incomprehensible, long (149 minutes) or expensive (more than $200 million)."

https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/the-fall-of-the-reven...

but the funny part is about climax.

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

#112

Post by bathtub365 »

The majority of respondents claiming this is because of Sony ending production of disc based games seems crazy to me. How do they think you get games on PC? My Steam Deck doesn’t have a disc drive and desktop PC case doesn’t even have a 5.25” drive bay.

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

#113

Post by bathtub365 »

ronsor wrote: post #89
dinkleberg wrote: post #84

Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I would wager these survey results are completely meaningless. Being angry at Sony for ending physical games is the "correct opinion" right now and all of the social media influencers are getting big views off of the drama. And a significant number of people will just parrot the outrage they hear about even if they don't actually care. But by the time the PS6 comes out, I would bet tha…

I don't think it'll blow over as easily because the PS6 is going to be as expensive as a PC[0], at $1,000 or more. The usual things that inhibit consumer action are hassle, expense, and inertia, and Sony is dishing out all of that to its customers already. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/PS6-price-estimate-now-1000-an...

What PC are they going to get for a comparable price, that also has a disc drive? The Steam Machine came out more expensive than they wanted due to the current component price crisis and doesn’t have a disc drive.

And even then, where is anyone buying physical PC releases?

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

#114

Post by darth_avocado »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #79
darth_avocado wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Modern games have visually worse graphics than games that came out 10+ years ago My knee jerk reaction was to disagree with this, but I thought about it a bit The Witcher 3 came out 10 years ago. So did Red Dead Redemption 2 (edit: not quite, actually 8 years. Still!) A lot of games still fall short of those in the graphics department

There is a real reason behind this. A lot of games before, used to be built on custom game engines and were heavily optimized. When you build on unreal 5, optimization is poorly done or completely ignored. On top of that, reliance on upscaling causes a weird feel to the overall look.

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

#115

Post by jemmyw »

karahime wrote: post #67
TulliusCicero wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 St…

Nobody wants to look at it, but I think this is a lot of it. The original Prince of Persia PC/Amiga version retailed at $39.95, or roughly $100 in today's money. In fact, roughly $100 in 2026 dollars was actually quite a stable price point for a very long time. A $60 game in 2006 is also roughly $100 in 2026 dollars. I think what happened is that around then, people generally decided that "$60 is the price of a AAA g…

It makes sense though for the price to fall (in relation to inflation) when the general public got into gaming though. The cost of development is unchanged whether you sell 10,000 or 1 million. Which is my argument against the microtransaction shit being driven by a price fall.

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

#116

Post by TulliusCicero »

jemmyw wrote: post #115
karahime wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants to look at it, but I think this is a lot of it. The original Prince of Persia PC/Amiga version retailed at $39.95, or roughly $100 in today's money. In fact, roughly $100 in 2026 dollars was actually quite a stable price point for a very long time. A $60 game in 2006 is also roughly $100 in 2026 dollars. I think what happened is that around then, people generally decided that "$60 is the price of a AAA g…

It makes sense though for the price to fall (in relation to inflation) when the general public got into gaming though. The cost of development is unchanged whether you sell 10,000 or 1 million. Which is my argument against the microtransaction shit being driven by a price fall.

The gaming audience increased, but budgets also massively went up. You weren't spending $100m+ on Super Mario World.

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

#117

Post by wernerb »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #79
darth_avocado wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Modern games have visually worse graphics than games that came out 10+ years ago My knee jerk reaction was to disagree with this, but I thought about it a bit The Witcher 3 came out 10 years ago. So did Red Dead Redemption 2 (edit: not quite, actually 8 years. Still!) A lot of games still fall short of those in the graphics department

Death stranding 1 and 2 also look absolutely amazing. They are not using unreal engine but their own. Not sure what magic they are pulling off there.

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

#118

Post by nottorp »

nubinetwork wrote: post #32
nottorp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No that was xbox. Sony even did a commercial back then showing how easy it is to lend a disc based game to a friend...

Now Sony is too succesful so they go assholes.

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

#119

Post by danaris »

gibberish678678 wrote: post #57
mhurron wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And how long did painting the top of the doors take you?

How much money did it cost?

Because I'm willing to bet it wasn't 9 months and millions of dollars.

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

#120

Post by danaris »

parasense wrote: post #94
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, as do video game systems, etc. I think that's true, and it's actually a very interesting topic. Just imagine the prospect that technology has effectively stalled out, and our civilization is stuck perpetuating the perception of forward progress.

But to the extent that it has stalled out, a huge factor in that is, again, capitalism: so much of the technological progress since WWII was built on top of the fundamental research that was being funded largely by the US government. And since around the 1980s (hm, I wonder who might've been in office then?), that funding has been steadily reduced, and now effectively eliminated under Trump.

In parallel with this, we've seen the massive consolidation of all industries, but especially the tech industry, and what does a giant behemoth monopolist/oligarch want? It's not to move science and technology forward; that would be much too risky, and could even lead to an upstart disrupting them! No; it's to make tiny incremental improvements to keep people happy, while raking in money just for being on top of the heap.

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