The console wars have been lost

Post by goobatrooba » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #64

Delphiza wrote: post #60

Somewhere along the way, consoles lost where they fit into the 'living room space'. The biggest thing (for me) was when games stopped with local co-op. Having two controllers and being able to play together was a good way to spend time doing casual gaming. Lego star wars did it well. Gears of War, Halo and others used to be a good way to to spend time with your children. The Wii had all ages playing together. Now, al…

Cutting the default hw setup to one controller was definitely MBA coded shortsightedness imo. It was de-incentivizing for living room multi-player modes in games, which in turn reduced a unique console advantage vs PC, all for a small savings in hardware.

Post by mort96 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #92

mort96 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a game with great controller support! I play it a lot with a controller. It's just that in the PC gaming space, "controller support" doesn't necessarily mean that you can log in to the launcher and launch the game without a keyboard and mouse. The assumption is that you always have a keyboard and mouse, and some people also happen to have a controller in addition .

I got a steam deck 2 years ago and I haven’t run in to any games like this. They all either skip the launcher or have a controller navigable one. I just had a look at the steam page and valve has listed a long list of usability issues with this game. I guess if it was a console they could just reject it and make the devs fix the issues. But it’s still cleanly presented to the user that there’s issues here and up to t…

Post by cassianoleal » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #73

cassianoleal wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve has also solved that by incorporating trackpads to the controller. I bet the PS controllers's trackpads can also be used for that.

You can't seriously argue that using a keyboard/mouse interface using the controller track pad is as nice an experience as just using a controller-focused interface. And since the Steam Machine doesn't come with a controller, I would bet that a large fraction of users will be using an xbox controller or something.

Post by mort96 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

cassianoleal wrote: post #95

mort96 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't seriously argue that using a keyboard/mouse interface using the controller track pad is as nice an experience as just using a controller-focused interface. And since the Steam Machine doesn't come with a controller, I would bet that a large fraction of users will be using an xbox controller or something.

> You can't seriously argue that using a keyboard/mouse interface using the controller track pad is as nice an experience as just using a controller-focused interface. I didn't.

Post by yoz-y » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

cliglot wrote: post #96

yoz-y wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only mobile devices had better external monitor support. It’s funny that iOS / macOS has by far the best controller experience from all devices pairing wise (even getting an Xbox controller to work properly on windows requires a dongle). iPad + controller just lacks games (and with emulators not even that, just good configuration).

> If only mobile devices had better external monitor support. What I don’t get is modern phones are impressive. My iPhone from several years back was capable of running full blown Civ6 and certain older Total War titles. So clearly the raw compute power and control limitations aren’t an issue (I doubt game companies care much about the latter at all now that RTS games made it consoles) Yet I don’t see many interestin…