this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

If I'm spending $450 + $70 + $80/year on gaming it's going to be a steam deck and not a ps5.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I feel like the better thing to compete on is "plug it in and it works", "easier to play on your couch and TV with a controller than a PC" and various comparisons to the other consoles.

Other than setup and ease of couch gaming, PC has them beat hands down. And it's only very slightly easier in those dimensions too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Which on the other hand is something many PC gamers and content with. Steam consoles didn't sell well because the market for PC fixed consoles wasn't there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yup. It's why they're unlikely to get conversions, but they might get people to do both.

Consoles compete with PC gaming, but they're not substitutes. The best they can hope for is people who are relatively indifferent to the advantages a PC has being persuaded by the console advantages, or people who are okay with just having both picking a PS5 over an Xbox or Nintendo.

For the latter, I think they'd be better served looking for a way to do "but it in one, play it in both" type deals, since that makes the ambivalent people more likely to default to PlayStation, since they still get PC, and the "both" people are more likely to buy sooner, since waiting doesn't get them anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Right. We mustn't forget that many people just have lots of disposable income. Buying several consoles and gaming PCs is just part of their hobby.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

There are at least tens of thousands of games to play on the PC. They must expect FOMO to be a huge motivator but I don't think it's going to have much of an effect.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

They're going to be waiting for a long, long time then.

Get your shit on steam and stop making that stupid PSN network that leaked my information that I'm still dealing with to this day a requirement to play your first party games.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Still waiting for that backward compatibility with discs.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Folks on Steam: set up tents and lawnchairs

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Like us pc gamers don't know how to wait out a game

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I still haven't played Cyberpunk yet, which seems like it's aimed directly at me and I really want to play, just because it hasn't been cheap enough on the Steam sales yet. I think they might be slightly underestimating the patience of PC gamers lol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh, really? I feel like I grabbed it for like, $30 or so a couple months back.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I'm very cheap lol, and I think the cheapest I've seen it in Canada was about $40. Close, but I think they can do better!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (4 children)

If they want to entice me, they need to:

  • open their platform
  • release interesting form factors
  • provide interesting, unique features

The Steam Deck did that, and I would happily buy a Sony handheld or something if it offered value.

But no, they instead want me to buy a locked down system that competes with my existing PC, and their sales pitch is, "buy this or you can't play these games." I don't respond well to threats of FOMO, so I'm not going to buy it. I own a Switch and a Steam Deck because they provide value I can't get elsewhere, I don't own a Playstation or an Xbox because they don't.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Gravity Rush was great and I'm disappointed no one has done anything similar since.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I agreed with you until you talked about the switch

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If it helps, I mostly got it so I could play fun couch co-op games w/ my kids. We've taken it camping, on road trips, etc, and it's honestly quite good for that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Nah i mean he blamed Xbox and Playstation but praised Nintendo while in fact Nintendo is as anti-consumer as the others

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I wrote both things.

Yes, Nintendo is anti-consumer and way worse in that regard, but they really deliver on the "new ways to play" angle. I just can't get anything like the local multiplayer experience I get with Nintendo elsewhere, and that's true for almost all of their history:

  • NES - awesome accessories, like the DuckHunt gun, running pad, etc
  • N64 - local multiplayer games were fantastic, and the controller was interesting
  • Wii - controller made for a very fun casual multiplayer experience
  • Switch - very portable and the joycons are very easy to pass around

And their handhelds were all the best on the market:

  • gameboy - first and had fantastic battery life, the gameboy color was immensely popular; no competition whatsoever
  • gba - way better gameplay experience vs gameboy, Sega Game Gear had terrible battery life, huge back catalogue with gb compat, so upgrading was a no-brainer
  • Nintendo DS - PSP had better hardware, DS had better battery life, better load times, and just better portability all around; 3DS improved on this

Nintendo has continually delivered an interesting gaming experience with almost each generation. That's why they appeal to people despite the anti-consumer behavior they have, and that's why I buy their systems.

Valve gets most of my gaming money because they win the rest of my priorities, but Nintendo gets some too. PS5 and Xbox compete in all the ways I don't care about, Nintendo and Steam compete in the ways I do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

i've never been a big Nintendo fan, i got the Wii and the Nintendo DS as a child but that's all. I don't understand the reason to buy a switch when a Steam Deck can do exactly the same and much more imo, But i got your point.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But it can't. Can you remove the controllers and play with a friend? Can you slip it in a bag, just in case? Can you play on an airplane or road trip without worrying about battery life?

The Steam Deck is fantastic for single player gaming, which is why I have it. But battery life isn't great for portability (road trips or flights), and for multiplayer, you basically need to hook it up to a TV and have more controllers.

I don't see much point in a Switch Lite except to reuse games from another Switch you have.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Depend if you're apart pc or console team at first, as a pc user why would i buy a console that only let me play the games of the manufacturer with a obsolete hardware while i could do the same + any games running on pc with the other one ?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Why make teams?

I play Switch games on Switch, and PC games on Steam Deck. Switch, for me, is casual gaming with my kids or friends. PC, for me, is more intense gaming alone or with friends online.

Can you play something like Smash Brothers, Mario Kart, or Mario Party with someone on an airplane or in a car with a PC? If you're playing games with friends visiting, can you easily hand off a controller every round and expect the next player to have fun?

