I used to be a playstation, couch gamer. I pretty much quit gaming when the ps4 came out. Things have only gotten worse since. On the bright side, I did manage to get a bachelor degree instead.
I’m still a couch and controller gamer primarily, I just use a PC to do it lol. Honestly, with Steam, it’s really easy to just change Steam Big Picture mode as the default shell for Windows, so even if you don’t want to install SteamOS, you can still have the console experience of just turning the machine on and booting right into your games menu.
I’m a gamer from back in the days when a “games console” was a ZX Spectrum or an Amiga, not an open standard like the PC mainly because back then nothing was standard, but far more open than modern consoles.
Then came the PC and for a time it was the dominant platform for games (basically the good old days of Shareware and a few years after).
Then consoles were reinvented, with the modern console business structure and tech stack which most present day gamers are acquainted with. This time around consoles were a locked down tech and the business was a walled garden model.
At that point I was so used to PCs and to piracy as an alternative to source PC games (or even just a way to unlock purchased games by cracking their DRM), that I never really jumped into modern consoles as it was too locked down. Also by then I was already a Tech professional and aware of the risks of jumping into a tech stack wholly controlled by a 3rd party.
So, yeah, here we are now with the closed down walled garden tech stack were there wasn’t even a proper piracy culture to disincentivize abusing locked-in customers having enshittified to extreme levels.
This shit was entirely expectable already back then.
I hope that the whole modern day business model for game consoles dies a horrible death, though people being people I expect that a decade afterwards they will get swindled again en masse by a reinvention of this console model.
I’ve always had computers to play games on, but consoles have also always been my primary gaming hardware. The additional cost of PC hardware, as well as having to constantly tinker and upgrade parts to be able to run the latest games, was the main reason. But now that consoles are doing away with the used market and also no longer have significantly cheaper hardware, Paying more up front for PC is the only thing that makes sense.
Well, the upside of PCs is that you can keep on upgrading just parts of it, whilst console upgrading is generally just buy a new one, something that has become even more so around the late 00s when the upgrade cycle slowed down quite a lot, even for gaming PCs.
I think (but am not sure) that as long as you didn’t aim for top of the range parts and instead used the ones just below (generally much cheaper for only a little bit less performance) all in all it was cheaper to just keep upgrading one’s PC than keeping on replacing one’s console with a new one as they came out.
Mind you, I’ve jumped out of the “keep up with the latest titles” threadmill over a decade ago since, with the notable exception of Indie titles, I don’t actually find them as entertaining (they’re generally very “guided” linear experiences whilst I like lots of freedom and high complexity) plus I discovered that I derive far more enjoyment from great gameplay than I do from great graphics: the latter can indeed be amazing and impressive for the first couple of hours, but it’s the former that gets me back to a game again and again and again, even years later.
PCs and Patient Gaming is way cheaper than consoles, though I guess that by now there’s also a lot of Patient Gaming in consoles since people keep on using the older one rather than buying the new on.
Further, upgrading one’s PC or even just knowing what kind of things are better to upgrade at any one point and how to chose the right parts for upgradeability (such as enthusiast motherboards instead of just cheap ones and the kind of CPU socket that was recent enough that was likely to keep getting new CPUs for a while) requires quite a lot of technical expertise and is beyond most people. even gamers.
“Paying more up front for PC is the only thing that makes sense” for me, specifically. For others it would vary. I was thinking the other day of what I would recommend to a person who isn’t tech-savvy, has no gaming hardware, is on a budget, and wants to get into gaming on a TV. Oddly, the Switch 2 seems like the best cost to performance ratio right now.
I used to be a playstation, couch gamer. I pretty much quit gaming when the ps4 came out. Things have only gotten worse since. On the bright side, I did manage to get a bachelor degree instead.
I’m still a couch and controller gamer primarily, I just use a PC to do it lol. Honestly, with Steam, it’s really easy to just change Steam Big Picture mode as the default shell for Windows, so even if you don’t want to install SteamOS, you can still have the console experience of just turning the machine on and booting right into your games menu.
I’m a gamer from back in the days when a “games console” was a ZX Spectrum or an Amiga, not an open standard like the PC mainly because back then nothing was standard, but far more open than modern consoles.
Then came the PC and for a time it was the dominant platform for games (basically the good old days of Shareware and a few years after).
Then consoles were reinvented, with the modern console business structure and tech stack which most present day gamers are acquainted with. This time around consoles were a locked down tech and the business was a walled garden model.
At that point I was so used to PCs and to piracy as an alternative to source PC games (or even just a way to unlock purchased games by cracking their DRM), that I never really jumped into modern consoles as it was too locked down. Also by then I was already a Tech professional and aware of the risks of jumping into a tech stack wholly controlled by a 3rd party.
So, yeah, here we are now with the closed down walled garden tech stack were there wasn’t even a proper piracy culture to disincentivize abusing locked-in customers having enshittified to extreme levels.
This shit was entirely expectable already back then.
I hope that the whole modern day business model for game consoles dies a horrible death, though people being people I expect that a decade afterwards they will get swindled again en masse by a reinvention of this console model.
I’ve always had computers to play games on, but consoles have also always been my primary gaming hardware. The additional cost of PC hardware, as well as having to constantly tinker and upgrade parts to be able to run the latest games, was the main reason. But now that consoles are doing away with the used market and also no longer have significantly cheaper hardware, Paying more up front for PC is the only thing that makes sense.
Well, the upside of PCs is that you can keep on upgrading just parts of it, whilst console upgrading is generally just buy a new one, something that has become even more so around the late 00s when the upgrade cycle slowed down quite a lot, even for gaming PCs.
I think (but am not sure) that as long as you didn’t aim for top of the range parts and instead used the ones just below (generally much cheaper for only a little bit less performance) all in all it was cheaper to just keep upgrading one’s PC than keeping on replacing one’s console with a new one as they came out.
Mind you, I’ve jumped out of the “keep up with the latest titles” threadmill over a decade ago since, with the notable exception of Indie titles, I don’t actually find them as entertaining (they’re generally very “guided” linear experiences whilst I like lots of freedom and high complexity) plus I discovered that I derive far more enjoyment from great gameplay than I do from great graphics: the latter can indeed be amazing and impressive for the first couple of hours, but it’s the former that gets me back to a game again and again and again, even years later.
PCs and Patient Gaming is way cheaper than consoles, though I guess that by now there’s also a lot of Patient Gaming in consoles since people keep on using the older one rather than buying the new on.
Further, upgrading one’s PC or even just knowing what kind of things are better to upgrade at any one point and how to chose the right parts for upgradeability (such as enthusiast motherboards instead of just cheap ones and the kind of CPU socket that was recent enough that was likely to keep getting new CPUs for a while) requires quite a lot of technical expertise and is beyond most people. even gamers.
“Paying more up front for PC is the only thing that makes sense” for me, specifically. For others it would vary. I was thinking the other day of what I would recommend to a person who isn’t tech-savvy, has no gaming hardware, is on a budget, and wants to get into gaming on a TV. Oddly, the Switch 2 seems like the best cost to performance ratio right now.
you can still play chrono trigger
You could almost say it’s timeless
☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)No way, it’s FULL of time.
Well done. I finished my degree once I quit drinking
That is fantastic! Congrats on both!