I’m scared. As soon as it becomes profitable, companies in the gaming space will be rushing to enshitiffy PC gaming the way they’re doing with consoles. Big, public game companies not paying attention to the PC space is a GOOD thing.
It has always been profitable and we’ve already seen the enshittification with the plethora of completely useless launchers and company specific accounts. We’ve more or less grown accustomed to the enshittification that has happened in the last decade.
So I’m not really scared because the real gems of PC gaming aren’t from big public companies, they’re from small indie teams. All that enshittification just pushes me more and more towards indie games. I occasionally tip my toes into the mainstream games whenever I see something I want to play, but mostly I play games made by small studios who want to make games for others to play rather than make games to make money.
That is true, but until now we’ve mostly been able to enjoy the best of both without compromise or major obstacles, and even AAA games can offer quality, especially considering the value add of the modding community. We got all the benefit of a AAA title with customization and community at a fraction of the price. Sure, indies will still be there and delivering great quality no matter what, but more actively engaged big companies is still a net loss to PC gaming.
I guess they’re all realizing what I’ve been saying for years about how all the various traits of consoles are for the specific purpose of keeping them paying.
No shit. PC these days is also less annoying than a console. Like I don’t need to renew a stupid subscription to play online and I have way less unskipable updates under Windows than a console.
It makes sense to me. PC is just so much more versatile and can do so many more things than a console. Also, while the initial costs can be higher, you can play your games without fear of compatibility issues or online fees, etc. I can play games from 10-15 years ago without issues (generally).
Just play on whichever device you have that can handle it.
Switched to PC Gaming around the PS3 era and never looked back.
It’s really nice to see the Sony titles coming to Steam these days as well.
I’m older so probably not in the demographic. I had a PS4 and liked it. My only complaint was paying for online service. But getting “free” games with the service, okay sure. Lol, you can play some games without PS+. I found this out playing rocket League, yay?
I thought about getting a PS5, but I’m not down with the whole rat race vibe. Paying more then retail seems silly. Resellers, nope. After 3 years the luster of having a new console is over. I’m fine with Steam.
I’d say one of the biggest things that kept people playing console games had to be the console exclusive games. If you wanted to play games like Ratchet & Clank, you’d need a PlayStation. But even that has changed, with the most recent release being available on Steam. Pretty much the only company holding out (Sintendo) is a company that no sane person should care about other than when it’s time to get angry about them.
There are cheaper and decently powerful mini PCs for about the same cost as a console, probably even a bit cheaper than a game console if you get a deal.
As much as I love my PC, playing on my GFs PS5 really sold me that a cheap PC just cannot compare, especially if more than one person will be using it.
Hand over $1500 and you’ll have a better set up with a PS5, a good TV, and multiple games, I just can’t tell someone it’s better.
A gaming PC is a “get what you pay for” experience, especially as AAA games become less optimized.
That’s true, though the little Ryzen mini PCs do seem to get good power out of them while being within the same price range as a console, obviously more powerful ones can run much more demanding games better but it’s still quite good for the price.
Definitely not a third. A $500USD Xbox Series X or PS5 has about the same performance as a ~600-650 PC in the current market maybe. They sell at a small loss (or used to), because they intend to get significantly more back from you via subscription payments. Most people want to actually be able to play games they paid for online or use basic online services, so after like 5 years you’ve already spent another 300 (xbox) to 500 (playstation) assuming you buy the cheapest option annually.
On console you also have significantly less choice for peripherals and pay more for games, a lot of extra money spent for most people. With PC you can spend way less to get the functionality you need.
Plus if you like pirating, you can consider that a few hundred dollars in savings on games… considering you don’t pay for them and all.
Apples to apples, I wonder how much that holds true…
When a console launches, buying off the shelf equivalent parts is probably a fair bit more expensive. After a couple of years though, the latest and greatest whatever is at least two years old.
I’m sure console manufacturers flatten out these prices by making long term contracts, but still a 4 year old machine is still 4 years old. AMD has released new chipsets since that are in turn themselves coming up on 2 years old.
Granted, console games are optimized for a specific platform, but that will likely be very game specific.
The most expensive PSN option was £83.99 a year last time I got it, for the full Game Pass type deal. I’ve bought a grand total of two games since I got my PS5 a few years ago (Baldur’s Gate 3 and Talos Principle 2, and neither are even available as a physical disc making my disc drive in the console pretty pointless), and I play the damn thing just about every day.
