I think I might be done with new mass market game hardware. I really enjoy my PS5 and Switch, but have no desire for a Series console. I may want a Switch 2 (Super Switch?, SwitchCube?) but with the way gaming is going enough might be enough. Gaming has always been a business but capital and shareholders loom large over the landscape today. Microsoft is clearly interested in following Disney in buying up everything it can and ownership is becoming a thing of the past. Sony and Nintendo are moving that way as well. How long until everything is just a cheap streaming box that is useless without a subscription? How long can I care about the new and oh so shiny graphics of the latest Unreal Engine?
I have hundreds of games at my fingertips and over 50 years of games to explore.
Iām leaning in the same direction, luckily I have enough stuff I havenāt played or probably even found yet that I should be able to chase that new game feeling for ages. I will miss the big event excitement for really good mono-culture games though (still happening occasionally just less and less).
Iāve had a PS5 set up for a year and a half and itās not been worth the money so far - itās sure my biggest console (literally, heh) regret (I do have a second hand Xbone S so that I can still play my 360 discs too which is the only reason I bought it). I sure could have otherwise waited for PC versions of the games that I did buy, digital versions they may be. The only real benefit has been that Iāve not had to piss about with settings on PS5. The chances of getting anything from Microsoft again are virtually zero, and Sony is only marginally above that.
I am, however, a big sucker for Nintendo. I don't think they'll be going digital only any time soon given their wider consumer base and I like their first party games. Switch has given me different experiences and I can see Nintendo's next console also filling that space, even more so given how much Sony and Microsoft have homogenised into the PC space. Switch 2 and PC for me once this generation is over.
I havenāt had a proper TV console* (or a proper TV, for that matter) since the PS2, and I donāt really feel like Iāve missed out on that much. Xbox Live Indie Games and Bloodborne are my two regrets. Everything else eventually came to PC, or wasnāt as relevant as the games press and game enthusiasts made it out to be at the time.
New stuff's cool and all, but after the joycon fiasco, I'm not even sure I'm up for a new Nintendo 'handheld', even. Somebody should make an awful business decision and release a new handheld.
And also yeah there are so many video games. So many. You could probably choose one year out of the last twenty, play only those games, and still have a good time for a long time.
*I have only ever played the Switch handheld, so I'm counting it as a handheld
If you look at video game playing as an activity with a finite amount of time that a human can possibly devote to it - say an hour or two per day every day - you could easily spend a single lifetime exploring just the library of any number of individual consoles. My downloaded but barely touched Switch (or 3DS (or DS)) library could easily last me the rest of my life and the lives of my progeny.
We donāt need any more videogames.
Except Demonschool and Demonschool III (Demonschool II is cool too I guess but kind of had some evolutionary dead ends).
Iāve spent like a decade now trying to keep on top of what kinds of interesting mechanics and so on are getting explored in newer, higher budget games for the purposes of trying to develop games, and Iām honestly pretty wrung out by it, so Iām edging toward just playing older stuff too (with the occasional Switch game). Iām not even sure why Iām spending time trying to play new things, when it feels like 2% of my dev efforts are informed by them, especially lately, when it feels as though less and less innovation is getting attempted in terms of gameplay, and all weāre getting is endlessly remixed takes on very well established genres. It used to be I felt this for AAA games, but I'm increasingly feeling it for smaller studios too.
My very specific target of ire is the endless cycle of new console generations where the console does very little new but is heavily pushed to the detriment of the earlier generation, is massively expensive, and is almost impossible to get for years after its launch. Years ago, with the PS2, I thought it was a fluke and that Sony would figure it out, but it ended up being a feature I guess.
AND ANOTHER THING: It occurred to me this morning that with the apparent abandonment of physical media at some point, we might get to a point with physical media for movies where we just don't have any new devices to play any of them that we own. Even now, dedicated Bluray players are massively expensive from what I've seen, and a bunch of retailers don't even stock them. I'm really not sure what will happen at some future date when Sony/MS consoles no longer include optical drives! (note: this is not a request for folks to tell me where to find cheap Bluray players, this is just me considering the future-- for the moment I have several options for playing physical media)
I really dislike being an 'I hate the new things' person! So this is a little tough for me, but... I'm just exhausted by modern console stuff!
Sometimes I wonder if Iām the only person on this forum who really likes the PS5!
We donāt need video games just like we donāt need new books, music, movies, or anything else people like to interact with.
I suspect some of this anxiety comes from how easy it is to see and have and hold āallā of the video games. You can put literally the entire library of pre-CD games on a smallish SD storage device. And even though we are all posting here on Insert Credit, the game-touching culture is going to be influence by the YouTubers who āhave got them allā on a wall behind them. But nobody worries about collecting āAll the books that were released in the US 1994ā.
Iāve written quite a bit about how setting up emulation systems or MISTERs or vintage consoles is a hobby in and of itself. I dabble in that hobby a myself too and enjoy it!
Also at the end of the (literal) day, I genuinely enjoy being able to push a button on a controller and play last-yearās AAA blockbuster Christmas release (Iām going to try out Deathloop next) for not much more additional money than the money that I am willing to pay to play Guilty Gear and Street Fighter 6 online anyway. Yes, I could get a PC that does that without the subscription. But thatās a bigger investment financially and in time, and I like playing the occasional new game too.
@radicaledward
I should make note that I really want a PS5 because I want to play very specific games that are new, like FFXVI. And, no, I do not care that people say itās terrible.
@radicaledward If you get one, be sure to play Control, and Returnal, and Devil May Cry V. They are great and I played them all with the subscription service!
