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Comment by a13o | Hacker News Reader

The console war argument is around such an outdated definition of the gaming industry. Self-identifying gamers have had their head in the sand for over a decade now.

Since 2010 mobile gaming has eclipsed revenue of both console and PC gaming _combined_.

Also since 2010, console revenue has stagnated while PC revenue has continued to grow.

This is the landscape to evaluate the different gaming brands. Xboxes are nothing more than a user-friendly gaming PC brand. The total addressable market for Microsoft is much larger than what Sony could hope for. Sony is in the worst bind long-term, trapped in consoles without any leg up in PC or mobile. They invested in VR instead which never became a strong category. In terms of revenue, VR is barely competing with Arcades.

If you had to stack rank gaming devices, iOS would be winning the console wars, followed by Android. In a distant third would be PlayStation, and then Microsoft and Nintendo neck in neck.

If you look at it by company, Tencent would be at the top, then Sony, then Microsoft and Nintendo.

Microsoft is definitely in -- at best -- third place no matter how you count it. The FTC trying to restrict the conversation to an era of console war that expired over 13 years ago shows they have no business trying to regulate this space.

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The revenues in mobile gaming overwhelmingly come from predatory in-app item sales. They aren't in the business of selling games to people who like playing games, they're in the business of psychologically exploiting people who are vulnerable to compulsive behaviours. The industry isn't shy about this - they openly brag about their pursuit of "whales" and their use of psychological manipulation. Frankly, everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.

https://www.blog.udonis.co/mobile-marketing/mobile-games/mob...

Blurring the line between gambling and gaming.

they even call that section of the industry "iGaming".

Mobile games are a pastiche.

The viewport is a small number of inches, the types of games are wholly different, the controls are awful.

These are not only different consumer segments, they're wholly different products. The FTC is making the right call.

If the category includes all mobile games, it should include video gambling machines as well.

Slightly tangential, but I've been watching Duolingo go down this road for the past few years since one of Zynga's product people became their head of product. Duolingo was never the best way to learn a language, but it's increasingly become essentially useless as an educational tool as they push for more and more revenue from their "whales". Every aspect of the experience is shaped towards manipulating people into "engaging" for longer and keeping them coming back, ostensibly to make learning more effective but in practice at the expense of learning.

This blog post by their head of product is a great example of the problems in the industry—he talks gleefully about all the manipulative techniques he pulled in from Zynga, and doesn't seem to have any clue that he's sacrificed the mission in pursuit of relentless growth.

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-duolingo-reignited-us...

>The team consisted of an engineering manager, an engineer, a designer, an APM, and me.

I feel for that lone engineer with 4 people breathing down the back of his neck.

But every time he gets a new order, there's a 0.0025% chance he will randomly get promoted to CEO, so it's all worth it.

Anecdotal- but my daughter wanted to use duolingo to "learn a new language". I said, sure... but no in-app purchases of any kind. After a couple of weeks, she no longer uses it. It turns out that you need to pay for gems and stuff, in order to continue practicing. Once you're out of hearts and gems, you can't do anything until it refreshes.

It's kind of sad, that in the pursuit of cashing in on their "whales" that they've essentially neutered it as an educational app.

This is only true if you're on the free plan. If you get Duo Plus (family plan and split it, for example), all the IAP become obsolete. You can practice/learn a language 24/7 without limits. The gems become completely irrelevant. I think this is a really fair model and great bang for the buck.

The problem is when the whole thing is structured around gems, etc. Duolingo is incentivized to structure it in such a way that it benefits the nature of microtransactions. It diminishes the educational value of the whole thing, subscription plan or not.

Just because people make decisions that you wouldn't make yourself doesn't mean that they're stupid and emotionally manipulated.

Have you read any of the literature from the mobile gaming industry? I don't judge the people victimized by the industry, I judge the industry, and I do it based on the way they talk about their customers. They're very open about their exploitative practices and don't even really seem to see the problem.

In my other comment, I pointed to this post by Duolingo's head of product as a good example of someone talking openly about exploitative practices without even really seeming to see the problem. This is honestly mild on the scale of industry discussions of how to manipulate people into giving more money.

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-duolingo-reignited-us...