It’s completely optional in any case, I very rarely even play multiplayer games. The price you’re hoping to beat is £389.
I can get an equivalent GPU (3060 12GB is about as close as you can get if you want to avoid lack of VRAM stutter) for about £270, which isn’t leaving a lot for the rest of the PC. There may well be regions where the PS5 is more expensive than a PC, but the UK ain’t one of them.
There are many strengths of PC gaming, like being able to buy extra hardware, modding, many digital stores, piracy, etc, but competing with consoles in the budget space is not where they shine.
£83.99 a year In USD, the most expensive plan is $160/year. The basic plan is $80/year. Over the lifespan of the console, the basic plan plus the console itself comes out to about $1K. Already more expensive than a basic gaming PC (and much more expensive than a steamdeck). If you were gonna be getting a basic computer anyways, you could probably get a pretty reasonably high-end gaming PC with that extra money.
If the only thing you care about is the up-front costs, then consoles are cheaper, but at least in the US, that’s not really true in the long-term (except for the switch) if you want basic online access. Especially if you are are going to own a decent computer regardless of whether you game or not. Personally, the only difference I would make between my current computer set-up if I didn’t also play games is I wouldn’t have upgraded my 9 year old GPU for $250 (3060ti*), which is cheaper than even a switch without accounting subscriptions costs (which is relatively reasonably priced at $20/year and a lot of the games I’d be interested in if it weren’t for Nintendo are primarily games I’d want to play offline anyways, so the subscription isn’t really that important anyways but the games like like $60/each…).
*edit: used. So a used switch would actually be cheaper as long as you don’t get a few years of subscription or buy like 2 games.
Forgot to mention I got it used, so should be comparing it to used consoles (PS5 looks like its still about $300 for digital edition, but doesn’t really matter since the subscription is most of the cost anyways), so a used switch would actually be cheaper.
You can make PC’s with comparable price and performance of a console. Especially when you facotr in the cost of subscriptions to use online services. Content creators just rarely cover that because it doesn’t get them views
If it’s a Playstation or Nintendo you get exclusive games, Xbox you don’t really, these games are available on Windows or cloud. Though a lot of exclusives do get re-released on PC so not sure how much of a benefit that is.
I’ve seen mini PCs (Shared link to one in other comments) which are around the same price range as an Xbox Series S now. Maybe at one point it was a benefit but now there are good quality mid-range options for people getting into PC gaming (or who want a nice living room setup to play their casual games from steam on the big screen).
Plus the fact that all consoles have subscription costs associated with them means that they ultimately cost slightly more in the long run.
If you consider hardware functionality, IDK why people buy consoles at all. The sky is the limit for what I can do on even a low end PC and there are significant limits to functionality on consoles. Not to mentioned the walled garden you're forced into with consoles.
Make money from software, there's little profit in hardware.
For some people, the walled garden and the “it just works” is a feature, when compared to the potential mine-field of building your own PC (or the increased cost of a pre built).
Some people have some money but not time, so a console a couch and a TV is easier to get into for the few hours a week they have.
Value for money, a build-your-own PC is better.
I don’t get why people buy iPhones. But if you go all-in on apple, the ecosystem is very attractive.
I wonder why no one talks about mini PCs like this one they’re around the same price range as a console (maybe even a bit cheaper) and don’t require nearly as much work as building a PC with parts. If you get it with an OS just set up, install steam and start playing. If you want a couch experience, connect a controller, launch big picture and also start playing.
A majority of games support controller input so they’re basically plug and play, and ones that don’t usually also have a default preset. If anything steam has become almost the same as the console experience, just with extra functionality if you want it.
The integrated graphics on that system are still pretty mid at best tbh. You would want a system with a discrete gpu. Otherwise i agree with the sentiment
I would agree that for more power and demanding games you would want one with an external GPU, maybe even more powerful CPU. Though as a SteamDeck user and also looking at it from the perspective of a console gamer in terms of power and price range, something like this would probably fit the bill very well, especially for a cheap living room setup.
There definitely are more powerful options out there for living room setups though, but they also cost more money, which is the main reason they go for consoles, they are (like midrange APU computers) more cost effective.
Didn’t like the tone of my last attempt to reply, so here’s a rundown from a hardware enthusiast perspective.
Single board computers with no thunderbolt cannot have an external GPU, and have soldered permanent processors
The U sku on that cpu denotes low voltage. That cpu will have much worse performance than you expect. Ghz numbers usually advertise boost clocks, not stable performance.
