> The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone.
No, the main driver is still there. People do not want to build and maintain PCs. Your 14-year-old nephew doesn't want to do it, either. People want to turn on a box and play a game. I am technical and I want absolutely nothing to do with maintaining a PC. I'll take the console experience every single time.
People can buy a prebuilt pc running steamOS automagically updating itself with immutable images.
The advantage of consoles are:
- No minimum/recomended config to check and insurance that a game or an accesorry bought for a console gen will work well for that console gen. In term of game compat this is something Steam tried to with the steam deck but has no way to enforce really and the biggest one imho. When you buy a brand new "budget" computer in the price range of a console you usually knownyou won't be able to play some of the upcoming AAA titles at least woth decent graphic quality.
- availability in retail stores
- ability to sell games in the second hand market but I don't think this is something that is here to stay with the disappearance of physical medias
You’re mostly correct but there’s truth to the original statement. Back in the PlayStation/N64 through to PS3/Xbox 360, consoles were so different to each other and PCs that porting games was a major task that resulted in very different outcomes.
Since the PS4/Xbox One, they’ve been similar enough in underlying architecture that engines like Unreal have been able to smooth over the differences enough to make multiplatform technically viable. It’s meant companies like Capcom with RE Engine have made a huge success out of selling across all platforms, including PC. That freedom for publishers is a problem for console manufacturers who have fewer 3rd party exclusives as a result.
True though I suspect it being, essentially, the first instance of it happening meant developers were playing catchup until it became the norm.
I'm trying to understand your view here. Do you have a computer? Are you advocating console plus phone plus streaming stick and nothing else?
And you don't need to build a PC to have a PC.
Plus developers get simplicity in having one (well two these days) configurations per console brand to deal with. Not 12 billion.
That's the Steam Machine.
The performance cap on a console makes a big difference to me which is why I only play on the PC. It’s also not rocket science, you can just buy a good gaming PC. Games look an order of magnitude better on the PC in some cases.
Wouldn’t the price increases on consoles also affect PCs? GPUs aren’t exactly cheap right now.
> This means it's harder and harder to say "here's a unique experience you only get on Xbox" (or Playstation for that matter)
That’s also been the case for a very long time. That’s why they sign deals for exclusives.
The idea is that the hardware overlaps enough that consumers would rather only buy the generic version which is the PC. It works for gaming and everything else. There was a time consoles thought they could steal share from the PC market by including browsers and whatnot but I think that never panned out as expected
The exclusives business model worked for Sony for the ps4 generation for sure. But it seems that the cost of developing ever larger and more ambitious games has ballooned in recent years. Intentionally limiting your distribution seems misguided. Even Sony has been releasing their exclusives on PC too after some exclusivity time.
On the other hand it seems to work for Nintendo which keeps their consoles intentionally underpowered and don’t try to compete with the AAA game expectations with the majority of their titles.
It’s their choice to continue to develop ever bigger super-tent-pole septuple-A games.
Look at all the amazing stuff in the indie space. Let your developers go wild and make neat games that don’t cost $200 billion each.
You could have so many test exclusives like the more fun and experimental stuff we had in the PS1/2 era.
You don’t have to give up the big games. Just don’t focus entirely on them.
Same problem movie studios have. They chase the “sure things” and just pump more money in to be “more sure”. It’s all more fragile than ever.
The thing is the whole set of companies making games at Sony and Microsoft are completely built for what we call AAA games. Tons of middle managers, large teams of artists and visual effect specialists, a whole human pipeline built to sand off every single pain point in every moment of their game to make a good content tube. Those studios are incapable of just making a bunch of indie games. They would need to be completely reorganized to an insane degree.
Yeah, that's the Nintendo model I mentioned.
Consoles also had performance advantages up to PS2. The lightweight execution environment and exotic accelerators used in consoles allowed better gaming experience than CPU/GPU at that time. Cycle-perfect consistency of consoles also allowed games to be better "optimized", such as data aligned to boudaries and arranged on game discs to be streamed and such.
Consoles slowly started losing that plot after the launch of Xbox and GPU development mess of PS3(the PS3 CPU was supposed to be the world's first APU but Kutaragi dropped the ball big time) and now consoles are just a Nespresso experience, with just marginally cheaper hardware tied to proprietary full-priced game discs, which is not worth much.
OS argument is practically valid but... Frankly IMO that's more of a disadvantage of PCs coming from horrible near nonexistent engineering discipline of software engineering than an advantage of consoles.
consoles are only getting much more expensive to produce as well, with PC parts prices going through the roof
> standalone PC
My take is that almost nobody has a standalone PC anymore, especially kids. Kids these days all start with iPads, them maybe they move up to Macbooks once they get to high school or college. Other than the local LLM fanatics I see here on HN, I have no idea who's buying those PC towers anymore, they seem like fringe relics from the past century.