I mean, at the end of the day it's opt-in deluxe entertainment, and games have been attacked on this vector for decades. They are by nature time wasters and they (console games) can arguably be money wasters depending on how many games or whay kinds of games you play. We did especially have an era of this with MMOs.

The game design patterns aren't new nor novel. Retaining players with repetitive grinds, using guilds to create peer pressure to stay, daily rotating events with a trickle of currency used to obtain desirable characters/gear. You could trace all that back to WOW and several Korean MMOs. The only difference is that they can reach a wider audience now, some of which they drew in from the console market.

I've worked in it for many years, and I've been a happy customer as well, spending a lot of my money on those games. I get a game, I figure out I like it, spend a few hundreds on it in a span of a few months, and move on after it bores me, with perfect return on investment. I've tried spending the same money in casinos, but they are just too boring — I usually can't even get myself to burn down the money I've decided to spend, so I take don't get the gambling comparison: mobile games a simply better as entertainment.

One of those rare sentences that can be both a game design doc and a casino defense...

I strongly disagree, mobile and console/PC gaming are not competing. It’s a completely different audience, different games and so on. I’d consider them mostly separate markets. The Switch tried to bridge the gap but really didn’t.

> The Switch tried to bridge the gap but really didn’t.

What would the Switch have needed to accomplish to bridge the gap to mobile? Sell 1 billion units?

Allow horrible gatcha games

They do, there are some gacha on the switch. Most notably, Genshin was trying to promise a Switch port, but never delivered.

To be clear, “mobile” is a distinct category from “handheld”. I am not OP, but to answer your question, I think the idea is that to bridge the gap with mobile gaming the Switch would have to… actually compete in that space. IOW, it has nothing to do with sales. Not many people are considering whether to buy a Switch instead of Candy Crush on their phone. If you ask me how many toasters you have to sell to prove to me you’re in the mobile gaming space, I’d reply that you’re committing a category error. You could sell 1 trillion toasters and still not succeed in “bridging the gap between making toast and mobile gaming”. This is of course a hyperbolic example, and gaming is a gradient with more grey areas and plenty of overlap, but arguably “mobile gaming” in particular is so different from the rest that it is fair to categorize quite differently. There is a good argument that it should if anything instead be compared to gambling from a business model perspective, or social media / content consumption given its expected use environment (on the bus, waiting in line, in bed, etc.).

Right, the switch wouldn't be competing with Mobile Games, it would be competing with Mobile Phones. So, to compete in that space, the Switch would have had to be a mobile phone. Maybe they could have gotten away with being a Tablet.

It's competing for a similar audience. But phones target a wider audience. There are very much high spec phones marketed to play the highest fidelity games, so it's not like there are no console gamers who consider mobile gaming.

Exactly. If you ask me, it would have to run the latest triple A games like F1, Call of Duty, FIFA, Elden Ring, Dirt, etc very well and be an attractive platform for that kind of gaming. The FTC is IMHO correct when they see Xbox, Play Station and Windows as one market and Switch in another.

People usually have the latest Play Station or Xbox, not both, but lots of people have a Switch in addition to either.

At the same time this metaphor works in reverse. There wee very much people who don't see the appeal of a 3DS becsuse "I have free games on my phone". And the 3DS lost a lot of its market due to that. Pokemon wasn't enough for the first time in some 20 years. And then Some part of The Pokemon Company released Pokemon Go and it was clear that the lines were blurry. Gaming or non-gaming, I can't find someone who didn't at least tinker with POGO in the few 2 months.

I think it's a bit silly to suggest that there isnt a decent overlap in the market. Any Japanese company has a mobile division, and they all utilize their console IP's there. They wouldn't do that if all their audience were candy crush players.

They all compete with each other since they're all competing for your time, there's just specializations that make them more attractive in certain situations. If I'm at home poking at a gem game at my phone, that's still taking up time that could be spent on a console. If I'm out and about, it's time that could be spent on a Switch or Steam Deck, or possibly cloud streaming.

There's plenty of overlap between all of them. Hell, most mobile games are mostly adaptions of what are usually called casual or what used to be called "desktop" games on PC. Genshin Impact is an open world RPG, there's CoD Mobile and Mario Kart too.

There's a habit to separate various kinds of media in it's own little lockboxes and it's completely wrongheaded and old fashioned in an age where tech is consolidating so rapidly.

