Comment on #StopPayingGames
ClamDrinker@lemmy.world 19 hours agoI kinda hate to say it, but consoles are designed with these companies in mind. The whole idea of locking the ecosystem to only companies Sony / Microsoft / Nintendo approves of and making the process to get in expensive, time consuming, and often hostile to creative autonomy, incentivizes exactly these kinds of companies to go all in, since they have plenty of money and know with a captive audience they will get more out of it.
Prices kind of suck right now, so there’s no easy solution. But the only real long term solution is to move to an open platform where you have the control, not them. And that’s going to require sacrifice, because the deck is stacked against you. Or if you have enough faith, for enough people to stand up when they need to. Because the power for you yourself to resist was intentionally already taken from you.
Icedrous@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
What would be an open platform for consoles?
ClamDrinker@lemmy.world 10 minutes ago
I mean it really depends on what your wishes would be. If you’re thinking big and long term then someone could really go all in on capturing the console crowd with an entirely new console ecosystem. You could definitely simplify an OS like Linux to be a lot more to be more console oriented, such as what SteamOS is already trying to do for Steamdeck and the Steam machine. Even though that will be a balancing act with the openness of the system, since ‘making sure you can’t easily break this’ also makes it hard or impossible to break out of it in case of a change of heart.
But the whole thing with open systems is that they can do very similar things to other open systems. Which is why Linux and Windows (and sometimes Mac) are packed together under the same umbrella. So it would have to content with those three and provide clear upsides to developers, businesses, or players over those, which is hard. That’s part of the reason why the big businesses love consoles, because the freedom they take from players, double as tools for them to earn more money.
Most realistically in that route, would be for either Sony, Xbox, or Nintendo, to change their tune and go down that route instead. But that would require immense force from the players to offset the profit lost from changing the status quo. So it really isn’t that realistic sadly. Xbox wouldn’t do it anyways because it’s essentially already even more locked down Windows. Nintendo relies on their exclusives to sell their consoles. Sony would be least unlikely to do it but they recently stopped selling their exclusives on PC because (almost) nobody jumped ship back to Playstation.
The closest and ‘easiest’ jump in the short term is probably to small formfactor PC hooked up to your TV. Controller support is pretty widely supported nowadays. And since most console game developers also develop for PC, you won’t have any issue missing out on your games unless it’s Nintendo or exclusives (but that’s probably another reason to jump too). With some technical knowledge you could do it without spending a single cent on Steam / Valve if that’s your concern. Since you could just run a Linux based system on a mini-PC or console formfactor with eg. Brazzite or another console OS lookalike.
Icedrous@lemmy.ca 2 minutes ago
That makes sense. Regarding your comment re:
I keep seeing videos on YouTube of people installing Ubuntu on their PS5’s - do you think this will gain traction with Sony and Microsoft and allow consumers to install a Linux distro officially like how Steam has SteamOS?
I also notice that when there is a discussion or video regarding modding a console, it’s to “preserve” its longevity rather than having a practical use.