Games Media has been acting like they want Xbox to die off and have only Sony and Nintendo making hardware, but I have been saying for years that would be horrendously bad for gaming.
Nintendo pulled the ultimate anti-consumer move by actively removing themselves from competing with PlayStation and Xbox.
Right now Sony is acting like they have no competition, pushing the envelop of what they can get way with while Xbox is still in the game: No more disks, absurd price increases, etc. They figure the same thing I was warning: Don’t like it? Where are you going to go? To what competitor? See you in two weeks.
But for all the Normies? They don’t care. Just eat up the slop until the water is boiling them alove and they won’t have noticed until its too late.
Peffse@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I feel like I’m going to summon somebody from c/latestagecapitalism but it really seems like we’ve gotten to the point where companies are so big, so invested in everything, that the “scrappy can-do company” can no longer challenge the ingrained supremacy.
So we just kinda… wish for less abuse from whoever is still in the market.
I asked all the gamers I know who they think could turn around that Playstation news and enter the market by promoting physical media. All I really got was shrugs. Nobody really can. Sega is out. Gamestop probably would benefit most, but they don’t design hardware. Evercade has hardware and production lines, but fills a niche at best. You’ve got giants like Google who failed with Stadia, so Amazon and Samsung probably wouldn’t dare try.
It’s uhh… not good.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think the reality is that we outgrew our need for consoles the way they’ve always existed, with certification, exclusives, walled gardens, generations, etc. that no longer make sense. If you want physical to come back, it’s probably on a PC somehow, but people also don’t typically have disc drives anymore, and even offline games tend to get patches and updates that you’d have to account for in some way; the media you can store that on will have a more restrictive shelf life and cost more to purchase.
greenskye@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Personally I don’t actually want physical media anymore. I just want digital media to actually be something I own.
Mac@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
I agree. I want physical to exist as an option, but i personally dont want it. I like digital and i want digital ownership.
Peffse@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There is definitely a benefit to having a set platform for game developers to target.
I don’t mean that PC is a bad platform… I just mean it’s a moving target. An ever-evolving target. The further back you go in the PC library the worse the game compatibility gets. We completely lost 16-bit games years ago without much fuss.
Consoles, though, serve as checkpoints almost. Place GTA IV into an Xbox 360 and it’ll act exactly the same as when you bought it.
FaceDeer@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
The answer there is emulation. Goid Old Games sells old DOS games and they work fine on modern computers because each comes wrapped in a DOS emulator.
kahjtheundedicated@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
But the beauty of an open platform is that people can and have made emulators, vm’s, translation layers, etc.
How much 16-bit software are you running on a ps5?
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Are 16-bit games not solved via DOSBox?
Also, I get where you’re coming from, but it’s the economics of it that are tearing down consoles. If you’ve got a set target, Game X launches on PS4. Now the PS5 comes out. It plays PS4 games, but it can’t ever run them better than the PS4 ran them. It also asks for an upgrade to run the “PS5 version”. It also demands you use a PS5 controller and not a PS4 controller. Game X is still super popular for more than the duration of the PS5’s lifespan. Now the PS6 is coming out, and the cycle will repeat.
Because of console cert, and all of those added costs, it’s far easier to get out the next indie hit on PC for less money. People go to play the indie hit, and it’s old news by the time it gets a port for Switch 2.
PS2 used to have tons of exclusive games that Sony didn’t even pay for the privilege. Now architectures and capabilities are so similar that if you’re making a game on only one platform, you’re leaving money on the table. So as the customer, you’ll probably end up going for the one with the most games you want to play, which has a greater chance of being PC every time the above paragraph happens.
Online gaming doesn’t have to come with a subscription fee, but they all choose to, and customers are savvy enough to notice their long-term costs after they’ve been gaming for some time.
Each of these things gets people to check out of the console space as it loses the value it once offered.
mereo@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
In my opinion, only PC and Linux matter. We desperately need Linux to succeed because it’s a community project. Yes, companies contribute to it, but it’s still a community project with no for-profit objective.
For many in the open-source community, contributing is an affair of love, not a way to enrich shareholders. We need this ecosystem to compete with console companies and Microsoft in the PC market.