I have a question. Do we really need new video game consoles every few years?
I'm a fan, I buy everything new and have a ton of vintage consoles. I like the weird ones. But the PS and XBox in particular don't really seem to change THAT much between versions and a lot of Nintendo systems underwhelm.
I'm a fan, I buy everything new and have a ton of vintage consoles. I like the weird ones. But the PS and XBox in particular don't really seem to change THAT much between versions and a lot of Nintendo systems underwhelm.
Comments
Which ones are you thinking of? The Wii U and Virtual Boy underwhelmed, but every other system had SOMETHING going on.
(Also my phone is five years old, I can change the battery for €90 and get another two or three years out of it. I want a new one. I really don't need one.)
GTA6 seems to be the system seller for new systems when it launches this fall.
The disk reader is struggling and it doesn't seem to connect to Xbox live anymore but my son enjoyed discovering Castle Crashers, Splosion Man, and DMC.
I was certainly glad to have avoided the red ring of death early Xbox360 when I bought mine a year or so after launch.
Also: what kinds of games do you play?
The Switch 2 will allow basically 1.5 more generations of games to be ported.
Reaching diminishing returns has made long-term support for machines like PS4 more viable for sure, though.
I still play Atari a lot, though, and have been on kind of a PS1 bender, too, so...
The curve of technological progress of consoles and computers has not leapt so far and fast as it used to imo.
No developer really ever fully taps the potential of a console, and we are forced to move on and learn a new one
No we don't.
I rather have software that fully pushes the console generation to it's full potential.
Or a whole new generation that truly knocks our collective socks off and makes it obvious it wouldn't be possible in the prior gen.
like at least Nintendo makes their games hard to pirate by requiring control schemes different from PCs
Does Capitalism demand that they be produced? Sadly, yes.
*i’d* happily play a catalog of all nintendo titles that focus on gameplay more than graphics, but it thrived on 3rd party support and needs to keep up
Even this generation was a big leap compared to last. The slow hard drives and CPUs made gaming very sluggish. I like how snappy and responsive current gen is 💝
It usually takes developers 1 or 2 years to find their footing with the hardware anyway.
When I started noticing how badly mid-level games began running on Switch in 2023ish I knew it was time for a new one.
I'm not entirely convinced that graphics and computational power are actually improving enough to require upgrades.
It does 'seem' like they come out quicker, but then I remember from NES to Super NES was only bout 6 years but seemed longer cuz I was a kid.
The reason is simpler than folks think though. It's parts availability. AMD can't/won't make 10+ year old APUs forever, Pioneer won't make BD-ROM drives, etc.
Sony and Microsoft generations go like every six or so, but the argument could maybe they could update performance by software updates and slight hardware iterations within the gen.
Sure, you could add in bells and whistles but from like 1970-1999 the TV was the same basic thing.
not really in the market for a new, expensive console when i have plenty of old, previously expensive consoles at home with tons of unplayed gems on them.
Video games adhere to tech trends, which have been on this slope for decades - the industry fundamentally *requires* there to be a shiny new upgrade to advertise, even if that may be detrimental to creators & users both
That also said, if you discount different editions, the average time between new consoles has...
- Playstation 1 in 1995
- PS2 in 2000 (five years)
- PS3 in 2006 (six years)
- PS4 in 2013 (six years)
- PS5 in 2020 (seven years)
The "Pro" versions of the 4 and 5 feel more like mid-cycle refreshes than new consoles to me.
Why would you need more than 128 bytes of RAM, total, including display and stack?
1. Competition means new consoles. Nintendo couldn’t keep churning out 8-bit games when competitors were putting out 16-bit ones.
2. Increased scope means new consoles. Games like GTA III would never work on a PS1. They needed a PS2. Generations are more than just graphics.
My most common games are No Man’s Sky and metroidvanias. I don’t need a top-tier system. But NMS is more enjoyable on a PS5 than a Steam Deck or Windows handheld!
People used to poo-poo the improved tech of the SNES when it launched. "Who can even see the difference between all those colors?"
But let's agree to disagree
If Steam could get it's steambox up and running well, PS and Xbox would basically evaporate.
i want the game industry to downscale. let games be the size of PS2 up to Xbox 360 but upscaled & performance tested.
the focus should be on developing & releasing a videogame. not chasing tech trends or skinner box patterns.
I see all these games with realistic mocapped human faces in them and they slide off my brain. But I see something like Penny's Big Breakaway and that sticks with me until it releases.
It's fine on its own, but it feels too much now that the realism is the selling point. And I'm left asking "What else ya got?"
It's cartoon graphics and a village sim, it shouldn't need to be fancy enough for a high spec machine?
As a primary entertainment device, perhaps? spectacle matters more there, the function being prinarily there to excite you.
But honestly I’m still really happy with the switch’s library. I could be pretty happy with just playing that and the handful of multiplayer games I play on PC and Mobile
If you want to play South of Midnight, for example, then you do, because improved hardware allows for ambitious design.
