This is called demand destruction.
Wait, can they still be peasants if they’re becoming marginal?
Congratulations to PCs for winning the console wars :3
The win is in vain if you can’t buy PC hardware either.
Yes you can it’s just now comparable in cost to a flagship console
As a PC gamer concerned about game preservation: good. Consoles are just walled hardware fiefdoms.
I looked at buying a ps5 for the first time since it came out a couple weeks ago because I really wanted to play LOTR War in the North again.
Its twice as expensive as it was when it came out.
I just went home and grabbed my old ps2.
Its absolutely insane that this console is so expensive right now.
It is also the last PS I would get because I want physical discs.
The ps5 that comes with a disc drive is useless, as the “physical” copies of games are just empty cases with redemption codes inside.
Wait seriously? No discs at all? For any games?
The majority as far as I know.
I strongly oppose this view: with my disc drive PS5 I am able to play games I bought second hand and games I borrowed from my local library
Gee, I wonder why!
There’s a big Xbox shortage right now and it’s been like this for months. Where it’s difficult to find new Xboxes in stores outside of scalpers selling a handful of overpriced units. The listings I can find on my local Pricerunner site is almost 3 times what it cost back when it launched. It’s surprising it hasn’t dropped more than it has.
Do they know most of their customers have budget and they can’t just spend entirety of it for gaming stuff?
There are also their potential customers that will gated by those huge cost for entry-level gaming setup.
Also for those who don’t even have budget, why the hell they gonna participate on those out of reach game ecosystem?
Looking at my own gaming expenses, I’ve definitely stopped buying as much as I did say 10 years ago. To me it seems like the value of what you get for your money has fallen. I can afford it, but why should I? On one side, the corporations are actively trying to lock down everything and make it clear I’m just a guest in their theme park and on the other, they’re offering investment safe sequels and remakes of past successes. I’m also kinda tired of Sony’s “AAA cinematic gaming experiences”.
I may also be getting too old cause all excitement of GTA VI fell through the floor once I learned I can’t own a copy without the explicit approval of either console maker. So fuck that…
Honestly, the value for money in the gaming industry is the best its ever been outside of AAA and consoles.
Market spending correlates this, more money than ever is being spent but its focussed on indies, AAA sales have been dropping and big studios are losing money, deservedly.
Yup, I do this as well. Most of my gaming expenses go towards PC games now.
Honestly the cheapest place to be in gaming is PC even with current prices. I could go to my local thrift store and buy a cheap ass laptop for 50 bucks and play and buy a couple really solid games on steam or GOG for another 50. Would that laptop be great? Probably not but you could do it and there’s also the bonus that if you do upgrade to a proper computer all your games still work.
50 might be pushing it here, that is super old and low spec. Even an N150 laptop costs more. Can comfortably find 10th gen i5 desktops for under £200 though. Laptops seem to cost quite a bit more if I skim across CEX. I suspect being easier to store helps as they don’t want to move them so quickly while desktops are taking up more space and they want to shift it faster.
Downside with those desktops is that its often full of proprietary HP or dell bullshit. But then laptops are even worse so I guess that is your choice. Still, CEX have got a 5 year warranty on second hand things which is pretty good.
what would you say is an ideal budget for a mid range build these days? i know it’s prob the absolute worst time to build, but i really want a pc to break free from console life lol.
Do you want new or are you willing to cobble together used stuff? If new, $1k is probably about as low as you want to go, but you can definitely squeeze lower. If you’re interested in used stuff, it really depends on what kind performance you’re looking for. You can put together a computer that’s around ps5 performance for around $500 using an old office pc and like a Radeon 6700. I did something similar to kind of meet ps4 performance back in the day when I was a broke student.
i was thinking maybe getting a pre built i saw something around 1100 usd on micro center cause i dont really know jack about building my own pc. i am fortunate to have buddies game share their huge ps libraries and steam libraries so selection of games is def not an issue. i just dont really know much about compatibility and which is good with what. but for performance wise i would LIKE solid 1440p gaming across the board, 60fps or higher works for me. do you think i should suck it up and build now or pre build and upgrade later?
Finding old gems is difficult, but yep, even with $50 laptop you technically have a lifetime (and 10 times over) worth of old video games available. Graphics and game design was atrocious though.
PC also has uncountable choice of affordable games thanks to the indie scene booming. AAA is dying and Im here for it
Maybe a decent refurbished gaming laptop for slightly more than $9 hundred dollars or so but yeah, I rather would buy refurbished or used
It’s the K-shaped economy.
25% stopped buying. 50% are buying and dealing with things as best they can. And the last 25% are rolling in it and paying exorbitant prices to show off and balancing out the losses.
I literally own two ps4s and two copies of a game my SO and I wanted to play together, but neither of us have an active PS+. We would both have to resub just to play it together in the same room. It ended up being cheaper just to buy two copies again on Steam to play it together on PC/laptop. There’s no reason to own a console anymore. Their convenience is completely gone.
Similar-ish story here. I set up a Minecraft server for the household and set up Minecraft on the Switch so my kid can play it. Turns out you have to have a fucking Nintendo subscription to play online in Minecraft on the goddamn Switch on my own server that’s on my own local network in my own house.
Let’s not even mention that you can’t even add a custom server on the switch, you can only play preselected servers or Minecraft realms that you have to pay for. I had to do essentially DNS fuckery to make that work.