> They all compete with each other since they're all competing for your time

But they have largely separate audiences. The number of people for whom they are in legitimate competition is vanishingly small compared to those who are exclusively on one side of the divide or the other.

Do they? Most people and households I know, particularly families, have products from all categories, with those who play games gravitating to dedicated hardware (mobile, console, PC etc) as opposed to phones and tablets.

Mobile, console, PC, handheld? Potato Potahto. I can play PC games on a handheld. I can play Xbox games on an iPhone. I can play Switch games on a PC. I can play "Mobile" games on a TV box.

The industry is so busy categorizing that they missed that everything runs on everything now.

> They all compete with each other since they're all competing for your time

But if you define the market that way, it probably also includes books, movies, television, and sports. Not so useful when working on antitrust.

Music and some less demanding TV (reality shows, news) can be passive enough that you can consume it concurrently to video games or sport. Narrative TV and movies absolutely compete with time spent playing video games.

I don't think that the categorization is actually helpful, if anything it distorts reality by making it seem as if Microsoft are on the backfoot regarding gaming. Meanwhile, Sony is releasing games on Windows.

My wife plays solitaire on her phone and never ever plays on my PS5.

I play games on my PS5 and never ever on my iPhone.

When my friends and I talk about what games we are playing no one, ever, has mentioned a mobile game. We did discuss Pokémon go, but not one of us actually installed it.

Software market segmentation was at one point borne entirely from technical considerations between different hardware platforms. Form factors, architecures, performance etc. To some extent it still is, but the differentiation has mostly dissolved down to screen size and the tradeoffs that need to be made to accommodate those differently sized screens.

The technical reasons for justifying segmented software markets have faded away. In spite of personal preference, your wife could play that exact same solitaire game on a PC or laptop if they wanted to, just like you could play PS5 games on your iPhone. Just like you should be able to play Xbox games on a PS5, or vice versa, with the only barrier existing to prevent this being the walls the platform holders themselves built. This absolutely results in market segmentation, but of the anti-competitive kind.

This will come to a head whenever AR glasses catch on proper, since that dissolves segmentation based on screen size. What's "mobile", when everything is mobile?

>if they wanted to

That's the market segmentation right there. My wife could play solitaire on her PC but she doesn't want to. She has her phone on her all the time. She is a very casual gamer. I, on the other hand, want to play games in surround sound with a large 4K TV. I have a switch but have never played it disconnected from the TV.

>What's "mobile", when everything is mobile?

The games. As as has been said on this thread, "mobile" games are actually either skinner boxes or casual games like solitaire. Console games are big investments in experiences - be the investment money, like GTA or Halo, or time and passion, like Celeste.

I hope that we will see some interesting games for VR/AR. So far there have been exactly zero high-investment games. Superhot, for example, was interesting, but played well without VR, and was short.

Here's the thing: I don't remember the last time I played a first person game other than Superhot. They aren't that fun. I don't have great proprioception in the real world, so how is that going to work in VR where I don't have legs? How will I time jumping off a building? How will I know when to strike? These are all reasons why most 3D games are third person. Games are fun.

Sure that's segmentation, but only because the platform holders architected it that way.

Solitaire is a mobile game? It didn't start out like that! Not just that it was for a long time a PC game, but also as a card game that required a big ass desk to play. Same with gambling games. You've been groomed into expecting that different hardware form factors require different software ecosystems, but that is a box that the industry has drawn for itself (with a few notable exceptions trying to break out of it).

As for the AR/VR talk, I was speaking more generally, not about AR/VR specific experiences. Given the panacea of AR glasses with perfect passthrough in a pair of Oakleys, virtual screens can be any shape or size. At which point the hardware distinction between "big screen" experiences like movies and GTA and smaller, casual games like solitaire are effectively at an even footing on the same device. At that point does it make sense to have separate stores for different hardware?

Not that I think it does today. If I purchase Solitaire, I should be able to play it anywhere on anything. If I purchase GTA, I should be able to play it anywhere on anything.

I think the op is right.

Try to sell mobile games to "console/pc gamers", you just don't sell them, different market.

From a personal perspective, all my friends who play videogames avoid mobile like plague.

On the other hand, my friend group have all played some mobile games at some point. I think it really comes down to genre.