Even when an external GPU is an option, the memory bandwidth of thunderbolt is not sufficient to run most cards and will result in micro stuttering and overall reduced performance. Usually you lose ~30%-50% of your performance depending on the card.
To top all of this off, you cannot use the steam deck as a reasonable expectation for this class of hardware. The deck runs a custom APU with a beefier than normal GPU. You will not get that performance from the linked micro pc.
I actually recently realized that the Mini PC shown in the listing I posted is not the same Mini PC as the one I have, the one I have seems quite a bit more powerful and also does have Thunderbolt/USB 4.0 (never tried connecting an eGPU though), I’ve actually been using it to play games at higher settings that would otherwise struggle on the steam deck, yes it’s not as good as something with a bigger and dedicated GPU but still really good. Though I realize this probably isn’t typical of Mini PCs, at least not yet anyway.
Honestly, I think that’s more perception than reality. Consoles are just “plug in and play” right out of the box, you have to get accounts set up and games installed. If you buy a prebuilt PC with the OS installed, there’s not a significantly different amount of setup needed in comparison.
The main difference is the potential issues on console aren’t game-specific. If a new game comes out on PS5 and you have a PS5, you can have good confidence that you can simply buy the game, install and play it without needing to consider anything else. No need to understand how your system compares to the game’s recommended requirements, no manual configuration to optimise performance, no Denuvo arbitrarily slowing down your games. You make a good point about modern consoles not working out of the box per se either, but consoles are undoubtedly still much simpler to get reasonably working.
PC’s being better value is a new development too. Most current gen consoles were purchased while GPU prices were very inflated. It’s relevant for next gen (especially with consoles already being sold at a loss) but not so much the current one. Future looks bright for PC gaming, if we can manage to excise the tumor that is Denuvo
I don’t have a need for a computer and I enjoy using a controller to easily navigate the system. I can toss the controller just about anywhere without it being in the way. I don’t have room for a dedicated desk so the mouse would get lost and the keyboard would be cumbersome for me to set somewhere out of the way.
I like to sit down, turn the console on, recline, turn the TV on, play, toss the controller in or on the coffee table after.
It’s funny people using that as an excuse when Steam supports the new big picture mode from SteamOS on basically every OS out there now. You can get the exact same experience of couch based console gaming on PCs now, without really needing to set anything up in terms of custom UIs.
No they literally made it extremely clear they were talking about their situation specifically. They didn’t say “pc gaming is worse than console gaming,” they said console gaming works better for them because of their specific situation. You PC gaming evangelists are so funny :)
It’s just the problem that was brought up has been a solved issue for quite a while. It’s cool if they didn’t know though, i can see the redesigned big picture mode isn’t well advertised.
The fact is is that all 3 console manufacturers charge monthly subscriptions for you to play games you bought with anyone outside of your room. (Nintendo Switch Online, Playstation Plus, Xbox Live).
Guess how much I have to pay Steam every month to play games in my $3000 library with my friends across the country? (A: nothing!)
Not surprising to me given my own personal experience. I only really use my PS5 for exclusives now and there haven’t been many of those being released recently that I’ve been interested in. Plus new playstation games are expensive which has made me a more patient gamer. So if a non-exclusive game interests me it’s probably going to be cheaper on Steam. I used to be more of a console gamer but these days if you have a decent pc there isn’t much that a console can offer over a pc.
The last two generations of consoles were just PCs but worse. Now nearly all games are coming to PC anyway, what’s even the point? Just to pay them $70/year for the privilege of playing multiplayer?
I just bought a Dual-sense controller, I knew I wouldn’t use the PS5, same way I didn’t use (and later sold) the PS4. PS5 controllers are awesome for Steam Games though, also emulation (on linux, windows they can be a pain to set up).
The mainstream consoles nowadays basically are locked-down computers anyway, so makes sense that people are skipping the live-services middleman and going straight to PC
Unless you care about exclusives, then PCs are the better all-rounder IMO, and don't need a yearly payment on top of your internet bill
This is exactly why I think Valve is primed to bring Steam Machines back. They’re already working on making a full functioning Linux OS, Steam OS. They have a huge library of games that regularly go on sale that you can now play on a handheld. Your save games sync across platform. Your Steam Machine would support existing controllers from either Xbox or PlayStation. I mean at this point they would be silly NOT to make them again.
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