I mean, when it comes to console exclusives, some can’t be beat. Nintendo and Sony have proven that console exclusives still drive sales.
Comment on Confirmed: PS5 console prices are being raised by $100 | VGC
CodenameDarlen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Why do people buy a console instead of a PC? I just can’t understand, seriously.
lemmyng@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Mat Piscatella makes a good argument that they haven’t proven that. A lot of Xbox titles became all-time PS5 best-sellers immediately after getting ported. People who wanted to play those games could have bought an Xbox at any point to play them before the multiplatform strategy was announced, but they didn’t. He would argue that people have already settled into their platform of choice and just wait for the games they want to come there. Something like a third of all console players (at least Xbox/PS) are only playing multiplatform live service games on those consoles, not any of the marquis exclusives.
And to be honest, that makes sense. In the grand scheme of things, there aren’t even that many exclusives anymore, compared to the deluge that there might have been in the 5th/6th gens.
PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is a good point, but leaves Nintendo out of the consideration
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And I don’t have data for this, because I’m not an analyst, and Piscatella shares what he shares, so all I’ve got are anecdotal observations.
- Some Nintendo properties have extremely strong moats, as Warren Buffet might call them. Pokemon, Mario, and Zelda especially. Even if a new property like Splatoon does well, it doesn’t mean it’s a system seller the way old exclusives used to be. The lower bound for this moat is clearly what the Wii U did in sales.
- Switch 1 was very popular with children, as the machine is cheaper and more durable than handheld PC equivalents. It was very easy to end up with multiple Switch 1s per household. The industry outside of mobile and Nintendo has done, from what I can tell, a horrendous job of catering to children compared to how it used to.
Speaking for myself, even if I wasn’t pissed off at how Nintendo operates as a company and decided not to be a customer of theirs anymore, they’re still running into the same problems that caused me to lose interest in PlayStation. They can’t put out enough exclusives to justify a $500 machine to play them, since I’m going to be playing everything else, at better settings, for the same or lower price, on PC.
baronvonj@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
People who wanted to play those games could have bought an Xbox at any point to play them before the multiplatform strategy was announced,
But then they would have had to use an Xbox. 😋
Something like a third of all console players (at least Xbox/PS) are only playing multiplatform live service games on those consoles, not any of the marquis exclusives.
PC totally makes sense for them, if they can afford the min. requirements.
rozodru@piefed.world 3 weeks ago
what console exclusives for the PS5? it has 7. that’s it. only 7 that you can ONLY play on the PS5. (used to be 8 but Death Stranding 2 just came out on PC). and of those 7 maybe ONE of which is a console seller, maybe, and that’s Astro Bot and while it’s a good game I say that as a massive stretch that it’s worth a $650 point of entry.
the ps5 doesn’t have any exclusives that drive sales. none.
Shorn@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Gran Turismo sells incredibly well, as such I’ve given up on it coming to PC lol
r1veRRR@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
It’s funny how we never count the thousands of games you can only play on PC as exclusives. If we throw in emulators and backwards compatibility, there’s just absolutely no contest.
Not to say that there aren’t great exclusives for the consoles, just that the PC ones seem to always get ignored.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I think a lot of the conversation around exclusives comes from the standpoint of what keeps a console player from switching from one console to another (whether that’s a PC, a PS5, an Xbox, etc.), so PC exclusives don’t really factor into it because PC players are almost always a PC gamer plus a console player rather than somebody who is switching from a PC to a console.
That said, I think a lot of people in the industry (and console gamers) really underestimate the vastness of PC exclusives that exist thanks to the indie scene. Most people will think of PC exclusive genres like RTS games, but few people think of
BloodborneNightmare Kart or all the tiny indie RPG/horror/etc. projects that come out all the time as a reason to switch from a console.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
because pc gaming is a huge pain in the ass.
console gaming is not.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Look, I won’t argue that console gaming is easier, but if you think you need to spend hours resolving driver issues on PC, you must not have owned one in a decade. I’m on Linux and playing Windows games without driver issues these days. On the dreaded nvidia drivers that everyone says are awful on Linux (they CAN have issues, but it’s not that common these days). On Windows there should be even fewer issues with gaming in particular since the games are actually made for that platform.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Idk man I’ve been a PC gamer for decades, and in my long career in IT have been a subject matter expert on both Linux and Windows systems and this is just straight up cope.
Drivers and compatibility issues and such are much better now than they were 15 years ago, but at the end of the day you buy a console and you get a guaranteed 8-10 years of running every game with zero problems. Thats something we will never, ever get on PC. It’s just not possible.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
i was trying to game on my pc a few months ago and just gave up due to the constant crashes on top of hours of wasted time trying to ‘resolve the issue’.
you can keep telling me how stupid and wrong i am, but my experience of PC gaming is it’s the same as it was in the 90s. the only games i don’t have tehcnical issues with are the indie ones, that don’t even need gpu to run.
my ps5… just works. everytime.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
…What game? I haven’t had that experience in at least a decade.
Fishnoodle@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because I like sitting down after a long day and playing games on my big ass oled tv.
I don’t like sitting down and turning on my computer so that it can update Windows, then the game itself needs to be updated. Then the game runs like shit because my graphics drivers updated to a newer version that doesn’t work well with the game I’m playing. So then I have to do some research to find the best driver version to downgrade to. So then I finally get the driver issue fixed and start the game, but now my controller isn’t working because the windows update broke the Logitech drivers my controller needs. So now it’s been two hours, I’m tired, I didn’t get to play any games, and I still have more work to do tomorrow to get things working.
Hond@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
This comment. But now imagine not beeing computer literate. While consoles lost a bit of their appeal in ease of use the last two generation they’re still a nice little walled garden where most of the stuff is just working for you in the background.