These were a bunch of weebs who also played stuff like Final Fantasy 14. And many mobile games marketed towards those current/former RPG players are similar in all but raw technical scope (and even then, we have Genshin impact now. That gap is closing). But sure, if your friend group focuses on FPS or fighters I can see a lack of interest.

I have no problem with the mobile platform itself, it's that usually all the games are terrible. The few that are on mobile usually have a counterpart on steam, with the steam deck that lost all the interest

The Switch didn't really try to bridge the gap, the games are different. There are no Tears of the Kingdom or Mario Odyssey on phones.

Genshin impact was mocked in the gaming space as a Breath of the Wild clone. So i don't think that angle is correct.

No one has tried to really make a 3d platformer mobile game, though. I wonder how much of that is due to technical/logistical issues and how much due to lack of audience demand. There are some 2D platformers, so that's not the issue.

I haven't played it, but Genshin Impact is often compared to Breath of the Wild.

I think it’s important to note the revenue coming from mobile gamers (generally) isn’t the same revenue that Sony/MS are after here. Very different customer segments with very different demographics. You’re right though, it seems that the mobile sector is growing and the console one has stagnated.

I imagine contingent of people who spend big bucks on mobile games _probably_ wouldn’t be spending that money on AAA PS5 games otherwise.

It can vary. Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail show that there certainly is a console-esque audience you can target, even with mobile style monetization. Their success does make me wonder why the West hasn't attempted something similar since the days of Infinity Blade.

It's very disappointing that big Japanese mobile and console game industry can't do what Mihoyo did. They should.

At this point though the PC gaming market is indistinguishable from Xbox which is just a closed down Windows PC with DRM. AFAIK all Xbox games are supposed to be available on PC anyway?

There's a difference for MS though, right? I assume it gets a cut off Xbox titles but nothing (other than cementing Windows) for sales of PC titles?

That's why they created GamePass. There's no way that's not operating at a loss right now, but they're playing the long game I suppose.

I think it’s important to note the revenue coming from mobile gamers (generally) isn’t the same revenue that Sony/MS are after here.

Just curious if you are making that comment after reading the article, or is your general opinion? Because one of the big points of the article is that Phil Spencer said they tried to by Zynga, and the major reason they want Activision is for the mobile assets. This is Spencer’s testimony quoted in the article:

The deal, as we’ve talked about, expands our business to the mobile platform... the existing business that we run today as the third-place console business is a very difficult business to drive profit and margin. So the opportunity for us to expand in a meaningful way onto mobile, the world’s largest gaming platform, was really both a strategic and business opportunity behind this deal.

That's just my general opinion! That's a great point though, and tracks well with what other commenters have said. Sony/MS definitely have a very good understanding of their own market, so if they're making efforts to expand into mobile, there's clearly very good business justification.

This is like comparing bikes, cars and motorcycles, saying "the car has won, motorcycle sales have stagnated - get your head out the sand". You cannot just change "Console" to "Computing device that can run a game" because you think it is a better way to look at it. You also count Microsoft as PC + Xbox but not Sony as PlayStation + Phones + TVs etc. all of which has apps and games, making this an extremely arbitrary definition.

There's no doubt that a Console is far from the same experience most people have with a PC or a phone. Different, not better. Why do you think most that identify as a gamer own both a Console, a phone and a PC if it is basically the same experience? I own one of each for the exact same reason I own both a car a motorcycle and a bike: They are not at all the same or even related outside having wheels.

So how does one find high quality games on mobile? There's so much crap out there on the Play store, it's really hard to pick games. I don't care much about the genre or the price, I just want to play some high quality, low bullshit (no ads, spam, loot boxes, etc.) games.

Is there a website that curates games?

Edit: turned this into an Ask HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36468335

Apple Arcade?

You buy a steam deck.

It's kinda a joke, but when I asked myself the question "can I play anything interesting on mobile", the answer I found was that one.

Check out some free software titles on F-Droid. Shattered Pixel Dungeon and Minetest are a couple examples. Anuto TD is also a decent low-budget-feeling tower defense game (don't set your expectations too high).

Maybe Microsoft could compete by building something people would pay money for, rather than just buying their way to a dominant position?

I guess the underlying question is, are any of the consoles worth buying? I feel like they aren't.

The Nintendo Switch is an easy choice if one wants a mix of at-home and mobile gaming and are able to find games w/in its catalog which suit.

