There’s an economic network behind console: contrary to PC (which is more an abstract concept that no one owns) you can find console in your local general store: these stores put Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo brands/logo all around without the need for these three companies to directly pay them (PC/Notebook strictly places for general and office purpose). Before the ecommerce got the point is today, these stores putting free console advertising made a big difference. PC gaming industry was fragmented, also the main player in the PC sphere (Microsoft) had their own console which, due to conflict of interest, damped the huge storm of the PC gaming industry. The only company I am aware of, that consistently work in favor of PC gaming was Valve. But they were a digital store and had not much interest in the physical presence in general stores until SteamMachine/SteamController/SteamDeck
From developers’ perspective, platforms are an obstacle. PC is the least-onerous middleman between them and customers. (And Steam still takes an entire third of their revenue.) The push for games to just work on whatever, for everyone, was already present by the PS2 era, and by the PS3 era it nearly killed the PS3. Sony’s wacky-but-powerful hardware counted for fuck-all to devs who wanted a PC release and and Xbox port or vice-versa. Sony only recovered by providing a generic API and getting some games that worked basically how they worked on every other machine.
Everything is a computer now. The PS5 and Xbox whateveritscalled are nearly-identical AMD laptops. Nintendo’s money-printing handheld is an Android tablet by Nvidia. There is no special sauce anymore. Microsoft is fully prepared for this, since the Xbox was always an effort to PC-ify the console market, but Sony is struggling to recognize the war is over. Helldivers showed them how much money they could make being just a PC publisher, and it scared the shit out of them. They’re not okay. Their entire business model is rooted in being a platform, when consumers are sick and tired of dealing with platforms.
Sony shat over their consumers and are now in the process of trying the same for pc using the 5 exclusive games they still have as bait. Xbox effectively fucked their business model a few years ago with game pass and are now hemorrhaging money. Apple, who in their right mind plays on apple silicon, shit cant even run doom. Epic games store is only being kept afloat due to fortnite and their free games they give out like candy. Valve got so fed up with the bullshit that Microsoft churns out of its window shaped asshole that they created proton and are most likely the leading cause for the rise of the linux market share . All of the other publishers tried to make their own games stores and all of those are dead There are no games on chromebooks.
Its not just the consoles its litterally everbody that is fucking dieing. The other platforms that could offer viable gaming experiences either dont support it (chromebooks) dont want to support it( apple xbox sony) or dont have enough power for fully fledged massive games (i dont think we’ll be seeing helldivers 2 on a phone like ever)
Gaben does litterally nothing All the while the rest of the competition is buisy looking down the barrel of a loaded gun wondering why its not shooting
The modern corporation does not allow for innovation, its only focus is asset acquisition, stripping until there is nothing left and selling the corpse or shutting it down, all for those tasty quarterly gains for shareholders.
I think another factor will emerge: people are starting to realize that they’re paying $60 to rent a game. They don’t own it, and the game developer can shut it down at any time, and even if they don’t, it probably requires some online access for something, and the game stops working once the developer turns off those servers.
I don’t think we’ll see a revolt, but companies will be forced through competition to allow rental models with less or no up-front cost. I think people will simply become less willing to pay $60 for a rental. At this point, I don’t know what happens to development studios, because they need seed funding to get to market. I think it’s already happening; as a very casual gamer, most of what I hear from the industry is pure-play game studios shutting down, or being acquired by corporations like Sony or Microsoft, who have other revenue streams they can redirect into speculative game development.
Add comment