Fuck these companies.
I bought Minecraft for switch to play with my son. What a shit experience it was.
First off, it took like an hour of trial and error to even get the two of us playing in split screen. Then I realized that to render split screen the game had reduced the draw distance to like 1/4th of what it was on PC years ago. We dealt with it until we actually had a good area built up and the frame rate dropped to like 10fps. Then my wife accidentally let Minecraft update and it bricked split screen until I completely turned off the switches WiFi.
Recently purchased Java for PC, spent another hour getting couch co-op going on that and it’s a completely different experience.
That’s infuriating. What game? If you don’t mind me asking.
Monster Hunter; we both already have World on PS4. Rise and its DLC was/is on sale for $10 so we just got that instead.
Two full games and their DLC for the cost of one month of PS+.
A console seemed like a stupid idea since forever. I never bought a new one, that would be a waste of money. Meanwhile game after game on sale for the pc.
And yet: I have 2 ps2’s networked with harddrives, a modified ps3 and ps4, a couply of modified wii’s and ds machines.
If it was more than $100 I wasnt buying. Several I got for free. We had our NES and SNES back in the day for about $20 (mid 90’s).
Turns out, fucking over your customers is bad for buisness. Who could have guessed?
Not Sony or MS.
I won’t purchase another system because I don’t want to deal with 1) constant downloads- new games, game updates, system updates, data collection 2) logging in all the time 3) not owning a physical copy of a game.
They complicated the fuck out of doing basic things on their systems and I want no part of it. What have they done to keep the consumer interested in their systems?
Microtransactions, ads, no offline modes, you don’t own your own games any more… well they topped all of it with the new console. You buy games that are just empty boxes. Might be a slip of paper in there letting you rent it for $80 flat fee, but they’ll take that game back any time they damn well please.
NOW BEG FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT PEASANT.
I find it weird tho, Xbox literally started ‘cloud’ gaming a few years ago and now there’s games that can’t be played on consoles. You need a subscription to cloud game instead of just using your console to run the game
They’ve never taken a game back. Everyone is causing a fear that doesn’t exist. I only buy digital, never had a problem.
Haven’t had a problem yet*
What’s to stop people from remaking the game and discontinuing support for the original? That happens in Apple’s App Store.
Sony has done it this year https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2026/06/26/purchased-studio-canal-content-removed-playstation-library
I guess technically it’s movies and TV in this case, not games. But the precedent is there.
I’ve lost a purchased game twice. Now I have a copy on my PC so no need to buy it a third time.
Did we forget Nintendo shut down their entire store just to open a new one?
This is either a blatant lie or unfathomable ignorance.
Ubisoft has done just that and so have several others. It’s the entire reason for the stop killing games movement.
https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
Theres no way you are a “gamer” and have never heard of it.
Exclusives.
Legit the only reason.
I guess it’s also “easier” in a “It just works*” kind of way. Like you can have a pretty good expectation to how well a game will run on your system, and no fiddling with settings, or drivers, etc.
This is a big point for the steam deck and similar handhelds. There’s now a benchmark PC platform.
I’d rather wait for the ps5 emulator(s)
took a little longer than expected
OMG! It’s almost like constantly raising prices just isn’t working out!
It doesn’t matter how expensive RAM gets, what the market is doing, how much AI is driving up component prices, or whether the market is bullish or bearish. At some point, consumers reach a breaking point. When a product becomes too expensive, people stop buying it. They don’t particularly care why it’s expensive. They care whether it’s worth the asking price, and whether they can justify spending that much money on it.
And that’s the problem Sony and Microsoft seem to be running into. Between rising console prices, increasingly expensive games, subscription price hikes, and a growing number of anti-consumer practices, they’ve made gaming an increasingly expensive hobby while giving consumers fewer reasons to feel good about spending their money.
What’s worse is that these companies have spent years alienating a significant portion of their own fan bases. Aggressive monetization, digital ownership concerns, restrictive ecosystems, and the push toward subscriptions have steadily eroded consumer goodwill. You can only squeeze your customers so much before they start questioning whether they want to remain customers at all.
At the end of the day, consumers aren’t obligated to buy a PlayStation or an Xbox just because they bought one last generation. They can stick with their existing hardware, buy fewer games, switch platforms, or walk away from gaming altogether.
You can’t price your way to endless growth, especially when you’re simultaneously giving your customers more reasons not to buy your products. Eventually, the market pushes back. And frankly, it’s hardly surprising that we’re seeing that happen now.
Gaming is not an expensive hobby at all if you stick to good games. The best game in the world runs on a Pentium 2 with 64MB of RAM.
Is it… Is it Doom?
Doom needs a toaster. No I meant Deus Ex.
Does CDDA still run on 64MB?
If I have to drop nearly $1k on a gaming platform the money is so much better spent on a PC anyway.
PC ends up being so much cheaper in the long run… Far better game prices and no subscription cancer
And you can do a lot more with a PC, nevermind upgradability
Especially since on PC apps like retro arch give you better access to backlogs that these companies aren’t even offering! You want to play PS2 games 4k upscale 60 fps? Can’t do that on PS5. You can surely do it on PC though.
Yeah, being a PC is also a plus, since it isn’t relegated to only being a gaming machine like consoles. Can actually use it for productivity to do things like 3d modeling, video editing, coding, etc.
Gooning…
👍
