You know, all those people making new n64, playstation, and gameboy titles might be onto something. Apart from steam, I don't think I've heard anything but bad news from modern consoles.
Meanwhile Steam just casually absorbing everything. It doesn't matter that it's porous.
And now suddenly - hardware costs you can't tip toe schedule around.
The console business is shitty.
The main problem is that, ex. the Steam Controller, nobody can make a decent game controller except for console vendors and when the console vendors go down somebody will have to step up.
I just can't believe the PS5 has sold as many units as it has with just 15 exclusive games, many of which are remakes, even remakes of remakes. That reputation that the PC platform is too sweaty has taken a long long time to die and it doesn't help that ACER and such are coming out with handhelds that are maximum sweat (boot into a Windows Desktop with 10x too small fonts) compared to the consumer electronics experience of the Steam Deck.
I used to only play on DualShock 4s and even skipped the DualSense because I just loved my DualShock that much.
I use an 8bitDo now and it is better in every way I care about. 8bitDo does not make consoles.
Eh, as someone who owns and plays on both pc and console, the simple truth of the matter is that playing on console is, for the most part, better 'bang for the buck'. You can reliably purchase a console and a budget linux laptop and both will reliably fill their respective niches for the next decade. PC gaming, in my experience, requires a much higher budget, and this was even before the modern pricing madness.
Consoles also had much wider support for couch coop than PC did, so it was a more social experience, and to be blunt, PC gaming has a pretty bad problem with cheating that I simply never experienced on console.
Like I said, I play and enjoy both. I can afford to do so now, but I do feel bad for teens today because even consoles are getting crazy expensive.
Reading this feels feels like you are the one that is still in 1990s.
Third party controllers have long surpassed the ones from console vendors. Standard console controllers still continue to use potentiometers for sticks. Even pro versions that cost over a hundred euro still use them.
The kind of ridiculous sweeping generalization that discredits the rest.
Gabe is in his mid 60s, I'm prepared that in the next decade or so there will be a change of guard at Valve and the slow train of enshittification will get moving.
P.S. There's been a lot of groupthink and bandwagoning for Valve, ignoring all the dirt under the rug. But at the end of the day, by comparison, they are the best behaving in the field.
Says who?
If you're an indy game developer, it turns out that just posting .exes on your website gets you a limited reach.
On a more fundamental level, it seems like people will pick convenience over security and freedom every time the choice pops up. In the land of media, this comes down to choosing to put all your eggs in one basket in exchange for having less control over the products you bought. We've seen this across Netflix, Steam, and Spotify as the largest modern examples.
I don't get to declare it one way just because I think it's true either.
If people truly want all their eggs in one basket, is it market capture if you are 100% upfront (which these companies aren't, but lets suppose), and people come into it anyway? I suppose my philosophy here comes down to "you can only protect people from themselves for so long before exploitation simply becomes business". Why try and spout freedom to those who actively seek someone or something to be controlled by? Why spout principles of ownership to those who will relinquish it every time for a "cheap" subscription?
Now the real answer is another scary word to this community: regulation. It's been beyond time we had proper digital ownership laws. But we're a very long road away from that in the US.
By random googling I found that they have 200 million active users, who bought 16 billion in gross merchandising value?
18 thousands of games launched there per yer?
Arguably if someone is in PC gaming, they at least know what Steam is?
Would you say the market demanded Ticketmaster based on the results?
However Ticketmaster is a monopoly. There are (still) alternatives to Steam.
But yes, it is getting into a monopoly, or oligopoly position.
IDK what this means for the steam platform but I'm guessing it will mean change of some sort.
He's been scuba diving and IIRC even discovered new species and doing marine biology. Very impressive as far as CEOs/presidents go.
Remember that this means he's not the "hands" but he's still very much the head. You'll only know what Valve really is without him when he's no longer around.
I've been thinking about giving it a go myself. It's such a fun and nostalgic console, and the limitations are fun constraints.
The code archeology is really cool too. Seeing Rare's Dinosaur Planet boot up and play after being a lost title. Decompiling all the original titles. Building sequels to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. It's such a fun scene.
Then there's Analogue 3D and ModRetro too, which make it fun to play as physical hardware.
Then I decided to throw on Metal Slug X, a classic of the Neo Geo. Then it struck me, "Could I attempt porting this to Jaguar?!".
It would be a great start project to familurise myself with this older stuff again. They both have a 12MHz 68k, it is just that the graphics and audio cores are different. Would probably have to base it off the CD version so that the memory addressing is already handled (it loaded all assets into 1MB RAM - twice the jaguars storage).
It doesn't sound impossible. But the Jags RISC chips were notorious for being a little slow due to limited cache space, so it might not be so straight forward.
Regardless, the scene is jumping.
The N64 is never going to get any faster, and emulators can run on just about any potato these days. People have realistic expectations of what the platform can do, so there's no need to spend insane effort making the graphics look better. It's always going to look kinda crappy, and that is Just Fine.
This lets game developers focus on the actual gameplay itself. No "Generic Shooter vol. 26 - now with slightly prettier water!", but innovative stuff focusing on the narrative and on novel gameplay elements.