I just wish someone would make a motion-controlled RPG which had:

- the exploration and immersive story of Xenoblade Chronicles

- the amazing imagery and intricate puzzles of Pandora's Tower

- the endless grinding potential of The Last Story

- on-going content like to Diablo 3's Seasons

- the fluid transition between ranged combat and melee of Red Steel 2

- the wonderful archery of Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on the Wii

and a story/world where constant replays make sense --- say something like to the Gates of C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine books. (and yes, I should spend more time playing Ring Fit Adventure, but )

Yes, why isn't anyone "just" making the perfect game? Look how easy it was to write that list. It's just the best aspect of six games and a series of books. Can't be too hard.

> Yes, why isn't anyone "just" making the perfect game?

I think we had a few that tried.

We got instant classics released soon after the initial announcement: Daikatana, Duke Nukem Forever, etc.

The problem with the Switch is, why buy that when you can get a Steam Deck? It’s exclusives aren’t really that exclusive when emulation exists. And all things considered, buying a legal copy of the game and then pirating the game file is equivalent enough to satisfy most moral objections one may have.

The PS5 is really the only console with any amount of exclusives, and even then Sony is opening up to PC more and more.

So to answer OP, none are really worth by themselves. Online games obviously create different considerations though.

Because I like Nintendo and would like to financially reward them for their efforts?

Did you miss the part where they said they bought the game before pirating it? Hardware doesn't make money, software does.

No I did not. Sales numbers matter. And Nintendo claims to make a profit on the hardware.

I don’t want the hardware, I want the games. The hardware is literally useless to me. A Steam Deck does everything I need it to do but better because it’s a Linux machine.

What you want is irrelevant here. If they wanted to sell it for the Steam Deck platform, they would have done so.

Because of convenience. I could do the whole dance fiddling with settings of yuzu and ryuxin or just press play on my switch.

> The problem with the Switch is, why buy that when you can get a Steam Deck?

One reason is that the cheapest steam deck is twice the price of the cheapest switch while being much less portable. If you want a Switch-like TV experience you need to spend an extra $150 on the dock and a controller whereas that comes in the box on a Switch OLED with a vastly better screen for $350. The Steam Deck is obviously more capable but it definitely has tradeoffs even for someone willing to go through all of the effort of piracy and emulation.

FWIW, you don't actually have to spend that much on a dock.

Since the docks weren't initially available, I purchased a $20 USB-C hub from Anker on newegg (with passthrough charging, SD card, USB/USB-C/HDMI) although there are even cheaper ones some as low as $10 for HDMI only. It fits pretty easily in the nylon bag with the charger so it's now a portable dock which I can also use for work due to the full linux desktop on the steam deck (I combine it with a collapsing BT keyboard and mini mouse when not at a desk).

Controllers you can get pretty good USB ones for $10 with better form factor than the switch and easier to replace.

The openness of the steam deck really helps with peripherals.

Oh... one thing I forgot to mention. I was concerned about strain on the USB-C connector, esp w/ the hub, so I added a magnetic USB-C connector. It's worked both to protect the port and break away if the hub was mispositioned and adding strain at an angle.

Because everyone can actually buy a Switch and it’s cheaper.

>>The problem with the Switch is, why buy that when you can get a Steam Deck?

Have you used the Steam Deck?

It's a janky experience if you try to use it in the living room. For one thing, the Bluetooth chip is terrible. I realized this when I emulated Donkey Kong, was doing terribly, then unplugged it from my TV and started winning in handheld mode.

The issue isn't the TV introducing lag, I followed instruction online to install the driver for the Xbox controller Dongle and the difference was night and day.

This is just an emblematic example. I had to buy a wifi extender because the Steam Deck literally crash itself (It will actually report "out of battery" when the battery is full) when it has a bad wifi signal, due to some sort of hardware flaw.

Steam Deck is a very janky experience, which perhaps isn't a surprise when you realize Valve has the highest profits per employee in tech, they accomplish a lot with a small staff, but they have huge resource constraints when producing products like the Steam Deck.

I bought a Switch last month to play BotW (yeah, I'm a bit behind). I kind of regret starting to play BotW on it (85 hours so far; it's a good game, with some flaws like all games, but good). The framerate is just absolutely horrid in parts, even in 720p, and I'm just not getting used to it; even after 85 hours, I wince every time it goes down to 10 fps. If I could move over my progress to CEMU I would.

