Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

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> so what exactly is the point of 5800X3D scalping

in the past, growth in PC gaming came naturally with the growth in the adoption of computers around the world.

at saturation of "new to computers" audiences, growth in PC gaming comes from convincing the core gaming demographic, newly-turned 13 year old boys, to agitate for PCs instead of XYZ.

so a big part of it is the retail-marketing experience - the aesthetics of buying - and scalping / sense of urgency plays extremely well with the buyer who actually chooses PC over a nintendo switch, as opposed to a kid who will never make the more expensive choice ever.

this is really a story about saturation than it is about hardware or shortages for AI usage or whatever.

Pc gaming is also massively cheaper than consoles these days so the lifetime cost is lower

How?

Consoles don’t pay for online subscriptions with f2p games anymore, which is the overwhelming lions share of online play today.

Consoles also get to flip games you’re done with. I’m positive about 3 of my friends spend much less than I do on gaming these days because of all the games they buy, play once, then flip again on FB market place

And then you get to the rising entry level cost of PC gaming. If you want something better than a Steam deck you’re looking at 1K USD to start with an Intel dGPU

But I guess if you’re fine with a Steam deck it’s a bit cheaper than consoles to start

The best claim that PC gaming has today is that it has a much larger library with indies that don’t release on console

Looking forward the physical media will disappear (with maybe the exception being Nintendo). Next gen playstation will probably be more expensive than the ps5 pro which is already 800 EUR in Europe so there will be little difference in pricing I think.

You are right about f2p though but you also don't need an insane PC to play most of the popular ones. Even a mini pc does that these days pretty decently and Integrated Graphics will keep on improving.

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