Congratulations to PCs for winning the console wars :3
The win is in vain if you can’t buy PC hardware either.
There are still many thousands of games playable on older hardware.
Console players living in a world of only triple A games. Have yet to discover that 20$ games from indie developers are thousand times better
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 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.
To be fair, most of your complaint is about the hardware of a low-power device not being able to handle rendering double the game and then compensating accordingly.
Which is an expected outcome.
The game is advertised and sold as having split screen co-op. Having to mess with console settings to get it to work and the resulting experience being shit isn’t excusable. Of course I didn’t expect a full PC equivalent but I expected it to have a minimum of polish and optimization.
If they couldn’t make the game do split screen decently, they shouldn’t put that as a feature. If the game can’t be run decently in single player, they shouldn’t have sold it at all.
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+.
This is called demand destruction.
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.
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.
Did we forget Nintendo shut down their entire store just to open a new one?
What’s to stop people from remaking the game and discontinuing support for the original? That happens in Apple’s App Store.
Haven’t had a problem yet*
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.
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)
FAFO
“Computers that are just for games, that you can’t do anything else on… And we say what games, and also for lots of them you have to keep paying us to play them… And you can’t have any physical ownership of them anymore”.
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.
If I have to drop nearly $1k on a gaming platform the money is so much better spent on a PC anyway.
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…
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
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?
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.
PC also has uncountable choice of affordable games thanks to the indie scene booming. AAA is dying and Im here for it
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.
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?
Fair enough, you really aren’t spending much more, if any at all, on microcenter prebuilts if you’re lucky enough to have one close. There are tons of resources for learning, but if your time is worth more than the hundred bucks or so and you don’t care about customizing it to your needs, wants, or preferences, that’s totally understandable.
But yeah, tough time to get/build a gaming pc. Imo there are a few different strategies to deal with the crazy prices.
- suck it up pay whatever it is to get what you want.
- get a good base platform and skimp on some components that can be easily upgraded later.
- get an old relatively dirt cheap system as a stopgap. Office pc + gpu? Gaming laptop with broken screen? But probably won’t have much resale value when/if prices do come down
Personally if I didn’t already have a pc and old parts laying around I’d go with #2. Get a case I like, decent mobo, cpu, psu. And I’d get a used couple generation old gpu, and absolute minimum viable amount of ram and storage until prices come down. Or I get a raise lol
Currently my desktop is a ryzen 7 1700 and Radeon 5700. It’s getting pretty old now, and if prices weren’t insane I’d have upgraded by now. But tbh, it’s fine. I don’t really care about playing the latest AAA games, and all the games I am interested in playing run absolutely fine at 1440p. So for the time being, it’s fine. I could upgrade the cpu pretty massively for not much money, but eh I’m really not bothered enough to do that until I get a new gpu. But a modest gpu upgrade is a ton of money, so not quite worth it to me yet.
Edit: oh and yeah if you do just grab a prebuilt, you will probably want at least a 9060xt or 5060ti for the gpu if you want to play like brand new AAA games at 1440p and high-ish settings
i appreciate the write up buddy, i’ve been very inclined but yeah this may be the worst time ever to get into pc building… i’ll keep my eyes peeled for a micro center deal if there’s a good one, saw a 9060xt pre built in the realm of 1300 usd. not sure if that’s really good bang for my buck, im also thinking of getting a bundle and perhaps a single fan nvidia gpu, and other parts. i’ve got an SSD lying in my ps5 i can always take out to save some easy cash on the full cost of the build.
Hell if I know, I don’t look at PC prices when they’re this high.
hahaha that’s fair, looking at it has made me question my choices
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.
I was actually thinking quite out of date actually. Also the thrift store near me tends to have piss cheap laptops cause they are locked or have wipped drives. But even if it’s say 16 years old you could still play Kotor, Republic Cammandos, every Fallout up until 4, Dragon Age Origins, and plenty more modern no but good absolutely.
I would probably see if factorio can run on it. Rimworld too.
Modded? No. Unmodded? Maybe. I used to run an ultra modded NV save on a shitty laptop from 2010.
Well it depends on the mods, for both games lightly modded should be fine. Throwing in 100s might be a problem though.
Then again, 1.7 for Rimworld is apparently improving performance by quite a bit. So 2-4 times as many mods?
I thought a hundred plus mods was lightly modded Rimworld? The game is supposed to take over twenty minutes to launch right?
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.
Turns out, fucking over your customers is bad for buisness. Who could have guessed?
Not Sony or MS.
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?
Nah, that guy is a bit off. I’ve bought several brand new, 2026 titles this year and they all have discs in the box.
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
Yeah, those games are by far the minority.
I have literally bought the last few brand new, 2026 PS5 games on disc. I’m getting Control Resonant this week on disc.