If they haven't improved performance in TotK (or Switch 2 is out by then), I will play that game emulated on a PC.

Super Mario Odyssey framerate was better. Not great, but not "did Nintendo seriously consider this to be good enough to release?".

Depends on how much you like messing with drivers, and other hardware issues.

I haven’t had a driver issue in windows in ages, have you? I’m sure they still happen here and there, but I feel like this is mostly an obsolete meme at this point.

You would be surprised when looking at AAA bug databases, specially graphics and audio.

Not everyone buys top quality hardware.

Yeah, fair, I guess I’ve narrowed my vendor list a lot from when I was a teenager, probably a big part of it.

I had no issues with my PC drivers. On the other hand I had to install a sound driver on Xbox for my headset to work...

Sure...

For real

And the driver was installed on XBox putting a USB pen and starting setup.exe..../s

No idea what you're talking about because I didn't have to do any of that on PC since Vista and earlier.

But there are multiple drivers in the Xbox store and it took some research to see what had to be installed. There are still times I have to disconnect and reconnect the controller for the headset to work.

There is no way to install drivers on XBox other than whatever comes with firmware updates.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/gdk/_content/gc/ref...

Not exactly. That is true for Microsoft hardware. Even then sometimes you have to reinstall those using "Update Now" and a few steps. You can also need third party audio drivers - I had to download audio software from the Xbox store to get my headset to work.

I love my PS5, as I loved all the playstations, although the xbox 360 saw more use from me for that era. I also game on the PC, but generally I find consoles get more gaming use, because I'm in front of a PC screen all day for work, so it's nice to sit on a coach and play games in the evening. The game catalog is huge, and older games these days are well worth playing. I'd say I'm at about 90% console gaming to 10% pc gaming at this point (no mobile gaming), although it can vary a lot over the years.

Also, a console just works (99% of the time), and I don't have to fiddle with drivers and editing config files and the other random crap that can crop up with even the best PC games.

> Also, a console just works (99% of the time), and I don't have to fiddle with drivers and editing config files and the other random crap that can crop up with even the best PC games.

Another anecdata point - I have several hundred games for PC on Steam, and can’t remember the last time I had an issue with drivers or having to do anything to get games to run.

That depends on what you value in a console. I bought an xbone a few years after I quit wow and got rid of my gaming PC. I don't game much any more but when I want to, I have xbone. 8 years of an appliance that plays games for like $300. My fiance doesn't play PC games but will play Xbox. My cat sitter doesn't need an account on my computer to play fortnight.

A gaming PC would be better in most ways but as far as value for dollar, xbone was well worth buying.

I agree they are dirt cheap for the specs. They've just lost the social aspect. I miss the LAN parties with 12-16 guys playing playing together in someone's basement.

It depends. Can you compare a car and a motorcycle? Maybe, but they really don't compete directly in most cases. I play 90% of my games on my PC but when I play Co-op I always pick the console version of the game if possible because every single time there are problems with either Windows, the game, whatever communication software we use, the network, etc. etc. I can count on one hand how many times I've had these problems since the original Xbox. The whole experience also feels very different. I have also been lucky enough to not once have a console die unlike a PC and I own all my old consoles - again unlike all my PCs (try installing a PlayStation 1 era PC game on a modern PC).

"try installing a PlayStation 1 era PC game on a modern PC"

I still occasionally play F22 TAW and Chamanche Gold. No issues.

I've had way more issues like you describe on Xbox with stuff like Halo Infinite than with stuff on PC like Destiny 2. That includes driver issues! (Headset sound on Xbox).

The answer depends on the individual, but millions and millions of people have said "Yes" to that question and are very happy with their choice.

I buy Nintendo hardware since it’s the only legit way to play their software.

I agree with this sentiment. As much as it lags the competition, it would be doing even worse had they not marketed the ever loving crap out of their flagship Halo. Remember I Love Bees?

"Self-identified gamers" and those extremely profitable mobile games have virtually nothing to do with each other, the commonality of 'games' is superficial. There's basically no overlap between the consumers of these markets.

You might as well compare console games to casino games.

