Topic: It's pretty weird to see the console market die in front of your eyes
Anonymous A started this discussion 2 hours ago#137,918
The data has been there for a while and people are moving to PC in ever increasing numbers but damn the recent decisions by xbox and playstation have made me wonder if consoles will even exist in 10 more years. Nintendo seems to be the best off and even they aren't immune to price hikes and anti-consumer bullshit. The entire gaming landscape could genuinely look drastically different within a decade which is crazy to think about. Obviously the PC experience will only become worse as more people migrate and predatory companies follow them.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc joined in and replied with this 1 hour ago, 47 minutes later[^][v]#1,459,620
This is going to sound sacrilegious, but I realized my MacBook Pro has more transistors than an Xbox One X and I only play one video game, and I can play it on my MacBook Pro at full UHD resolution > 110fps.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc triple-posted this 1 hour ago, 1 minute later, 49 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,459,624
If you look online, there are lots of forums where people say they tried playing it on their M series MacBooks and generally most people get > 100fps at 4k.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc quadruple-posted this 1 hour ago, 1 minute later, 50 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,459,625
I had a windows laptop, but it was old, and I thought about it, and the specs on the MacBook are higher, and I hesitated, and then I tried it, and it feels wrong but it works. You definitely should never buy a MacBook for gaming though, that’s a really bad idea never do that.
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 1 hour ago, 3 minutes later, 53 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,459,626
@1,459,623 (Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc)
I've never even tried Minecraft and don't want to but GG for finding a game you're happy playing and being able to run it smoothly. Have fun bro
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc replied with this 1 hour ago, 4 minutes later, 58 minutes after the original post[^][v]#1,459,627
@previous (A)
I guess the point is the business model of gaming consoles doesn’t make sense, because in recent years due to advancements in chip manufacturing, they can make transistors much smaller than they could 10 years ago. So the idea that you can have a product that’s non-upgradable that’s connected to a TV just for playing games, and they can keep selling that console for multiple year doesn’t really make sense anymore. A MacBook really isn’t meant for gaming, but my laptop has more processing power than the Xboxes I had when I was growing up. So how is a gaming console supposed to compete with an actual gaming PC? It doesn’t make sense.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc double-posted this 1 hour ago, 4 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,628
Eventually, say 20 years from now, I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets to a point where you can just game on any random device because everything will have sufficient processing power to play whatever game. Especially given generative AI, there will be a reason for non-gamers to have GPUs so probably they’ll just start putting powerful GPUs in everything. At least that’s what I’d guess.
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 1 hour ago, 1 minute later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,629
@1,459,627 (Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc)
I don't think it has to do with any of that. I think people are just moving to PC and the console makers see the writing on the wall so they're squeezing every cent they can before the market collapses.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc replied with this 1 hour ago, 4 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,630
@previous (A)
I’m not even that old, I’m in my early 20s, when I was a kid, if you downloaded a game on some random computer your family got for you that wasn’t intended for gaming, in 2012 or 2014, it would be terrible. The idea you could buy a laptop explicitly not for the purpose of playing games on it and then randomly realize you could find any game at all that will run at 4k > 100fps wasn’t a thing really. If you were a parent who wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about technology and you wanted to buy something for your kids to play video games on in 2012, you’d buy an Xbox or a PlayStation. But now, you can just haphazardly buy a laptop that’s not meant for gaming and then download games on it, and a pro gamer wouldn’t be happy with that, but for a lot of people it will be tolerable. Which breaks the business model of consoles.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc double-posted this 1 hour ago, 3 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,631
Like in 2012 or 2014 for example, there’s no game you could just download on a MacBook that’s not even a desktop, just a laptop, and run a game on it at 4K. That wasn’t a thing. If you even tried it or suggested that people would have laughed at you back then.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc triple-posted this 1 hour ago, 2 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,632
I mean, 12 years ago, in 2014, I had an Xbox one. It couldn’t do 4k anything and maxed out at 60fps, but was 30fps by default unless you changed the settings.
