I don’t Believe it has anything to do with the age of the hardware. The PS5 and especially the PS5 Pro are very capable machines. And PlayStation had an amazing sale this black Friday. I just think people literally don’t have money to spend on something like that right now.
I mean, they’re pretty good, but they’ve also been out for a while. I think that a lot of the people that want and can afford it have been buying it over the past couple years. Most people don’t tend to wait several years to get new consoles. I do, but even I’ve had my series s since early 2023. The tariffs can’t be helping.
also other than Nintendo a serious lack of exclusives/zero console sellers.
the PS5 has what? maybe 15 exclusives? less? whats’ the point? There’s nothing out on the PS5 that makes me say “I need to own this console” especially when many of their “exclusives” are now available on PC. I just wish they gave us Bloodborne.
I’ve owned every Playstation console with the exception of the PS5. I even had the PSP and the Vita which I adored. but yeah the PS5 is the first playstation console where I’ve said I don’t need to own it.
the PS5 has what? maybe 15 exclusives? less? whats’ the point? There’s nothing out on the PS5 that makes me say “I need to own this console” especially when many of their “exclusives” are now available on PC.
Last time I booted up my PS5, I was teaching my son how to play Minecraft on PC. I was going to hop into the world he had made on my PC from the PS5…and that’s when I discovered Sony locks out all network multiplayer behind PSN, even just over LAN.
At this point, I might just sell the fucking thing. My PC (5800X3D/7900XTX/32GB) can run PS3 games just fine via RPCS3 with a Dualsense controller, and that’s 99% of the reason I paid for PSN. But even then, playing PS3 games on the PS5 is just streaming from rackmounted PS3 hardware based in some Sony datacenter. So I’m not even sure why I still have it. I don’t play on it enough these days to justify paying nearly $30/mo for PSN when I can just get PS exclusives on Steam and buy cheap PS3 games on eBay to rip and play on my PC.
The PS5 has incredibly capable hardware, but it’s so locked down that it’s impossible to enjoy anything about it without paying for PSN.
I am very much on Team PC for video games, but the fact that consoles are a closed, locked-down system — something I typically think of as a drawback — can be a real strength for some game applications.
If you want to play a competitive multiplayer video game on a level footing, you don’t want people modifying the software on their system to give them an advantage. There are all sorts of companies with intrusive anticheat software on PC trying doing a half-assed job trying to make an open system work like a closed one. The console guys have more-or-less solved this.
And then there’s the hardware aspect. There is an entire industry on the PC selling “gamer” hardware that aims to give a player some degree of an edge. Higher resolution monitors with faster refresh rates driven by rendering hardware that can render more frames. Mice that report their position more-frequently. Hardware with extra buttons to invoke macros. A lot of that industry is built around figuring out ways to inject pay-to-win into competitive multiplayer video games.
I’m pretty sure that the great majority of video game players do not really want pay-to-win in the competitive multiplayer video games that they play. Consoles simply do a much better job there.
Now, if you take competitive multiplayer out of the mix, then suddenly the open hardware and software situation on the PC becomes an advantage. You can mod games to add features and content and provide a more-immersive experience. It means that I can play all sorts of older games and have a experience that improves over time when doing so.
But a lot of people do want to play competitive multiplayer games, and unless something major changes, consoles have a major area where they are simply better-suited to gaming.
Two ways that it might change:
If single player gaming displaces competitive multiplayer. My guess is that single player games with sophisticated video game AI will tend to increasingly encroach on that, though not overnight. Multiplayer saw one huge boost in the past two decades or so, which was widespread, high-bandwidth low-latency network access. But I think that that’s probably a one-off. I can’t think of any huge future multiplayer-specific improvements like that that will come along. And I can imagine a lot of future improvements to video game AI.
If PCs get some sort of locked down trusted computing environment, probably with its own memory and processor, that runs alongside the open emvironment. Basically, part of a console in a PC.
But absent one of those, I think that there are going to be gaming areas where the console excels that the PC does not.
This is a pretty fucking easy one to crack, fellas.
À complete mystery. We probably need more AI.