> without any leg up in PC or mobile

Sony has a stable of desired exclusives (and even exclusive series). Microsoft Gaming doesn’t earn a dime on PC hardware sales. Hell, even the Windows group doesn’t earn more than a couple of bucks on a Windows sale.

It’s Microsoft Gaming that is in a bind here.

I'm evaluating them ultimately from their technical prospects and on a long timeline. Sony has a bright future as a content curator no doubt. It's their hardware business I think looks shaky.

Consider a future where TV sales dwindle, cannibalized by personal screens like tablets and headsets. Or imagine smart tv platforms clamping down on media that they don't get a cut of (anything over that 'obsolete' HDMI port).

Those trends are slowly underway, and part of the reason the console segment is not just stagnating, but shrinking. Sony has a big piece of a shrinking segment and no easy way to move to the other gaming segments. Microsoft on the other hand has 3 generations of games that run on Windows, which is still the dominant OS in a growing gaming segment.

If we could define the console wars as: who will escape the console segment before it disappears? That is the lens by which I say Sony has the worse hand. They're more likely to become an Atari or Sega at this point than Microsoft is.

> Microsoft on the other hand has 3 generations of games that run on Windows, which is still the dominant OS in a growing gaming segment.

But what does it matter that Microsoft owns the OS? They don’t see a dime more because of that except for the OEM Windows fee and tiny sliver from OS ads.

Steam is the predominant sales platform on PC, which again Microsoft doesn’t earn a dime from.

Sony has ported or is porting all their successful 1st party and 3rd party games. Nothing is stopping them from doing that for all the games they think customers care about. And the supermajority of customers care very little beyond current gen, maybe one gen back.

I don’t see consoles shrinking a whole lot either (once you cut out the spike from COVID). I use my PC with a bunch of fancy tricks and Big Picture and it still has plenty of weird bugs. The most recent annoying one is having to manually override DPI scaling on Ori, and choosing my TV as the monitor for Ori and Halo MCC. Funnily enough both Microsoft games (although I am not saying Sony’s games would fare much better).

Maybe that a revival of Steam boxes / Steam machines will change that in the future.. or hell, maybe the EU breaks open the console walled garden. Who knows.

Microsoft has been doing Microsoft things to boost the Xbox app and game pass. Having a huge back catalog to fill their store gives them a leg up over say, Epic's game store, which also wants to enter the space.

It's a huge hill to climb to catch up to Steam's market share, but we've seen Microsoft leverage Windows to climb similar hills time and time again. The strategy is at least viable enough that Valve has been shaking in their boots for years, trying to build up a war chest of games on Linux. The Steam Deck is a great strategic accomplishment for them.

I don't understand why smartphone games are relevant in determining whether or not the FTC is right to have concerns over competition in the console gaming industry.

Consoles games aren't the same products than smartphones games. Only xbox, playstation and the nintendo consoles are in the same market (edit: and PC)

I do agree console war is outdated and not relevant anymore but it doesn't mean the FTC is wrong. Of course they may be wrong for an entire different set of reasons.

Ypu are writing as if only the winners were making money. What is not true.

Consoles, handhelds and PCs can still make a ton of money even when studios are not centralized.

Unfortunately I think you are probably right. One thing I don't get though, why is either ms or Sony still in the console business. It's extremely risky, why bother when real money is mobile?

Edit: is pc gaming really growing? That surprises me, I used to really be in to pc games (late 90s). GPUs are ridiculously expensive, is it really big now? It was niche in my day

I don't consider most of mobile gaming 'the gaming industry' - superficially it's the gaming industry but it's some other thing. That's my own opinion and I guess I'm outdated but I never 'game' on mobile.

I don't think mobile games have anything to do with it. It would be more accurate to say mobile applications.

Epic vs. Apple reported that 70% of Apple's revenue on the App store came from mobile games: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/apple-vs-epic-70percent-of-a...

It really is that big a market.

It's a big market, but is it really competing with other forms of gaming? As an analogy, if someone were buying up all the oven manufacturers, would it matter that microwaves were more widely used?

I don't see why it wouldn't. You're probably thinking of just Candy Crush and company but I have games like Final Fantasy 7 and Baldur's Gate on the iPhone. Though more interesting from a money standpoint would be major online games like Fortnite and League of Legends on the iPhone.

