Ex-Xbox Exec
X Xbox Xec Series X|S
This seems nsfw
Or muskrat having an aneurysm
And his Xclusive Xposé.
Yeah their stupid naming convention is exactly what was going through my mind reading that.
People have been telling me that consoles are dying and everyone will play on PC instead for over 30 years. The convenience factor of the all-in-one hardware, and the supported lifetime of the platform, can’t be understated. I can see docked phones being a replacement at some point. But I’d be surprised if PCs ever squash out consoles.
Aside from convenience, the price really is a lot cheaper than equivalent PCs. An RTX 4070 alone costs as much as a playstation 5 (with disc), and that comes with a controller too.
But you don’t really need a 4070 for gaming. Just like you don’t need a F150 to drive to work (most people don’t at least). Plenty of lower end hardware does the job well. Over the course of the systems lifetime a PC can be very competitive in terms of prices for games. And it can be used for more than just gaming.
PC is already larger than active users on both PlayStations combined, and it didn’t used to be that way. Given the Steam Deck and what Microsoft have been saying about handhelds and their next console(s), you’re looking at a very real possibility that the next Xbox is just a PC with a different UI, like the Steam Deck.
isn’t the steam deck much closer to a console than a PC?
Now we’re in philosophical territory with questions like, “What is a console?” It runs PC games, but you can navigate it with a controller. It has most console features but is malleable enough to have most PC features.
sure, it’s a spectrum. but to me the biggest defining feature of a console is being a self-contained wad of hardware, unable to be upgraded or repaired piece by piece.
Then it arguably isn’t that either. They give you full instructions on how to repair and upgrade it, and they partnered with iFixIt. People have modded in more storage, battery life, and better screens. Personally, I think I draw the line at the part where it runs the same executables as any other PC, so I’ll call it a PC.
Wow, it’s been 40 years since I played on a spectrum.
Those are two different things
being a self-contained wad of hardware
Steam Deck checks this, but so do laptops, raspberry pis and smartphones.
unable to be upgraded or repaired piece by piece.
Again Steam Deck is almost as upgradable and repairable as a laptop, and more repairable than a raspberry pi or a smartphone.
So that definition of console doesn’t work, otherwise raspberry pies, laptops, and especially phones would also be consoles. The differentiating factor is locking of the system with the hardware, in that sense Apple is more “console-like” than non-Apple competitors. Also The primary function of a gaming console must be gaming.
With those two extra points the Steam Deck hits one but misses the other. It is primarily for gaming, but the system is not locked down, you can change it how you want and even remove it entirely and put a different one.
So with any definition you can find the Steam Deck is not quite a console, but it does provide a console experience, so it’s in a weird space.
I upgraded my Steamdeck joysticks to a 3rd party with hall effect sensors, the ssd to one with double the capacity, and the fan to one that is silent. There’s people that have upgraded even more things, to the point of using a pcie flat cable to connect a full pcie GPU card.
The steam deck is a PC in a handheld form factor. It simply runs Linux and defaults to steams big picture mode (a console esque interface). You can still enter a desktop mode and use firefox and a word processor
Yeah, but now you can buy an all-in-one convenient PC to plug on your TV with almost 100% retro compatibility, it’s called the Steam Deck and it’s awesome.
Can’t if they don’t sell in your country
Does the deck dock to TV? I always thought the Switch should have a pro dock to upscale when docked.
Yup, you can buy the official dock or really any usb-C dock. Resolution can be set, so you can even do 4k on it if the tv supports it and the deck can handle it for that game
Im with you except for the “supported lifetime,” I have a PC that can play the original Doom alongside Cyberpunk 2077 with raytracing, and literally everything in between.
My PS3 can play at most a decade worth of games. It is obsolete.
My PS3 can play at most a decade worth of games. It is obsolete.
Sure, but so is the PC that someone bought around the time the original Doom was released.
Right. Fair enough. But, as another user said, I can upgrade that PC. I’ve technically had the “same PC” since like 2015. At this point, there are no pieces of the original left, but I never went out and spend $1000 on a new rig up front.
Also, that still doesn’t make consoles look amy better. Because, when the PS3 became obsolete, and I went and got a PS4, what happened to my PS3 library? It’s still locked to my PS3. Even if we did have to go buy new computers every 7 years, they’s still all run the original Doom as well as newer games, and everything in between. All this, while also being able to file my taxes.
As long as there are killer 1st party titles exclusive to a console platform, there’s a reason to buy one.
