Consoles aren’t going anywhere so long as GPU manufacturers keep scalping their userbase. A console costs less than just a GPU these days, with mostly comparable performance.
Mid-range GPUs still exist, they just dont get the same coverage as the top-end cards. An RTX 4060 is set at $300 which is much cheaper than a PS5 or Series X
$300 for the GPU only. You still need the rest of the PC to play games. The CPU will be at least $150 for anything that will run newer games basically at all, and then your RAM will be at least another $50. Now add on the case, fans, cooler, and any other accessories and for a mid-to-low range PC you’ve already passed the price of a premium console.
I’ve been a PC gamer for 3 decades. Most budget conscious PC gamers I know upgrade individual components as needed. Done this way, you can easily get more for your money than having to buy a new console every cycle.
A Ryzen 5600 is less than that and already beats the CPU in the PS5/X1X, especially in gaming.
The “mid-to-low range PC” already beats both consoles and when you consider that games are generally cheaper on PC and you don’t have to subscribe to a service just to play online, you’re quickly arriving at a point where PC gaming is cheaper while offering superior performance.
Steamdeck has shown that the age of the general purpose computer is very popular.
I think most people don’t care how their games run, just that they run.
Consoles were a way to have games “work” out of the box, even if you didn’t have a high powered computer. Now everyone has a high powered computer (phone).
Nintendo will never die, but I think open platforms like stramdeck with their HUGE libraries will be more popular until even cell phones take over that space.
I think most people don’t care how their games run, just that they run.
Honestly, this is why I game almost exclusively on console. I can download a game, press play, and it just works.
I have a Steam Deck too but I find myself not using it a lot. I loved it when I got it, but anymore it seems like there are just too many quirks(?) to make it an enjoyable experience. I swear even some verified games I have to do this tweak or that tweak to make it run right.
I’m married with kids and a house and 4 cars to maintain and when I get time to game I just want to play. I don’t want to think about if there is something special I need to do or some driver I need to update or whatever.
Yeah as a PC gamer of several decades I feel like this is easily the biggest weakness of the platform.
The Steam Deck did a pretty good job of trying to make things easy but it sounds like it still has a ways to go. Hopefully things get better and we can all get a “best of both worlds” experience at least when it comes to handhelds.
I thought PS5 and switch were some of the best selling consoles of all time? Just because they are in the later part of their generation now doesn’t change that.
This is an “article” in PC GAMER written by some “pC mAsTeR rAC3” lunatic. Who upvotes this crap?
“Most profitable” just means it exists in the age where people who play FIFA and CoD are more milked for microtransactions. That line trends down when their hardware units sold do too. PS5 isn’t seeing the growth rate Sony wanted given their investment, even with complete domination of their market segment. If everything were hunky-dory in PlayStation land, I doubt they’d bother to bring God of War, Spider-Man, and Horizon to PC at all. There’s also the fact that PC over the past few years overtook consoles for where the most copies of games are sold, for most franchises anyway, which never used to be the case.
Computer only game bitch here: the PS5 is a marvel of technology especially at its price point and it’s amazing. I’m so happy for my console friends.
The PS4 and XBone were shit garbage boxes with slow ass hard drives and CPUs and I hate them.
I have every console from the 2600 to PS3/Wii/360. No way I’d get a PS4/Xbone. Three minute load times in Monster Hunter World is insulting.
Not sure I agree the premise of the article. Sales are going to be down when there are fewer AAA releases to drive hardware sales. It’s taking longer and longer to develop those games and the budget required no longer justifies console exclusivity.
I think 2025 will be the real measure of console strength when the big releases are scheduled to come out.
Weird, I think the whole PC console game war was relevant when I was a kid and everything was new and cool, but I think at this point the whole “who’s winning the console war” feels immature and is holding the industry back.
Like others have said, I don’t really give a shit what content runs on, so as long as it runs. Better if things run well and I can take them with me like the deck.
You can make the argument about why it’s better to play content on a PC but what’s the point of the comparison? Why does it matter who is better? In an ideal world, everything would run great on affordable PCs that everyone has access to, but I don’t think we’re at that reality.