nanoUFO(Opinion piece) Hello, PC gaming here: Are the consoles OK? With sales dropping and confidence declining, how close are we to the end of consoles as we know them?
RightHandOfIkarosConsoles 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 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.
Yes, but if you don’t have a PC, or one even remotely good enough, that cost is all up front.
Either way, you end up spending more on PC hardware than console hardware. For the price and for a person that isnt an enthusiast, they really don’t have a need to go to PC, when console does everything they want.
Don’t forget that games are significantly cheaper on PC, especially if you wait for the first sale (which’ll come much quicker on PC). The upfront cost is indeed higher, but depending on how many games you buy you’ll probably recoup that cost within one console generation.
I mean, technically every game can be free on PC. But overall anyone that has a gaming PC and a console will definitely be spending more on the PC, unless they are given PC parta for free or something.
The way I see it: PC has a high upfront cost with minimal maintenance/upgrade cost to continue using it with newer releases for years.
Consoles have a cheaper upfront cost but no maintenance/upgrade. Once it’s obsolete (as determined by the industry, not the owner) then you are forced to buy a new console for new releases.
For me, in practice, I know for a fact that I have spent less on my PC components and games than I would if I wanted the same experience on a console.
TrickDacyNo one is arguing that PCs cost less than consoles. The original point made was that consoles were cheaper than graphics cards alone, which isn’t exactly accurate
With consoles, you also run into the planned obselescense problem. If I bought an Xbox in 2015, I would now be at a point where the industry has decided my console belongs in a trash and I need to buy a new one if I want to play modern games. But with my relatively modest gaming PC I built in 2015, I can still play most modern games if I turn the graphics settings down. I haven’t upgraded a single part in my 2015 build in years and it still works fine for my usage.
narc0tic_birdA 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.
The “mid-to-low range PC” already beats both consoles
But not for the money. The console manufacturers sell their systems at a loss, which is something PC part manufacturers can’t do.
GanbatThis is entirely true, and you don’t deserve the down votes from people who refuse to face it.
Building an equivalent system to a console, without a whole lot of luck being involved as far as finding deals goes, is likely to cost nearly double. This is speaking from experience, my current mid-tier PC, which almost performs as well as a current Gen console, cost about $400, and without, as said above, the ludicrous luck I had finding some deals, would’ve cost about $700, as the GPU alone, one that isn’t actually very good at all, retails for over $300.
This is an interesting take. Historically, the main benefits to console gaming were 2 things:
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Consoles are cheaper than PCs
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Games require no config and and are guaranteed to be compatible
Nether of these is really the case anymore. For the price of a PS5 or a Series X you could get a midrange gaming PC with similar performance.
Regarding complexity, we kind of met in the middle. Long gone are the days when you could just pop a disc in the tray of your playstation or xbox and start playing, every game requires an install now. And on the PC side, you very rarely need to configure settings to get a game to a playable state. Hell, you dont really even need to manually install drivers anymore.
Of course, as the article points out, none of this applies to Nintendo and those consoles are still worth buying.
My guess for the future is that if Microsoft and Sony are going to hang around in the hardware space, they’re going to make something akin to the steam deck, but locked to their own storefront. And then they’ll wonder why people are still choosing PCs over their hardware.
First point is more true today than it was in the past. It is impossible to build a gaming pc for $400-500 that is capable of playing most modern games at high settings (without RT) and play at 60 fps. The gpu capable of doing that is around $300 by itself.
I think the longevity of consoles also plays a large part in their appeal. Knowing you can use the system to play at consistent performance levels for 7-8 years is a comforting thought.
For the PC side, I’m not sure about your point about drivers. Nvidia/AMD/Intel regularly release day 1 drivers to improve compatibility with new games.
A Radeon RX 6650 XT is like $230 and performs on par or better than the PS5’s GPU. Pair that with a Zen-3-or-newer CPU like the Ryzen 5600 for < $130 that already outperforms the aging Zen 2 CPU in the PS5 and then you’ll have to add 16 GB of RAM which can be had for < $40, a cheap mainboard (you probably don’t care much about the feature set coming from a console anyway), PSU, SSD and case and you’re probably at around $550 to $600.
Save $10 on pretty much every full price AAA title, benefit from more frequent and more aggressive sales, enjoy not having to pay $60 per year and you’ll quickly arrive at a point where you actually paid less for PC gaming while having an experience that’s at least on par if not superior in terms of graphical fidelity and performance.
It’s a myth that PC hardware doesn’t last as long as console hardware, especially nowadays. I know people who are playing current games with a GPU years older than a PS5 just fine. And when you start with hardware equal to or newer/superior to a console, you’ll be able to run all games for that generation just fine.
Oh and don’t start with the magic word “optimization”. Optimization mostly involves improving code paths and removing complexity from scenes where it won’t be noticed. These optimizations seamlessly transfer over to all ports including PC.