Personally, I love Zelda, Mario, and most recently I’ve been excited about the new Astro Bot game about to come out.
Outside of Steam Deck emulation, you need a console to play those, and I do enjoy the convenience.
The last Xbox worth buying was the 360, because all Xbox titles are released on other platforms now - eliminating the need for an Xbox console.
I would agree with your last statement, but in the case of Xbox i think it is by design. They already excitedly talk about windows handhelds being the future and its because the console market has almost always been a loss, even back to the Sega selling massively under production cost to try and take ground from Nintendo. Games were always what made the profit.
In the case of Xbox, their business model for a long time has been moving to a live service streaming model, i don’t think they want to be in the console market. If they can move their app on all kinds of devices, they can skip the investment of the console and instead focus on what the real profit driver was all along.
The new-gen console is actually trending 7 per cent ahead of the PS4 in the United States launch aligned.
And how much do you think the drop in Xbox is? It’s way more than 7 percent. The problem for Sony isn’t that its console is dying; it’s that they’re approaching market saturation. They’ve got their market cornered in a way that they never have, and they’ve only got a 7 percent lead off of the last generation. Peak dollars spent on consoles was back in 2009, when all three consoles were in very healthy competition. Many PS4 users are happy to stay on PS4, because the games they play are over 10 years old, like Grand Theft Auto V and Minecraft, so there’s no need to upgrade.
Meanwhile, a console that launched with some idea of every game running at 60 FPS is now compromising on that (it was inevitable, but people believed otherwise). Games that used to be console exclusive are now coming out on PC, where you don’t need to pay a subscription fee to play online and your library always comes with the assumption that every game you have will be forward compatible. Even if you buy the new PlayStation, there’s no promise that your old games will run at better resolutions and frame rates. The controller you bought 10 years ago still works on PC, but Sony says you need to buy the new one, even if the game you’re playing uses none of its new features. The VR system you bought before doesn’t play the new VR games. For all sorts of economic realities, not the least of which are certification processes and licensing fees, there’s a good chance that game you really want to play is on PC long before it’s on console, in early access or otherwise. There are no competing storefronts for digital releases, so you can only pay what Sony says you have to pay. Consoles also aren’t even significantly cheaper than an equivalent PC anymore, and they run basically the same hardware under the hood, so the reasons for a console as we know them today to exist are fewer and fewer as time goes on.
Sont forget that pc games have faster, more frequent and longer updates, cross storefront multiplayer and quickly cost a lot less than at launch.
Oh, the Ex-Xbox Exec? I hear is now a Court Reporter with a unique sense of fashion, the jet-setting jort-sporting Court Reporter.
Can things that are true be a “pushed narrative”?
Consoles will be around until the tech is sufficiently advanced as to negate their usefulness. There will come a day when a phone does everything a modern high end PC can. Bluetooth to a TV and play whatever you want.
Graphic fidelity is almost to a point where there isn’t much more needed in the way of processing power. Another decade. Maybe 2. Consoles will still exist for decades yet. But they’re going to become increasingly unnecessary.
Steam is futureproof. But nothing else.
I think it’s a bit shortsighted to assume gaming will have no use for significantly more powerful hardware in the future. even if not for graphics or VR, it could be greater use of AI, or something else we could never foresee.
I disagree. Your phone can happily do that today as long as you’re willing to play old games. This will always be the case, even when phones are able to play things today are now considered AAA, Desktop computers will be leaps ahead in what they can do.
Dedicated hardware still has benefits, having your phone notifications separate from gaming, if your phone breaks having your console break would suck, and imo a touchscreen will never surpass physical buttons on controllers so you’d still want those.
I personally hope the future looks more like a steam deck than a gaming phone.
In terms of touch screen control. The phone will just be the processing unit. It will wirelessly Stream the video to your tv while accepting controllers and other ik devices via bluetooth. Maybe with a switch like cradle. And I can’t play a lot of games with a controller… but my kids play fine with one… also on the touch screen. It’s what you are used to I guess.
Your console is failing doesnt mean Nintendo and playstation are failing. As a matter of fact they are killing it. Xbox has lost the console wars!
I think the biggest competition to consoles is tablets. A lot of Gen Alpha doesn’t even know how to use a controller. EDIT I guess noone on Lemmy actually pays attention to kids these days…
What the fuck gen am I? Millenials, Z and all this shite. Everytime I get on here there is a new generation. Im only 30.
'94 is considered a Millennial typically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#/media/File:Generation_timeline.svg
Oh Im one of them, didnt realise it was gen Y