If you mean GTAVI, then yeah that’s bonkers. But you can get most games with a physical disc currently.
Sounds like it’s gotten better? I remember it being a shit show before I sold my ps5.
LOL Consoles are too expensive, and this is the find out stage of their fuck around journey. Its not all that surprising, especially with the ending of physical games on Sony’s part and Microsoft being generally shitty… They might not recover for a while. Bully for them!
This is true. Who wants to spend all that money at once. My PC may be more expensive than I console but I spent no more than $250 at a time as I upgraded it. People don’t need $1000 graphics cards to play modern games.
I had a ps3 and a ps4 and was fully up for getting a ps5. Then it came out right around COVID time and I couldn’t get one anywhere because of scalpers. So I thought, “No worries, I’ll just wait a year or two and pick one up for cheap.” Then it just never got cheaper. Now it’s like a 5-6 year old machine that costs over $900 CAD so I just never bothered.
And in the midst of these increasing hardware costs Sony thinks people would not mind paying the premium for their digital only games, completely killing the second hand and retail markets, bless their heart.
I’m amazed they’ve not crashed more. The PS5 and Xbox whatever the fuck they called it are both 6 years old, if you haven’t already decided to buy one why would you get one now after the price hike?
Some people really want to play gta 6 before it comes to pc I guess
That’s how I ended up buying a PS3 back when GTA V was released. Well, that and Gran Turismo and wanting a Blu-ray player. But it was still not really worth it.
Same, but mostly because a cute girl told me we could play GTA together if I got it on PS3
Well did you?
Yeah it was a good time
Gran Turismo 6 was a fun game though
I was actually a little disappointed. Friends of mine were huge GT fans and played the shit out of it, but when I played it I found the AI opponents horribly stupid and the missing damage model was mildly weird, to say the least. I expected more than what I got. It wasn’t a bad game, but just not what I expected.
Every GT game has shitty AI. I mostly play them to just drive a whole lot of cars fast on a track for fun.
I’ll eat my shoe if a PC under $1000 will be able to play GTA VI even halfway decently when it comes to the platform. My handheld PC is nominally way more powerful than my Series S, but I’m lucky to get half the performance out of it because the Series S gets a bespoke treatment from devs to make it work well.
Same, was expecting sales to plummet. Guessing gta6 presales tempered the fall
It’s the same theme everywhere. They build for some kind of non existent luxury market while buyers stretch themselves thin. Now no one has any money left and credit cards are maxed.
We’re not buying what’s being sold. So now what?
Now they blame millennials and gen z kids for ruining gaming
And then they switch to everything being a live service so instead of buying games you just have access to the “whole library” of games (for whatever payment tier you’re in) which they will change and remove games without warning and deleting all of your progress unless you pay them at least $20 a month for cloud saves
Oh and the only games in the games library are ai slop vibe coded games that are unplayable carbon copies of each other
Oh and the only games in the games library are ai slop vibe coded games that are unplayable carbon copies of each other
Man, Ubisoft sure did trailblaze for the industry. Including that part where it has already started dying before its competitors.
If me putting another 1000 hours into factorio is millennials killing gaming, I guess I will go and kill gaming.
Nuclear MLRS robot spiders. Railway artillery cannons. Flamethrower turrets. Industrialised warfare. Why would I leave? I just started a marathon deathworld run.
Steve Bannon ruined gaming.
No, I will not be taking further questions.
Not just here but everywhere. Everyone (except those with too much) is holding tight to their wallet until trump dies and some stability comes back to the world.
These companies have said plainly that they don’t see prices returning to pre-pandemic levels even if the current economic crisis is resolved. Corpos are too greedy, and the people in power are even greedier.
Just another flavor of rent never goes down.
And yet somehow there are millions of people preordering GTA 6 for 100 bucks lol
I don’t really see what difference trump dying would make to me tbh. Got enough money, don’t really want to buy many things even though I can afford them.
I could afford a new gaming PC every year. But my RTX2070 is fine. I won’t spend money without a good reason to and I don’t really see many good reasons right now. I have pretty much anything I could reasonably.
Cutting my hours worked, that could be something to go for.
its not even a choice for me. i have been unemployed for over 2 years now. since just before he got elected.
Lol as if one person can be the cause of all this
People have unfairly held US presidents responsible for the state of the economy in the past… But in this case Trump’s illegal tariffs and pointless war with Iran absolutely are the cause of current high prices, or at least huge contributing factors. Republicans are a disaster for the economy…
He’s both effect and cause, he wouldn’t be there if the USA didn’t have fundamental social problems, and if he didn’t exist, someone else could have been in his place causing different problems
The evolved system is the cause. One person with several minions could easily topple this.
