> My husband and I both can't remember why we even got a PS5 in the first place You are going to remember why you have PS5 in about 120 days.
Why? Sorry about my ignorance, but what will happen in about 120 days?
The console wars have been lost
21–30 of 121 posts
Re: The console wars have been lost
#22I also think Steam was a game that had no choice but to win. AAA development costs have gotten so huge that even platform-exclusive developers find it burdensome, so they end up releasing on PC as well. And when that happens, Valve's value only grows. A console generation lasts about 8 years, but with Steam, once you buy a game, you can probably keep playing it until Gabe Newell dies. On top of that, CDs don't last a…
I've never had a problem with any CDs, even my old Quake CD from about 30 years ago. Probably there's an issue with your drive or the disc wasn't stored well.
As you said, it could be that I didn't store it properly, or it could be an issue with the CD reader on the old console.
Re: The console wars have been lost
#23Consoles just don't make sense in any modern context. It's profoundly wasteful to have an edge device sitting in your living room, unused for 99% of the time that can only do an incredibly small subset of what a gaming computer can Every PS5 in existence is destined to become e-waste Not to mention how bad the developer and porting experience is compared to PC/Steam Machine
> Every PS5 in existence is destined to become e-waste So is your pc hardware, unless you expect to stay on that 9800x3d and 4090 for the next 30 years...
4090 probably won't survive, but I could see 9800x3d still being usable.
Re: The console wars have been lost
#24Consoles mostly died with the PlayStation 3. Consoles (At least Sony and Microsoft's offering) have become repackaged PCs for a while now this will be especially apparent with the Steamboxes going up on the same shelves as Playstations in the future. I will concede it's hard to reason or discuss about these things without getting lost in a Ship of Theseus definition of what 'console' and 'PC' is and where the lines a…
I really don't think having a custom CPU and hardware architecture different from PCs is the defining property of a gaming console. Nobody cares about that except developers and hardware nerds. A console is a computer purpose-built and streamlined for playing games. No more, no less.
The line is far more blurred now. The Steam Machine is a purpose built device streamlined for playing games. Yet without any hardware modifications you can put it on your desk and load windows on it. So it's clearly a PC too.
The nitpicking on language here is entirely due to the fact the distinction is no longer clear like it once was.
Re: The console wars have been lost
#25Consoles mostly died with the PlayStation 3. Consoles (At least Sony and Microsoft's offering) have become repackaged PCs for a while now this will be especially apparent with the Steamboxes going up on the same shelves as Playstations in the future. I will concede it's hard to reason or discuss about these things without getting lost in a Ship of Theseus definition of what 'console' and 'PC' is and where the lines a…
We're definitely way past the point where console hardware is vastly different from PC hardware; we're not in the age where what makes a console special is having a sprite processor which allows it to render graphics in a way that mainstream PC hardware is incapable of. It's all pretty much just x86 APUs from AMD, slightly customized compared to what you get off the shelf.
However everything other than the hardware is what makes consoles special. They're a special-purpose device which is specifically designed to only be used with a game pad on a big screen. That means stupid stuff like a pop-up which needs mouse interaction, or the system getting confused about window focus, or games which have controller support but whose launchers need mouse interaction -- issues which have always plagued living room gaming PCs -- just categorically can not exist.
And they live in a completely different market. You have one mass produced computer which benefits from economies of scale, sold to a captive audience which has to buy games from the manufacturer. This allows completely different pricing strategies from non-console PCs where the manufacturer needs to make a significant profit on every device sold.
Then there's the developer angle. In the traditional desktop PC world, you have to work around performance quirks of many different GPU manufacturers and their drivers, and you're always in this careful balancing act where increasing graphics or CPU processing time by a little bit reduces your potential market. A console, representing exactly one hardware configuration owned by millions of people, allows much more extreme hardware utilization; you can consume every available CPU core, every available byte of memory, hit exactly 16.6ms frame times, and your game is gonna run at a smooth 60 FPS for everyone.
So yes, the computer science behind consoles is boring these days, they're "just PCs". But the market dynamics and developer implications mean they still have a place as a product that has a fundamentally different role than a traditional PC.
This is coming from someone who hasn't owned a console since the PS4 FWIW; I play my games on a Linux box with an Xbox controller in my living room.
Re: The console wars have been lost
#26> I fear for what happens when Gabe Newell retires and the MBA cancer fully infects Valve.
They are making SteamOS compatible with other hardware, if you want to build a steam machine of your own. Also their contributions to Wine and Fex will enable other Linux gaming platforms that are not SteamOS to have the same compatibility layer.
Re: The console wars have been lost
#27Consoles just don't make sense in any modern context. It's profoundly wasteful to have an edge device sitting in your living room, unused for 99% of the time that can only do an incredibly small subset of what a gaming computer can Every PS5 in existence is destined to become e-waste Not to mention how bad the developer and porting experience is compared to PC/Steam Machine
People want the convenience. Generally , a console "just works", whereas a PC is more likely to need some messing about to get working optimally. Console devs have one target hardware that they can target, whereas PC games could be run on a huge variety of hardware
Re: The console wars have been lost
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every PS5 in existence is destined to become e-waste So is your pc hardware, unless you expect to stay on that 9800x3d and 4090 for the next 30 years...
4090 probably won't survive, but I could see 9800x3d still being usable.
Modern chips rarely last that long.
Re: The console wars have been lost
#29Consoles just don't make sense in any modern context. It's profoundly wasteful to have an edge device sitting in your living room, unused for 99% of the time that can only do an incredibly small subset of what a gaming computer can Every PS5 in existence is destined to become e-waste Not to mention how bad the developer and porting experience is compared to PC/Steam Machine
> Every PS5 in existence is destined to become e-waste Just like every Android device or computer in your household? Are you trying to make a point for cloud computing?
I can accept the waste of having a second much lower power CPU in the phone I use with me every day. But I can't justify having both a gaming pc and a playstation/xbox that's exactly the same thing with a different OS on it. They even play the same games these days.
Something that weighs on me is the fact that every tech device you own is constantly devaluing as it ages, eventually becoming worthless when support ends and the servers are shut down. It makes far more sense to own the least possible and get the most use out of each one. Unlike most things you own that only devalue as they are worn out and damaged.
Re: The console wars have been lost
#30I also think Steam was a game that had no choice but to win. AAA development costs have gotten so huge that even platform-exclusive developers find it burdensome, so they end up releasing on PC as well. And when that happens, Valve's value only grows. A console generation lasts about 8 years, but with Steam, once you buy a game, you can probably keep playing it until Gabe Newell dies. On top of that, CDs don't last a…
>you can probably keep playing it until Gabe Newell dies I remember Valve talking about the concern that if anything happens to Valve they have some contingency that basically releases your whole library to you without Steam DRM/etc.
If that's true, when they sell out to private equity, that'll be the first thing private equity deletes.