$666 without kb/mouse/monitor/os. pcpartpicker.com/list/vjVNbL
You’re right in that over the long term, a PC gamer will probably end up spending less on their hobby. But for someone starting from scratch and trying to decide on a path, the console remains the cheaper and easier platform to jump into.
I don’t see where I mentioned optimization but I am curious and maybe you can elaborate further on what I’m guessing are probably the differences between game patch optimizations vs driver level optimizations?
You can still cut costs in your build by using an A520 mainboard and a cheaper case (this CPU + GPU combo doesn’t care much about good airflow), so you can get below $600 for sure. As you say though, you still need a mouse and keyboard. If we count a display it’s only fair that we’d count a TV in addition to the console as well. Then you need an OS as you say, but here in Europe you can legally acquire a used Windows OEM license for dirt cheap (like 5 bucks), or you could always run a Linux distro for free.
And of course when you buy PC parts you either have to build the PC yourself (which is quite easy these days though) or pay someone to build it for you (or you know a good friend who does it for free).
You didn’t mention optimization but it’s what many people bring up as a pro for consoles, where they think spec for spec console hardware performs better because of it. This isn’t the case though, especially with the last two console generations.
I’m sure we could both list hundreds of pros and cons for each platform, but what it comes down to for me is value. Sure, a PC might cost more upfront (even though as I said it can turn around after a few years). But with a PC you get a system that’s not locked down. You have access to a huge library of games, the backwards compatibility is insanely good and you can potentially get more value out of every game purchase because of support for mods for example. And of course you can do a lot more things than just gaming.
I don’t think console gaming is dead in any way, but I don’t think the reason keeping consoles alive is value.
I think the “no config” part is missed on most lemmy users. I have buddies who can barely work their phone. They have consoles. They would be screwed trying to do pc gaming, it’s just too much. Drivers. Filesystems and paths. Cloud shit this, updates that. They just want to play.
He’ll, I know how to do everything and the notion of optimization turns me off. Being in your 40s and gaming is precious time where you don’t want to mess around with anything but your entertainment objective. Yeah consoles have some of those things but it’s more idiot proof and straightforward.
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 schedule to come out.
Madbrad200Outside of handhelds, I don’t really see the use-case of consoles anymore, to be honest.
I’d like to see how the switch 2 does before jumping to conclusions.
I’d like to see how the switch 2 does before jumping to conclusions.
Everyone who wanted a console already got it.
PS 5 released 3.5 years ago, the switch is 7. xBox is only bought by… who the heck buys xBox anyways? It’s been bad since the xBOneS.
Switch2‘s gonna sell bad. Either due to naming or bad marketing or both. I fell like it’s gonna be like the 3DS was to the DS, or the N3DS to the 3DS.
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.
I thought PS3 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.
BlizzardThis is an “article” in PC GAMER written by some “pC mAsTeR rAC3” lunatic. Who upvotes this crap?
I thought from the title it was obvious.
ampersandrew“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 is lagging behind PS4 by about 20M units in the same timeframe when you consider how many of them are actually out there, while your link is focused solely on dollars. 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.
Preference. It is preference. It always was and it probably will be fir the foreseeable future. There are perks or arguments for either but imo you are either a PC-type or Console-type (subject to change over time lfc).
Put me in the both camp. They’re fundamentally different experience and there are different games that I prefer to have on PS5 and other on PC
Oh yeah totally forgot to add this as an option. I should have put it like: Those are different things with different aspects to like/dislike about each.
As a very new PC gamer, supplementing my long time Xbox gaming, the biggest advantage of consoles is that games always work OOTB (or OOTDownload).
Sometimes with PC gaming, a game just doesn’t run for whatever reason, or you get crashes, or any other weird issues. Most people don’t want to have to tinker in settings just to get consistent framerates.
Including myself, because I don’t have a lot of time to play and I don’t want to waste that time troubleshooting.
dorumonI’m over here questioning my sanity paying 20 dollars for a Half Life 2 mod that was made in the span of 10 years by some South Korean women.
Only to have to open up gcfscape and extract the audio such that the game doesn’t crash and also emulate a graphics card.
Good game btw! It’s a shame that modern graphics cards are losing support for directx9.
But like I get your point first hand. There are so many games on steam that just don’t work anymore or in G-String’s case. Don’t work because the creator runs ancient windows 10 and has an older graphics card such that if it works on her machine it must work on your computer as well.
randomasideIt’s funny to me that we are not looking at the market beyond Sony Microsoft Nintendo.
Retro gaming handhelds for emulation are on the rise and large swaths of the market are gravitating to them. There is growth in gaming but it’s actually a growth in piracy. No one likes the new stuff.
Any numbers you could share to show “large swaths of the market”?