Couch co-op kinda sucks on PC generally. Xbox was cool with the Kinect, but they killed that so I'm back to Nintendo. Nintendo just offers a fantastic casual gaming experience.

I have Switch because it's a lot of fun with my wife and kids. I have Steam Deck because I like playing games in bed. I have a gaming PC for more intense games. I don't have Xbox or PS because they aren't better in any way imo.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

When so much is multi-player now, the cross platform stuff sucks on console. Average PC players are gods compared to using a regular controller on console.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Good thing I don't play multiplayer games very often.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Good thing I quit multiplayer games that aren't just against friends a long time ago.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

Nah, I'm good.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Sony has been the enemy of PC users/enthusiasts for the last two decades, they can go to hell.

Remember that CD rootkit debacle?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

My wife and I happened to buy a PS5 so I played Spider-Man 2 on it, and I played GT7 because that's just never coming to PC and I can accept that.

Doesn't mean I'm not pirating all your games on PC, too, so I can own them forever

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

ITT: a bunch of people saying "I won't".

You're probably in the minority. There's 16k subscribers in this community and, currently, about 30 million active users on Steam. Most of them have never heard of Lemmy, and heck a lot of them probably were never on Reddit. The PS5 has sold 50 million units- that's over 3,000 PS5's for every subscribed account here.

A lot of users here have PC's that approach or exceed the PS5's capabilities. You have fancy expensive monitors, a nice desk and chair, a gaming mouse and mechanical keyboard. The people this CEO is talking about don't. They may have an old desktop from the pandemic, or a laptop. They might just use their kitchen table as a desk.

Or, heck, they might not even have a desktop or laptop at all. It's still early, but there have been studies suggesting that Gen Z and Alpha are using PC's less and doing more of their computing on phones and tablets.

Overall I thought it was great that Sony started releasing their games on PC (and especially through Steam, usually with pretty decent PC ports). It's great to give consumers more options. Delaying the PC release probably means more time for the devs to work on the port (Sony's PC ports have been mixed on launch, but even the bad ones have gotten fixed pretty quickly afterwards, and it's been a while since the last one). Delaying PC versions seems like a pretty reasonable compromise.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They've been doing this strategy for a few years now, and Sony isn't seeing PS5 grow the way they need it to, and that's in an environment where they're so dominant that their competition has thrown in the towel. PC overtook any one console some years ago, and due to how long it takes Sony to make them now, they don't have the volume of unique exclusives to entice people to buy the console like they used to. This strategy isn't working, and they will pivot. They just need to say, for now, that they're not going to.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What makes you think the PS5 isn't growing how they need it to? It's outselling the Xbox and it isn't close. In a less direct comparison, it's outselling the Switch. It's outselling what the PS4 did, and that was successful. I don't understand where this sentiment that the PS5 is struggling is coming from. The second half of your first sentence even mentions that they're really dominant right now.

I also don't understand "PC overtaking any one console"... Like, how is that even a comparison? When was the last time there were more consoles than consumer PC's.... The SNES era? I'm not even sure about that, you might need to go further back.

Even if you want to talk about just gaming, that's tricky to even start to compare. The closest I can think of is that according to this Steam averaged 120 million monthly users last year. According to this, PSN averaged 118 million monthly users in Q4 2023. That's pretty much dead even. I don't think it makes sense to add other platforms to the PC side without adding in Nintendo and Xbox to the console side, in which case... Consoles have more users and it's not close. And they both are just a fraction of the mobile gaming market anyways.

Sony has absolutely proven that they can generate the unique exclusives that sell consoles. That's.... Why they have the best-selling console right now. Their strategy is working. You could say this about plenty of other consoles at points in the past (PS3, WiiU, 3DS, GameCube, N64, Xbox One). If you even said this a couple years ago about Sony struggling to manufacture PS5's fast enough that might make sense. But they're currently dominating the home console market. So I don't understand why you think they're struggling or need to drastically change the way they do things?

Just to clarify- what strategy are you predicting that they will change?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

What makes me think that the PS5 isn't growing how they need to is because they've admitted it with their words and actions. Their margins are thinner, they're not moving as many consoles as they'd expect to at this point in the generation, and they felt the need at all to put their games on PC when they never did before. "Struggling" is the wrong word, but the console business model as it's existed for decades no longer works like it once did.

I'm not talking about number of PCs compared to number of consoles. I'm saying the same game sells more on PC now when it used to sell way more on consoles. Maybe there are a few stragglers that still do better on consoles, but they're rare now. Your number of active users for PSN includes PS3 and PS4 users. I'm included in those PS4 users, and my PlayStation only plays Hulu these days.

The strategy I'm predicting they'll change, despite this PR statement is that PC releases will come out closer to the console version than they do now, and they'd be crazy to do anything else in the wake of Helldivers. Temporary management in the wake of Jim Ryan even said they were going to do this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Lol good luck

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

Jokes on them, I rarely buy a game at release anyway. An extra year of console players beta-testing the game just means I am more likely to know a game is a dud that much sooner.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago

Sony are severely underestimating how many years I’m already behind on big “tentpole releases” (missus).

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