I havent bought a current-gen console since the 360 for various reasons. But i get why somebody just wants a playstation and not a gaming pc.
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Feels like linux can fix some of your problem, but then it creates some other. So, fair.
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
The cost of building a gaming PC has also gone up dramatically.
A whole ps5 is about the current price of just a decent “value” video card. Toss in your ram and storage and you’re looking at three times the price.
SharkWeek@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Can’t speak for other people, but as a patient gamer it’s a combination of cost and longevity - I can get about 15 years out of a console.
I only upgraded from an original xbox to an xbox 360 because I found it in a dumpster (I did have to fix it and buy a controller, so it wasn’t ideal). My wife’s PS4 is now 11 years old and still works.
r1veRRR@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
You won’t believe how much time I can get out of a PC, if I wanted to. Backwards compatibility plus frequent sales, plus emulators and mods.
There’s a bunch of reasons why someone might prefer one over the other, but longevity absolutely goes to PC, no question.
Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Idk man I still play my PS3 online to this day.
Not kidding. It has held up quite well.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Seriously. I have some DDR3 RAM and a motherboard with processor laying around somewhere that I recently was considering digging out to make a second computer out of as a home storage/media server/pihole analogue, and I bet I could still get low quality settings on most recent games to play nicely with whatever parts I can scrabble together.
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
I was too damn patient and missed the end of the steam sale this week FFS.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s more cost efficient, and less of a headache to deal with anomalous problems like bugs and driver issues that can be as specific to your unique combination of PC hardware.
Golden@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
In addition to being more cost efficient, square footage is at a premium. I bought a PC when things were going well for me, but then my living situation changed and it sat in the closet for a couple years. The old Playstation doesn’t take up any additional space because it can sit behind the TV that’s always being used anyways.
Now that I’ve finally organized my space enough to fit a computer desk I’ve gotta deal with either using Windows or taking up Linux as a full-time hobby and learning how to make an Nvidia card work with it. It’d literally be easier to just sell it and buy a ps5 if I only cared about gaming.
R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Linux is not that hard. These days it’s easier than Windows in some ways.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is a big reason why I’m hyped for Steam machine.
hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Console is easier (plug in and play). But console gaming is more expensive in the long term.
DamienGramatacus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Since the Sega MegaDrive, I’ve always been a console kid.
CentipedeFarrier@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
I don’t anymore, ps5 was my last and I barely use it. It wasn’t worth buying, but I use my ps4 incredibly heavily.
I used to do console because it was easier. You also know a game put out for a system is compatible with your hardware. You don’t have to fiddle with things to get them to work properly, much less well.
It used to be a decent value proposition. It was worth it enough that I’ve had every non-handheld console for decades. The games would be sold cheap used, they always worked, and used consoles were cheap. If you stuck with the secondhand market you could get a system and like 20 games for the price of buying the system and one game of $50 value new. But you could also resell the games if needed for some reason. It was an investment, and it definitely paid off. My collections is worth almost 10 grand now, and I certainly didn’t spend half that much on it, when each game was $10 or less.
Those value propositions changed when physical media stopped being the main thing. Now used games sell for near what new ones do, because they just didn’t make that many. And why would they continue to make them when everyone downloads?
So now your question is valid, but it didn’t used to be in the same way.
Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Well I have a PC also but for me I wanted to play with a specific friend who I’ve always played games with growing up.
It was cheaper for me to buy two PS5’s and give him one than it was to buy us both PCs that could run new games at the same fps as the PS5.
Also, Sony let’s you gameshare not only individual games but the PS plus subscription service as a whole as well.
What that means is when I buy a game, me and him can play the game together at the same time (steams game sharing doesn’t do that only one can be online playing it at a time) AND he doesn’t even have to pay for online as long as I have PS plus and have his console set up as my primary and vice versa.
That still comes out miles ahead from the cost it would have taken to get us both a decent gaming PC and games on top of it. Every single time you both want to play, boom two copies of the game have to be bought.
And since we share PS plus it really still makes it cheaper than gaming on PC. Especially now like yeah ps5 went up but you have to practically be a drug dealer or something to afford a new PC now (kidding of course, but not far off) so its still a lot cheaper to just get a ps5.
Also the exclusives on PlayStation are absolute titties. God of War and the Ghost of Tsushima series are my jam but there’s several others too.
Xbox though, yeah I don’t know why anyone would buy an Xbox anymore. I had one and when they raised game pass 50% I sold it and will never fuck with Xbox or any other Microsoft product ever again, minus using my friends computer to update my Garmin when it needs it since its windows only.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There are fewer and fewer reasons as time goes on, but the big one is that it’s usually a lower up-front cost (in a lot of cases, still is) and just works without any fuss. We might find the fuss on PC to be pretty minimal, but on console, it approaches 0. PCs have gotten easier to work with, people have become more literate in how to use them, and the long-term savings on PC with a significantly sized library have become more apparent, but there will always still be a market for something like a console, even if that means they abandon some of their defining traits in order to survive the future.
Naho_Zako@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Yup. I wanted to play FF VII Rebirth, but apparently SE can’t be assed to optimize their flagship game for PC, so I stuck with the PS5 version because it just works. I don’t want to deal with stuttering and downloading weird drivers to get it to maybe not stutter. I don’t care about mods and ultimate graphics. I just want to play the game.
BigDaddySlim@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“…and just works without any fuss”
Unless you bought an Xbox One/Xbox One X and found out the software was total shit and you can find yourself forcing system software repairs and having video cut out issues on the One X. The amount of times I had to download a repair tool to a flashdrive for the Xbone is embarrassing even for Microslop.
Otherwise your statement is correct