Well yes, but also tariffs and the rising cost of components, such as memory are going to play into this. It’s only going to get more expensive.
That and diminishing returns on new consoles.
“Oh no, I won’t be able to play- wait, no, the game will be on both consoles.”
I don’t Believe it has anything to do with the age of the hardware. The PS5 and especially the PS5 Pro are very capable machines. And PlayStation had an amazing sale this black Friday. I just think people literally don’t have money to spend on something like that right now.
I mean, they’re pretty good, but they’ve also been out for a while. I think that a lot of the people that want and can afford it have been buying it over the past couple years. Most people don’t tend to wait several years to get new consoles. I do, but even I’ve had my series s since early 2023. The tariffs can’t be helping.
Capitalism loves using supply and demand to justify anything… up until it’s time to lower the price to adapt to low demand.
also other than Nintendo a serious lack of exclusives/zero console sellers.
the PS5 has what? maybe 15 exclusives? less? whats’ the point? There’s nothing out on the PS5 that makes me say “I need to own this console” especially when many of their “exclusives” are now available on PC. I just wish they gave us Bloodborne.
I’ve owned every Playstation console with the exception of the PS5. I even had the PSP and the Vita which I adored. but yeah the PS5 is the first playstation console where I’ve said I don’t need to own it.
Last time I booted up my PS5, I was teaching my son how to play Minecraft on PC. I was going to hop into the world he had made on my PC from the PS5…and that’s when I discovered Sony locks out all network multiplayer behind PSN, even just over LAN.
At this point, I might just sell the fucking thing. My PC (5800X3D/7900XTX/32GB) can run PS3 games just fine via RPCS3 with a Dualsense controller, and that’s 99% of the reason I paid for PSN. But even then, playing PS3 games on the PS5 is just streaming from rackmounted PS3 hardware based in some Sony datacenter. So I’m not even sure why I still have it. I don’t play on it enough these days to justify paying nearly $30/mo for PSN when I can just get PS exclusives on Steam and buy cheap PS3 games on eBay to rip and play on my PC.
The PS5 has incredibly capable hardware, but it’s so locked down that it’s impossible to enjoy anything about it without paying for PSN.
I am very much on Team PC for video games, but the fact that consoles are a closed, locked-down system — something I typically think of as a drawback — can be a real strength for some game applications.
If you want to play a competitive multiplayer video game on a level footing, you don’t want people modifying the software on their system to give them an advantage. There are all sorts of companies with intrusive anticheat software on PC trying doing a half-assed job trying to make an open system work like a closed one. The console guys have more-or-less solved this.
And then there’s the hardware aspect. There is an entire industry on the PC selling “gamer” hardware that aims to give a player some degree of an edge. Higher resolution monitors with faster refresh rates driven by rendering hardware that can render more frames. Mice that report their position more-frequently. Hardware with extra buttons to invoke macros. A lot of that industry is built around figuring out ways to inject pay-to-win into competitive multiplayer video games.
I’m pretty sure that the great majority of video game players do not really want pay-to-win in the competitive multiplayer video games that they play. Consoles simply do a much better job there.
Now, if you take competitive multiplayer out of the mix, then suddenly the open hardware and software situation on the PC becomes an advantage. You can mod games to add features and content and provide a more-immersive experience. It means that I can play all sorts of older games and have a experience that improves over time when doing so.
But a lot of people do want to play competitive multiplayer games, and unless something major changes, consoles have a major area where they are simply better-suited to gaming.
Two ways that it might change:
If single player gaming displaces competitive multiplayer. My guess is that single player games with sophisticated video game AI will tend to increasingly encroach on that, though not overnight. Multiplayer saw one huge boost in the past two decades or so, which was widespread, high-bandwidth low-latency network access. But I think that that’s probably a one-off. I can’t think of any huge future multiplayer-specific improvements like that that will come along. And I can imagine a lot of future improvements to video game AI.
If PCs get some sort of locked down trusted computing environment, probably with its own memory and processor, that runs alongside the open emvironment. Basically, part of a console in a PC.
But absent one of those, I think that there are going to be gaming areas where the console excels that the PC does not.