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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

#121

Post by oliwarner »

mikenew wrote: post #52
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…

> Current top 5 played games on the Steam Deck are...

I think this speaks more to the type of games people want in their pocket. Games you can casually pick up, put down.

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

#122

Post by haunter »

AngryData wrote: post #106
haunter wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That entirely depends on the games you want to play. Check the most played games on Steam and how many of them are available on GOG. 1 out of 10 or even less.

To be fair many of those are multiplayer games with required updates and anticheat.

30 is f2p from the top 100

From the remaining paid 70 there are 2 softwares (Wallpaper Engine and Crosshair X)

From the remaining 67 there are 2 versions of ARK Survival and GTAV so we can count those once.

That leaves us with 65 games

From the 65 games 13 are available on GOG:

- Baldur's Gate 3

- Cyberpunk 2077

- Factorio

- Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

- Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

- Project Zomboid

- RimWorld

- Stardew Valley

- Stellaris

- Terraria

- The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

That’s 1 out of 5 which is better than I've guessed (1 out of 10)

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

#123

Post by pibaker »

mikenew wrote: post #52
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…

Well, because most recent AAA titles would be miserable to play on a handheld.

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

#125

Post by pibaker »

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

If you buy a new game every month or every week, sure.

But that is not representative of all gamers. Here's a survey that shows only 15% of American gamers buy one or more games a month. Not only that, half of the gamers buy less two games a year on average.

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bhqrrxt7yyfpwguioa7rwa7x/po...

I can't find the number of PS5 games sold per console. But I did find the number for Nintendo switch — roughly ten games sold per switch, on a console almost ten years old. Maybe PlayStation gamers are different, but Nintendo gamers are definitely not buying games frequently on average.

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.htm...

I find it hard to believe that a $15 price increase on a purchase you make twice a year is going to be the dealbreaker for most people. If anything it is likely lagging behind price increases in other leisure items like dining out and alcohol.

But then again, internet discourse over gaming is dominated by devoted gamers who are in that 15% so we hear their argument over and over again, instead of the silent majority of gamers who don't buy anything beyond their yearly call of duty or FIFA or battlefield instalment.

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

#126

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

de6u99er wrote: post #103
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 strongly believe generative AI is going to change this equation. Not only will it lower the cost for studios, it will also enable gamers to make adjustments to games within pre-defined parameters.

Most people have an intense dislike of AI slop, so why do you think gamers will want that?

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

#127

Post by Pay08 »

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

At the same time, both of those games had an entire AAA studio behind them (you could consider CDPR to be AA), whereas most other AAA studios work on a number of projects at a time. Same reason Starfield ended up having such high visual "prowess", in lieu of talking about just graphics.

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

#129

Post by spwa4 »

oliwarner wrote: post #121
mikenew wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Current top 5 played games on the Steam Deck are... I think this speaks more to the type of games people want in their pocket. Games you can casually pick up, put down.

Top-5 played games off the steam deck are:

Counter-Strike 2 (Valve)

DOTA 2 (Valve)

Palworld (Pocketpair)

PUBG: battlegrounds (PUBG corporation/Krafton Inc)

TBH: Task Bar Hero (obviously not AAA)

I guess Valve would half-qualify as AAA? The top played true AAA game would be, imho "Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced", at the 18th place. Perhaps Ubisoft with a Assasin's creed title in the top sellers probably should be higher in the playing list.

But I think it's fair to say AAA doesn't hold the steam store anywhere near as tightly as it holds the consoles.

https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed

https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/US

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

#130

Post by asantopietro »

wernerb wrote: post #117
bluefirebrand wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They are using the game engine from the developer who produced the Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West games, called Decima.
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