The console wars are over and nobody won | Hacker News Reader

The console wars are over and nobody won

kotaku.com

43 pointsraytopia23 comments

Games nowadays have a real accessibility issue.

Every new game feels like I need to spend hours learning how it works before I get to having fun, when as a working parent I might only have 30 minutes here or there where I’m able to play. When I get back to a game after a couple of weeks off, I can’t remember what I was doing, or what the controls are. It’s just not fun.

Furthermore, every time I turn my console on, everything needs an update in order to be played. So there’s a 15-20 minute wait to get to any sort of entertainment.

Contrast this to the OG Xbox/PS2 era - I’d turn the console on and be having fun within a minute or two in a game that was easy to understand. I don’t think this was due to a lack of depth in the games either. They generally just seemed to have an “easy to learn, hard to master” aspect to them that doesn’t feel present today.

Obviously this is a huge generalisation. But the cumulative effect is that it’s switched me off gaming completely. Unless something is considered a true masterpiece, I won’t even bother.

My Xbox is packed away for now. I expect the next time I’ll turn it on will be for GTA 6.

Call of Duty is the worst with this. After purchasing Modern Warfare, waiting for it to download 60GB, all you get is a fancy menu where the game you purchased is hidden away somewhere below the fold and it tries to upsell other CoDs instead. When you eventually figure out how to navigate the menu and find the game, you can't play it, because apparently, the 60GB download didn't include any of the game. That's another 50GB download. Oh and turns out, that also doesn't actually include the game mode you were interested in. That's another 25GB.

Call of Download: Modem Warfare.

> as a working parent I might only have 30 minutes here or there where I’m able to play. When I get back to a game after a couple of weeks off, I can’t remember what I was doing, or what the controls are. It’s just not fun.

+1, I fall into this category. It's tough.

But is it a problem for the gaming industry? How many sales can they expect from the time poor?

I manage to still play, by choosing conceptually simple games (puzzle, platformer, sports, GTA, some FPS), and playing on the Steam Deck. Portability + instant resume works well for this.

One thing I appreciate about modern games is that a lot of them have quest systems that can remind you of your next objective at any point, and/or maps that tell you where you haven’t been.

This makes it easy for me to log on, do 30 minutes of gaming and then log off and make some incremental progress on the game.

(My experience here is mostly with Nintendo and indie games on the Switch, for reference)

Whilst I agree game updates have become larger and larger and there are reasons why for that as annoying as they are. I'm not sure if there is much of an accessibility issue as much as its my ability to make enough time to play games like I used to.

Game designers need to strike a balance between people like us with little time, and those that can commit much more time.

There are a lot of games that have less complex controls and game mechanics. You just have to buy those instead of what you are buying now.

While I do get the occasional must update from my switch, 9 out of 10 it’ll let me play without downloading the update.

Most Nintendo games are really easy to jump in and out of and are really fun to play.

Not a gamer, but isn't that basically that the Steam Deck won, by merging the "portable", "game console" and "gaming PC" categories into one device?

Good point, but arguably it's that Steam (rather than Steam Deck) won, as (with the relatively low hardware margins) they probably prefer that it be others like Asus and Lenovo selling steam handhelds.

SteamDeck "success" is still out there to validate.

Doesn't have the sales of any Nintendo handheld that has earned its place on history books, and remains to be seen for how long Microsoft will tolerate Proton as Windows/DirectX translation layer.

I think the window for Microsoft to squash Proton (if that was ever practical) has already passed. Valve will be able to stand up to any litigious bullying and they have financial incentive to do so. And defeating it from the technical side with a new interface would require buy-in from developers, which Microsoft has consistently been unable to obtain.

What do you reckon Microsoft can do about Proton?

Apparently there aren’t any sales figures but most estimates puts it at 1% of the Nintendo Switch sales.

I don't think it has meaningful volume to be considered a winner. Mental to physical share ratio is low, similar to Boston Dynamics in robotics, RISC-V in processors, etc.

There are now a ton of competitors to it though -- it's become a new format for gaming PCs. Whether or not the Steam Deck itself is the winner, I think the form factor is here to stay. And I can't imagine why (as an owner of a Switch Lite and a Steam Deck) why I would want a Switch 2.

ATI/AMD made out pretty well across many generations.

I suppose you could argue it may have helped keep the boat afloat before they launched Zen, but as far as I know the margins on their game console chips are terrible.

The margins are terrible, but they make it up in volume. :P Seriously though, having a volume product that covers its costs keeps the business running; even if it doesn't make a lot of margin, it enables producing products that do have reasonable margins. Zen, especially since Zen 2, can probably pay for itself now, but it's still nice to have two high volume customers.

Not really. It's only the Xbox and Xbox One, PS4/5 where AMD CPU got used. ATI has some more design wins. Earlier generations were somewhat exotic in comparison to PC.

  > It's only the Xbox and Xbox One, PS4/5 where AMD CPU got used.

i think maybe forgetting about gpus?

gamecube → wii → wiiu = amd/ati gpu

xbox 360 (amd/ati gpu) → one → series = amd gpu/cpu

ps4 → ps5 = amd gpu/cpu

Ive been a pc gamer for a little of 2 decades and this is one of the best times to be a PC gamer. Production costs of video games have ballooned so much that both Microsoft and now even Sonys exclusive are coming to the PC because they simply cannot sustain games that are exclusive to just 1 console. Granted Microsoft has not been hostile to PC gaming for a while now but i never thought id see the day Sony would port some of their exclusives onto the PC

"Free to play" games with slot machine mechanics and intrusive monetization schemes seem to have won.

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