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Comment by dpoloncsak | Hacker News Reader

The main thing consoles have going for them, imo, is the standardization of hardware. It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world.

Some console gamers seem to think PC gaming requires hours of fiddling with settings and drivers. I think we've all had that experience on PC (cough Bethesda cough), but I doubt to the degree the console-side would have you believe. Most AAA games will self-optimize their settings to a playable state, and indie games don't tend to demand more than your standard gaming laptop can provide...but I'm sure we've all been burned some 10-odd years ago buying a Steam game that just wouldn't run on your iGPU...that experience sticks around in the brain a while

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That's one thing. The other is price. Consoles can be sold at a loss, particularly early in their 10-year cycle, when early on the loss is high, but close to the end of the cycle the loss is minimal, and so they appear much cheaper.

Oh, for sure! It's not getting any better with PC part prices lately either...

I've never considered that my old 360 was probably sold at a loss, knowing I'd buy LIVE and all the games they take a cut/license fee off of, but that makes complete sense to me

Given recent price rises for console hardware I think they're struggling with that too though. The model doesn't work as well if the components get more expensive over time and not less?

But PC parts are also getting more expensive, so the difference is still there.

Yeah I mean specifically the "sell at a loss, wait for costs to get lower over the generation" thing. if it's at a loss at the start of the generation and component costs only rise, it'll still sell for a loss at the end but also it'll be more expensive for customers. this puts the company in a hard position. a lot of gamers are also used to waiting until the end of the life of a console and getting games used, which might no longer be an option

This cycle is different. Prices have increased for both Sony and Microsoft’s consoles and no higher efficiency versions have been released (ala the PS3, X360).

Sony released the PS5 Slim earlier this cycle.

Isn’t PS5 Pro a higher efficiency version?

No, it's a more powerful version.

True. I think there are two new issues this cycle:

1. They are testing what the market will bear. Ubisoft's silly "quadruple-A game" rhetoric and executives saying "people will have to get used to $100 games" is them testing the water. This should pull back, as most people don't want games that cost that much, unless they're really amazing. They aren't (currently). I imagine this same thinking is going on in hardware-land.

2. Current RAM/GFx card prices are driving up prices all round. It should still be true that for the same spec, console components should get cheaper over time, but I can imagine it's less of an effect at the moment with all the AI data centres hoovering up manufacturing capacity.

It seems like their strategy will be to just raise hardware and media prices. Just keep doing the same at a higher cost. If it's a loss leader today, it will stay a loss leader tomorrow, just at higher cost. The question is whether the customers keep showing up at the higher prices.

Indeed. No one expects console manufacturers to take unlimited losses, but yes, the price at the end of it all is what will matter.

During college, before I switched to linux, the DRM packaged with Spore bricked my computer in the middle of a semester. That's what turned me off of PC gaming.

That's unfortunate and infuriating I'm sure

This is a nitpick, but "to brick" means that hardware becomes totally unusable, like an expensive brick. You turn it on, and it does nothing. I'm going to assume that this is not what you meant, and that the OS just got hosed, requiring a reinstallation.

This is also why Steam hardware matters.

If something runs on a Steam Deck, you can be sure it will run on your >= Steam Deck-equivalent device.

"Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world"

Let me tell you, as someone that repairs a TON of XBox 360s, this comment is very, VERY wrong. The GPU isn't even the same revision between the same batch runs. Did you get Xenos? Zeus? Jupiter? That determined one set of things needed for install/refurbish. Is that a Valhalla motherboard in your hands? That just limited you to a very narrow and specific set of hardware you could utilize.

Oh and performance between all of those models varied WILDLY. Silicon lottery is a fucking JOKE on the XBox 360.

I'm not trying to disagree with you, I'm not too knowledgeable in this field. Even assuming what you said is true, I don't think it aligns with the public image of consoles. The general non-technical gamer doesn't know the difference.

There's a ton of differences that matter to refurbishing, no doubt. Different eMMCs, different chips on the board, different cooling needs, different board layouts, different ports, and more.

What really mattered to end users though was "this disc says Xbox 360. Can I put it in the box at home that says Xbox 360 and have the game run properly?" This didn't really matter if it was a Jasper motherboard or not. The game ran practically the same from a user perspective regardless of which board revision you had. I can go pick up any generation of 360 that still powers on and any 360 game off the shelf and it'll work pretty much how the developer intended.

Meanwhile, if you don't really know anything about computer specs, who knows if a game will run on your computer? This was a $3,000 gaming PC, it should run anything! I bought it in 2002 though, is that a problem? The Radeon 9700 Pro from that red GPU company, probably better than that Radeon RX9070 right? Bigger number and all, and after all its Pro. And its got 128 MEGA bytes, probably better than that other card's 16 something or other.

> It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world.

It used to be a selling point of console indeed, however nowadays console are separated by Pro/Non-pro, different revisions and you aren't really guaranteed on how well your game is going to run unless you watch a Youtube let's play of the game you want.

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