People who want their games to look prettier and run smoother than what you can get out of the thermal and power budgets of laptops would be the ones still buying the desktops. If you additionally value a not too noisy environment home, then water cooling is way better and more accessible in the desktop form factor (though this is still niche at least for the gpus where all-in-one units are basically non-existent). Laptops are by all means nice toys as well, but on the go phones are better entertainment while in transit, and once you're somewhere you left the comfort of your home to experience it's rarely for your gaming hobby (however it might be a setting where you're reminded that computers are still relatively cheap compared to certain music instruments or sports equipment).
> Consoles are a struggling market right now.
You're out of touch.
Step outside an echo chamber and you'll see that in most countries, including East Asia and the Middle East, if you take a walk around any big mall, you don't see kids pestering their parents to buy them a PC. They ask for a PlayStation or an Xbox or a "Nintendo" (yep that's what people still call the Switch)
In conbinis, there are Xbox and PlayStation gift cards hanging from the shelves, in the local currency.
There are accessories for PS/Xbox/Switch everywhere, more than PC gaming accessories.
And it's not because the PC stuff gets sold out while the consy stuff gathers cobwebs: If that was the case the consoles would stop getting restocked after a few months, but they keep stocking newer stuff. Meanwhile I have to hunt around and specifically request for Razer or Mad Catz or other PC-specific brands.
> The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone.
If you go hang out at someone's home, nobody says "Let's go to my bedroom desk and play something on the PC", no they crash on the couch and turn on the TV and fire up FIFA or some other normie shit.
> Meanwhile I have to hunt around and specifically request for Razer or Mad Catz or other PC-specific brands.
Since you mention conbinis, I'm guessing you're in Japan. Having just been there, game software is receding from the smaller hobby stores, and then in the tech stores like Bic Camera, the PC gaming stuff is one floor down.
> Since you mention conbinis, I'm guessing you're in Japan
I use that word for any similar convenience stores in all East Asian countries now ^^
I feel like gaming controllers for PCs never gained popular acceptance.
Sure, there are advantages to using a keyboard+mouse in a FPS game but it’s a much different gaming experience than a handheld controller.
It feels like the problem was the market ended up in a race to the bottom and so most of the made-for-PC controllers just sucked. The best option was to buy your preferred console controller and use that with PC.
Xbox controllers work pretty seamlessly on Microsoft platforms.
But I don't get why HN is randomly shadowbanning half my comments and not the other half! This one wasn't shadowbanned.
Usually means your comments are getting flagged by other users. I’m not going to dig through your comments to speculate on why, but I don’t think there are any automated filters that will kill only some of your comments.
They're instantly pre-flagged upon posting and some others aren't.
This one came pre-flagged.
Probably your account is shadowbanned but people with showdead on are individually vouching for some comments which unbans those comments only.
Instantly when posting them?
> I feel like gaming controllers for PCs never gained popular acceptance.
I will never forgive Microsoft for killing SideWinder.
> Step outside an echo chamber and you'll see that in most countries, including East Asia and the Middle East, if you take a walk around any big mall, you don't see kids pestering their parents to buy them a PC.
This is still the case in the U.S. for the most part. The point is moreso that barrier to entry is lowering. The SteamDeck is a PC/console and a good example of a possible trend in that direction.
Just a couple weeks ago in Bali someone said "Oh you have a Nintendo too?" and pulled out their Switch. Meanwhile I haven't made a Steam friend in the wild in years
Hell I saw PlayStations in barbershops in Vietnam! There's no way you'd see a PC in those environments.
The Steam Deck certainly reduces the gap, but I've yet to see it penetrate "normie" social circles, and it's still rare in random gaming shops compared to console stuff. Have Valve released their OS for other handheld manufacturers to use? That's probably the only way to end Windows' dominance and improve the coolness factor of "PC" gaming.
Yeah I think we're mostly in agreement. Consoles will continue to dominate for the foreseeable future.
Another attraction for publishers was (historically) a much lower adoption of piracy.
Part of the sales pitch is you need more than just a torrent client to pirate.
Now in the world of AI I think this moat is evaporating. Hypervisor exploits are dropping like rain and determined individuals can vibe code a reasonably performant emulator in a couple of weeks.
In that world the only reasonable edge you have left is high prestige exclusives and merchandising/physical sales.
Nintendo has this cornered, one of the few companies who can pull off a rabid fan base buying a console they already own because this time there’s a triforce on it.
Meanwhile Sony and Microsoft are diluting their own IP and going full digital. Writing is on the wall if you ask me.
Consoles won’t go anywhere. They have advantages but more than anything so so SO SO many consumers want them and don’t want to mess with computers.
They’re gaming appliances and that will still be a huge draw.
PS: Sony gave up PC publishing, so that argument no longer holds. It was a dumb move as you said.