The Tragic Downfall of the Video Game Console | Hacker News Reader

The Tragic Downfall of the Video Game Console

rz01.org

18 pointsexitnode7 comments

I believe John Carmack has said that this is one of the major barriers to VR adoption.

The fact that the Meta Quest has to spend long amounts of time to update after being on the shelf for a while.

This is a barrier because it prohibits people from grabbing their Meta Quest from the closet to show people who are visiting or coming over. It also makes the owner of the device less likely to pull it out of the closet to use it for personal use because of the frustration.

For what it's worth, I don't recall the Nintendo Switch ever giving me such trouble. Creating local accounts and playing offline has been smooth for me. But I never tried Minecraft on it.

Thanks for mentioning that! I have no experience with this console but a friend already recommended me looking into the Switch. Need to confirm that what you say also applies to Minecraft on the Switch and then I would do the...well...switch.

The Switch 2 is coming out in a few months.

We don’t know much of anything about that console yet and how Minecraft would work on it though.

Even the Switch needs periodic system and game updates. These tend to be small because the OS and games are small (compared to those on eighth- and ninth-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony).

More promising in terms of the old-school "plug in and play" experience is Evercade, who can get away with it because their titles are mainly licensed, emulated retro games that aren't changing any time soon.

The Switch doesn't rely so much on AAA and live-service games like other consoles that have large amounts of graphics and voice content, since it's not powerful enough to run them (and the customer base is different).

OMG yes! This inability to just turn it on and be reliably playing a game in less than 30 seconds is the major reason I haven't upgraded to the current generation of consoles. It's especially bad for those of us who get busy with other things and may not boot the console up for weeks or even a month or two. Then it's almost certain I'll get hit with a mandatory OS upgrade and then a game upgrade. And then there's the drag of glacial install speeds, the need to create and manage user accounts, constant DLC pitches - it's become the opposite of fun.

In response, we've gone all in on retro gaming and it's a blast. The games are great and we get to spend >99% of our play time... playing.

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