Every time I want to play a game I have to consider if I want to bust out my laptop, turn on my TV system, or just swipe over to a game on the phone I'm already holding.

Sure, but the experience is different. You can cook a piece of meat in the microwave but it won't be the same as one cooked in an oven or on a stove. I can forsee a future of convergence where a phone is powerful enough to play any games and can just be docked to get the console or PC experience but we're not there yet.

We are already there. Pretty much every iPhone sold for the past 5 years is more powerful than the Nintendo Switch, could be used with controllers and connected to a TV. But they don't seem to bother.

Cinema / 65' TV versus iPhone. It is definitely not the same experience. I own many consoles and more than one gaming PC and I'd never play a game on a phone.

I don't find myself doing that very much.

I obviously prefer to play my PC or PlayStation, but will play my Switch if I am in the bathroom, riding shotgun on a long car ride, etc. Mobile games, for me, are essentially waiting room games or something I will whip out if I have exactly 7 minutes to kill.

I don't generally think, "I want to game" and then decide which one is worth the effort in the moment.

Entertainment is entertainment and attention is the currency.

With that point of view, would it be acceptable for Disney to buy up all movie studios since there are other forms of entertainment?

We could certainly debate that all day. I simply replied because the parent comment made it sound like games were this niche corner of the mobile market. I wanted to assert otherwise.

But to properly reply to your comment: indirectly, yes. I'd go so far to argue that the rise of mobile gaming yet another reason why the Vita couldn't gain traction (releasing in 2013, around the time mobile games started to really show they can do more than arcade-y style minigames), and why Nintendo decided to pivot to a hybrid model. the 3DS's middling sales (for a nintendo console) definitely put some pressure on even the uncontested king of handhelds, so what chance would any other platform have?

Meanwhile Microsoft in this era would flounder with Windows Mobile and fail to gain traction with Windows 8S or whatever they were trying to do with tablets in this time, so I guess their enthusiasm to try that in their gaming division was negative. I'm honestly still baffled Valve beat MS to making the most obvious Xbox handheld, that we now know as the Steam Deck.

So I'd say it was competing the same way handhelds competed with consoles. There would never be apples to apples comparison, but the markets definitely tug on one another, the markets keep eyes on one another, and the audience have some significant overlap, enough to be kept in mind with marketing. Sony and Microsoft wouldn't be marketing cloud gaming on mobile if they thought none of their audience were interested in playing games on their phone.

I'm a bit confused. Are you saying the Vita competes with Consoles and PCs? Surely it competes with phones?

The Vita/3DS had very similar audiences to their console counterparts, despite not necessarily being direct competitors. But you can't think in just games for this to make sense.

Remember that the PSP was also a pretty good multimedia device pre-smartphone. So it lost that userbase as it became the Vita. But of course it's primary purpose was games and the Vita focused on that in its western marketing: "console gaming on the go". It couldn't sell itself on mobile style games if it ever expected to succeed, so while it may have overlap I can't say it was a direct smartphone competitor either.

And it took similar resources within Sony to develop and market it. Another of a dozen reasons why it failed: Sony decided very early on to put all its chips into the PS4, and ditched first party Vita support after the first year. This woildnt make sense for a phone competitor.

Everyone weren't sure whether mobile console disappearing or not by smartphones getting popular and high performance. Sony tried some weird things like PlayStation Mobile. Nintendo merged consoles as Switch.

As a result, it seems that it's a different market.

To be fair, apps are a limited market. Games are fun for some time, and then you move on to the next game. Or you are addicted, and waste a steady amount every month to get the ever same experience. Apps are different. After you found your necessary set of functionality, you stay with them for years and years, you barely add any new app, or change to another one. And often there are even enough free or builtin apps around to cover your demand. So revenue is naturally smaller.

I do agree the monetization ceiling of games is much higher. There's not much to infinitely spend on in a productivity app but you hear stories of whales spending thousands a month on a single mobile game.

And that does line up with the above link: most of that revenue os generated by a snall minority of gamers. Most games are indeed played for free for a few hours/days with no money obtained outside of Ads. But that whale market is small but insanely lucrative.

> Xboxes are nothing more than a user-friendly gaming PC brand

Also, manufacturer- and publisher-friendly, given the heavy restrictions on the platform. It's bad for preservation that the Xbox One hasn't significantly been cracked yet.

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