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 1 hour ago, 12 seconds later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,633
@1,459,630 (Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc)
Some big companies like capcom have seen a pretty drastic shift in their players within the last couple years. It was around the pandemic when their playerbase became majority PC so it's really no surprise. It's not technological advancements, people are just done with the bullshit that comes with consoles and are going elsewhere to save money.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc replied with this 1 hour ago, 3 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,634
@previous (A)
I don’t think you’re wrong, I think for people who are really into gaming you’re probably right. But I think the average person tends to be motivated by less noble things. For example, Linux is free, everybody uses Windows anyway. Most people don’t really meaningfully attempt to combat a lack of digital freedom. The masses are sort of brainless consumers.
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 1 hour ago, 5 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,638
@previous (Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc)
Just as an anecdotal example, my nephews have switched over to PC gaming and literally all they do is play Call of duty so they're the textbook case for just buying the new console. The "PC master race" propaganda has been going strong for like a decade now and people see the console companies becoming shittier every year. I remember the insane backlash to nintendo announcing paid online. People are just forced to be smarter with their money these days
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc replied with this 1 hour ago, 23 seconds later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,639
Or for example, I know adults play games, but children are definitely a large market. I’ve noticed with my younger family members, after school when I was a kid I’d be on my Xbox a lot of the times, but with kids now, I’ve noticed sometimes even if they have a gaming console they barely use it because they’re in their room on their laptop because you just don’t need a gaming console anymore and they’d rather just be in their room. And their parents aren’t buying expensive gaming PCs for them.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc double-posted this 1 hour ago, 10 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,644
@1,459,638 (A)
Tbh I have mixed feelings about PC. For gaming, obviously windows is the best OS for that because all the games are optimized for it and you have more control over your hardware. But I also feel like Microsoft is kinda invasive. Most of the time I use my laptop for programming, which is a different thing from gaming, but generally on a software level, I feel like Linux and macOS are both much better designed than Windows. Although Mac gives you the least amount of freedom in terms of hardware. Apples hardware also used to suck back when they were using intel chips (the 2019 intel i9 MacBook Pro overheating issues for example). But when they switched to arm, it improved a lot.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc triple-posted this 1 hour ago, 4 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,646
Then there’s also the annoying thing where you can write an android app on a MacBook but you can’t write an iOS app on a windows pc. I mean you can if you do some weird convoluted solution where you pirate macOS, access a Mac remotely, or an emulator, but natively, you can’t.
Anonymous C joined in and replied with this 57 minutes ago, 4 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,647
@previous (Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc)
programs are literally just one or more txt files put in a specialized archive format, theres absolutely nothing stopping a windows user from developing ios apps
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc double-posted this 53 minutes ago, 1 minute later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,650
Like sure there are cross platform technologies, but if you interact with the OS, there are so many differences between macOS and windows, for desktop apps for example, even if you write a desktop app using a cross platform framework, if your app interacts with the terminal or the file system in any way, in my experience you’re still going to have to end up rewriting a bunch of stuff and testing it in the other operating system otherwise it’s not going to just work without testing it.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc replied with this 52 minutes ago, 5 seconds later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,652
Even something small, like the fact that windows uses backward slashes \ and Linux and macOS use forward slashes /, if there’s just one place anywhere in your code where you forgot about that, that can be mildly annoying. And app permissions work differently on different operating systems as well and there are all sorts of weird inconsistencies.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc double-posted this 48 minutes ago, 3 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,653
Also for web development, this might sound stupid, but if your web server is going to use Linux, it is slightly easier to program your web server on a computer that works more like Linux. And I know it sounds dumb, but there are a lot of people who are willing to just pay more money to have something that’s a little bit closer to Linux without having to go through the pain of installing Linux on a laptop.
Mr. Bloody Lemonade !0JqexkOGBc triple-posted this 42 minutes ago, 6 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#1,459,655
…also different operating systems have different APIs so in app purchases work differently on different operating systems.
…and most windows PCs use x64 but Mac uses arm64, so even if you were to write a program in C++ when you compile it on windows it won’t run on Mac natively. Both operating systems have a translation layer that will translate between the different instruction sets but it will be noticeably slower especially if your app does anything with GPU. It’s actually kind of a headache.