You just have to be able to resist the shiny. (I cannot)
My partner plays on Xbox while I play on PC. She had been playing on the same Xbox for 10 years before I got her a new one this last Christmas because it kept crashing.
Nintendo is the outlier in that they really don't push for high end performance and graphics like Playstation and Xbox. Their niche is bubbly fun.
People change PC parts just as much if not more.
20 years ago was Xbox 360 and PS3, they voted in the last election.
I wouldn't even miss out on Xbox because it's on PC and Xbox Cloud and the big PS games are PC now too.
But always in the knowledge that at some point they will be older and stand the chance of being reappraised.
Honestly most games have PC Ports these days and it seems the only games PCs don’t get are basically Nintendo.
They don't all have to be state-of-the-art showpieces, I can count on one hand the number of games I have gotten hooked on for their technical majesty.
On the other hand, if they make a new Mass Effect for the Xbox Series XL (or whatever), I'll definitely want to see the New Shiny.
Without it things would stagnate.
The fun exciting genre defining games I've seen lately don't need power. What about Vampire Survivors and Balatro scream "I need new hardware"?
See God of War(2005)
You can have the best looking graphics a game can muster, but if it runs like shit, what's the point?
We've hit the ceiling in terms of visual fidelity, we peaked.
Now it's time to focus on making games run and play well
But the short answer is that PCs have a stunning number of incredibly creative and compelling indie games, and the Switch is convenient.
And that’s before you factor in whatever new feature Nintendo usually implements in new hardware (the Wii U may not have been a success, but the GamePad opened up an incredible amount of new game design possibilities).
But at some point, really about a decade ago, most of the technology pivoted to cloud integration and kinda/sorta haptic feedback pivoting the VR way…
Which kinda fizzled.
Gaming is at a messy point in time and struggling thanks to the streaming model…
I suppose in theory you could maintain a single generation console with support but games would plateau due to the limitations of that console.
E.g How many games/developers/jobs wouldn't exist if PlayStation didn't progress passed the first console.
Nintendo is quite adept at delivering new experiences with each new console they release.
don’t feel like they improved any beyond visuals, but as visual technology gets more advanced the companies want to keep up.
I tend to wait until new console prices drop, their initial bugs are patched, and the console has enough of a library that I can pick up a few essentials too.
...Mario Kart World is definitely tempting me with the Switch 2. Too bad Nintendo pretty much never discounts their consoles.
I stopped playing Nintendo during the Wii years because I wanted to game not work out
As far as retro gaming, I married a computer genius who gave me all the games before 2004 on one console
Like all of them
Like the Wii back then screamed NEW because it was nothing like other game consoles at the time. Not just consoles, games too.
The developers NEED us to buy new versions of games.
But also I think they fear being left behind. If Sony kept coming out with a new system every few years but Microsoft didn’t for a decade they’d lose the perception war maybe?
Or "dated" graphics but 100s of hours of content.
I know which one I prefer.
Yes, it's very pretty for the era. But it has no story. At all. Go ahead. Try to find one. But you'll still love playing it, because the gameplay loop is novel and fun, and well supported by the art and music.
No, really. As a fighting game, it was... eh. It was just another Street Fighter. It had a LOT of problems. And we've seen the characters. The compelling story is what carried it.
It shows they're thinking about all aspects of their game and how each piece tells the story, from background design to gameplay. You can do that with photorealistic too I guess but quirky art signals fun to my brain.
Undertale and Deltarune, anyone?
Schedule 1?
Among Us?
Hell, *Minecraft* if you want to look at it that way.
And frankly, they're still fantastically scary for it. Hell, the original Corpse Party is still leagues ahead of its time IMO.
The switch 2 might underwhelm but most switch players have complained for years about the performance gap.
And it just doesn't seem sustainable to crank out games with insane budgets to full make use of that capability.
I’m gonna get the Switch 2 solely on the fact I can play a probably mid mainline Pokémon game at 60fps lol
Most titles are also on PC, and I’ve yet to play something my Steam Deck can’t handle 🤷♀️
Example? Warframe.
Imagine Street Fighter. Every few years, graphics upgrade, a few more characters, a few more stages. Hell, you could do an extended 'campaign mode' which tells the story from SF 1 to SF 6, all in a single game.
Though, really, FF is a bit of an exception to the rule because it isn't 'same universe'. X and X-2 though? Shoulda done that.
https://bsky.app/profile/shintonephilim.bsky.social/post/3lnd7mvps2s23
The nuance of fighting games is really different from say MOBA heroes having different abilities but more or less the same core mechanics for auto attack.
But some people want, and as long as there are enough of those to make it financially viable, the pattern will continue
But they are a corporate business. They fill market demand. If people are buying new consoles, then there is a demand for newer hardware. No one is forcing people to upgrade. We can play all the old games we want.
I think there's vanishingly few games today that couldn't have existed on PS4.