I should mention that I own a PS5, but my partner is pretty much the sole user, because she enjoys big AAA games much more than I do! We previously had two PS4s set up so we could play them at the same time (I feel a little bit embarrassed at how dumb this sounds, haha) but Iāve only had extremely scant interest in any of the games for PS5. I also admit that this reticence over new games is more of a me thingā Iām not suggesting we donāt need new games, Iām just saying I think theyāre less my thing than theyāve ever been.
I know what you mean, and I agree that we do need new games, but at the same time the situation about two or three years ago with even finding a PS5, let alone being able afford one, is like if you had to wake up at 3am and be ready to pounce as soon as a retailer put 5 copies of a new book up on their website, and if you were late or just unlucky youād have to wait two more weeks to try again or maybe you could find a scalper to sell you a copy for three or four times retail and youād have to trust that when you bought it they wouldnāt just ship you a brick in an empty box.
And I really like subscription services that let you play older games, but at the end of the day itās all super subject to the whims of a company doing it in a way that I think has pushed a bunch of folks toward keeping back catalogues of old systems themselves.
The only thing keeping me from being fully supportive of the feeling being expressed in this thread is the fact that New can be New in smaller non-commercial spaces. Yeah new big games suck but thereās hundreds of amazing experimental weirdo games being released every year.
New* stuff sucks usually but remember to keep any pc around to play small itch.io (or equivalent) games.
I definitely agree that consoles (with the possible exception of whatever Nintendo is doing) seem a bit silly these days with how much comes to PC, but as far as new games go, I think this is still an incredibly young medium and until I stop seeing games that completely rework my ideas about what is possible to do with it (as myhouse.wad and Void Stranger certainly have) I'm going to stay pretty optimistic about the games people play on those consoles, if not the consoles themselves
I hope we don't just get set top boxes next. Consoles have always been the baseline to which games are developed and I think we finally hit a legit generational leap with the PS5 and XS consoles due to the new CPU and NVMe drives (The PS4 and XBO used low power laptop CPUs with lots of cores and had 5400 rpm drives). There has been so much time consuming optimization trickery when it comes to designing a game around slow mechanical hard drives and weak/complex cpus that caused games to drop features and feel redundant.
I'm not just talking fast load times. It's more about bigger games being able to be created by smaller teams with more experimentation again (like old AAA games) due to fewer hardware bottlenecks and better tools.
I've been hoping we would see some more cool games that utilizes the new hardware by now, but it's only been 3 years since the new consoles came out and there was a pandemic during that time. Plus between cross-gen games, remakes, games-as-a-service models, fear of experimentation by AAA, and long development periods it can be hard to appreciate the new consoles.
I haven't had time to play as much since becoming a dad, but seeing some of the newer games that actually utilize the better hardware like Alan Wake II, Returnal, FFVII Rebirth, Baldur's Gate 3, Spider-Man 2, and Deathloop, (hell even that Matrix demo) still get me excited about games I imagined I would be playing since I was a kid (and will be sharing with my kid).
I like the PS5 and think the xbox is fine. I donāt really care about one over the other but I do use the PS5 more because yakuza games come there first and etc. I turn the xbox on sometimes to check out gamepass.
I play all the big boy games a year after they come out so I can see the state of game design/narrative/etc and itās pretty enjoyable generally. New games are so much more playable than older ones!
I like console games because I never have to touch settings! or get the right mods! or do all the tweaks to make it run properly on my specific graphics card! I truly truly hate doing that stuff, itās like filling out expense reports for me. If I can avoid it, I will.
All the big single player experiences seem to launch on console. Thatās the stuff I want to play.
I am probably a big weirdo and unusual in that I have a TV and a pc monitor and they are in separate rooms, but I donāt want to buy a separate big PC for my living room, and I donāt want to play games in my work zone, in addition to all the fiddling. It feels like work to get the ābigā PC games running, and so I just donāt do it.
@antillese I never really understood why people comment online "My āInsert Consoleā is just sitting there gathering dust!ā Then use it? Lol
The PS5 is the main entertainment thing we have in the household. My partner and I usually wind down taking turns playing Dead by Daylight and chatting, watch Netflix, or have it playing music while cooking or doing chores.
If you see it as a device that is there to play AAA console exclusives then I can see why youād be dissapointed. I donāt personally get crazy excited when say a new Spiderman game comes out but I have enjoyed the occasional AAA when I eventually get around them. And man Returnal is gooood.
To support what other people have said - there are so many great indie games that are available on all modern consoles itās kind of hard not to find a game to enjoy right now.
And yeah I can sit here and download to mind-blowing games for a snes or PS1 emulator. But back then you found out about the good stuff through word of mouth, buying magazines, or online assuming you had the internet.
We donāt have a very big TV so I just do not play games in the living room. Iāve thought about getting a mister and calling it a day. But also I probably play games less than nearly everyone here.
Also, I believe consoles will persist because on the sliding scale of āmeā to āfrank cifaldiā thereās a bunch of people even further to the console side than me, who know dramatically less about everything, and just want to play madden/fifa/call of duty without thinking about it.
a $300 console that simply plays the the games is a reasonable fit for the mass market sure. What meets the weird needs of the mutants on this forum is another story though. Donāt see a path to return to the days of these conditions: 1) distinctive hardware that is appealing to use 2) comparatively expensive PC equipment 3) a preponderance of good games being exclusive to (1)
Iāve found it more worth the effort both in terms of convenience and cost effectiveness to build a PC to target 1440 performance and upgrade it after a few years than the ~$1000 Iāve spent on PS4/PS5/Switch. Shameful!!
And if you want a cool little box to play on your tv thereāre always the MiSter
because despite pretenses to 4K and/or āperformance modeā, the PS5 runs worse than a middle of the road PC
I bought these consoles because I thought they would function as advertised but they just simply do not