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(Serious) Where does our hobby go from here?

I'm a PC gamer who stays a bit behind the tech curve. I have a mid tier PC which is several years old, and most of my games are bought on deep discount during Steam sales. I don't ever buy the top end hardware and I very rarely buy new games the year they come out, so gaming is more affordable than ever for me. 😎
 
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Just to exemplify what i mean, look at these laptops:

acer Nitro V 15.6" FHD IPS 165Hz Gaming Laptop, Intel Core i5-13420H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 with 8GB GDDR7 VRAM, Win11H, w/Mouse pad (16GB RAM, 512GB PCIe SSD)

$809.99

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Lenovo LOQ Gaming AI Laptop | 15.6" FHD 144Hz (100% sRGB G-SYNC) | AMD 6-core Ryzen 5 220 | 16GB DDR5 512GB SSD | GeForce RTX 5050 440 AI Tops | Backlit 5MP Privacy Camera Win11Pro w/DLCA Accessory

$999.00

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HP Victus 15.6" Full HD 144Hz Gaming Laptop, Intel Core i5-12450H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050,16GB RAM, 512GB PCIe SSD, Wi-Fi 6, Backlit Keyboard,Windows 11 Pro, Performance Blue

$738.99

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Yeah, you can bitch and moan about 6gb or 8gb vram, or how higher end stuff is super expensive. It sucks, undoubtly.

But the reality is these not only can game, they can game on very good looking settings. Personal computing isn't dying, and you can still play all the games you want without having to subscribe to Jesen's cloud service
 
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I'm hoping the industry cools a bit on bleeding edge graphics because the diminishing returns are not worth the price of entry at this point. All of this is stacking on the industry at the same time:

- Hardware (Even consoles) is getting more expensive.
- Dev times are at crazy 5-8 year windows.
- Next gen games will look marginally better at best.
- Younger audiences are not interested in paying $70-90 per title to own AAA games to begin with.
- Interest rates are up meaning games need higher returns to justify capital investments.
- Longer game dev cycles means less industry experience shipping titles and fewer entry points for new talent. (This is why you don't get a bunch of Hideo Kojimas and Shigeru Miyamotos these days. Those guys got to cut their teeth on a bunch of 1 year dev cycles. All of this older talent will eventually retire.)

Studios are either going to shutdown or be forced to adopt AA / Indie style development. Technology improvements will need to be focused first and foremost on bringing the cost / time of development down rather than rendering each pine needle on a tree... We need to get back to 2-4 year dev cycles and there's going to be a lot of blood in the industry until they learn that.

memoryman3 said:
Buy less cutting edge hardware.

You don't need a 5080. 5060 Ti will do. Or if you want the best of the best, pay up. Developers are not going to ignore the mass market.

On the low end you have the Switch 2 and Xbox Series S which are both $500 or below.
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Yeah but if the people who could afford 5080s now have to buy 5060 Tis it means the 5060 Ti itself has also become unaffordable for some percentage of the budget market and most people have hardware in that class / budget range.

Fewer people with capable hardware = fewer sales = fewer AAA games.
 
I think you shouldn't come and jump to conclusions until we are in a two to four year period of this at a sustained level. All that will do is create a new level but you can be sure that when the AI stuff slows down then the demand will go back to a regular level.

That is unless the next new thing or something that consumes the same components keeps happening and keeps the prices where they are.

If you're trying to be reasonable and not hyperbolic, realize that a mid-range PC today that cause probably the same price as a console right now, it can run practically every game ever dating back to the '80s or '70s. What kind of shortage of games do you have that you need the highest stuff right now and can't rely on so many great games that have released in the past?

This would be a question to ask yourself and answer even if we didn't have this current hardware climate. So don't panic and don't overthink it too fast. It's easier to make these weekly or bi-monthly or once a year threads when you are in the thick of it.

Did people already forget what we went through with covid thinking we would never get out of it and be in crowded places again?
 
900k salary? 😵‍💫 What are you doing with all that money? Do some stock investments or something. I earn a third of that.
 
Gamezone said:
Apple is selling $2000 phones like warm bread, yet people are asking themself how to afford gaming.
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I'd venture a guess that most of those are sold on a monthly payment as part of most peoples cell service, which is very different from a direct to consumer market like gaming.
 
Cloud gaming.

bH0XGuzw5kfdLVUo.gif
 
Phone plugged into tv dock. Boom. S2-like UI. Controller.

Gotta imagine that's a future. Maybe only reason it doesn't exist now is because it's small potatoes for Apple?

Or people want to use their phone when gaming. Which is probably why this hasn't happened?
 
all the fretting seems overblown. Games will be Crossgen for a while after the next gen consoles land. You're not cut off gaming.

Even at $800 - $1000, you're realistically set with a console purchase for the next 7 years. It's absolutely a mental hurdle that many need to push through. Easier pill to swallow if you sell your existing console to part pay for the upgrade.
 
ChorizoPicozo said:
Contraction and correction.

In the case of smartphones. The biggest market is low-mid range. (around 70% of the market) and around 100-600 dollars?


Apple only represents like 20% of the smartphone market and they sell them at a profit. A lot of peope "buy" phones with some kind of plan too
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I'm not convinced The people buying $300 smartphones were the same market as those who were paying $70 per game
 
Console games became what were PC games back in the day. Gaming got Hollywood envy and insecurity so hard since the mid to late 90's. Mainstream games are now developed on marketing bullet points, how big the world was, how many hours you could play the game for.

The solution is to scale everything back on consoles and let PC's take the cutting edge graphics for those that want it. Most of the market across all forms of media will accept "good enough for the price".

I'll agree with the comments that phones are only so expensive because people will pay for a pocket status symbol on credit and contract.
 
dispensergoinup said:
it's gunna be grounders vs clouders isn't it?
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I honestly still can't see cloud gaming taking off. Cloud computing is a thing for really strenuous tasks but even business don't fully rely on it.

Compared to that, gaming is relatively light weight, and most popular games aren't even that demanding.
 
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Puscifer said:
Consoles are approaching cell phone prices.

Even with my salary, let's say my 5080 build I got for around 2K will cost me 3000. I built it when I made around 90K even with my new job and salary of 150K something about 3K for a high end PC just seems gross.

For consoles? I dunno man. Rather go backwards than forwards if 7-800 might be the norm - no way are they subsidizing hundreds per unit anymore and I just don't feel like anything more than 500 for a console is worth it and I was even considering a Pro but 900 dollars is a hell no.

Maybe I'm just accepting I'm watching the death of personal and open (key word, OPEN) computing, affordable gaming and high end home compute.
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Nothing's dying. You're just overreacting.

Prices spiking due to supply-chain issues is not unprecedented. Granted the current situation is worse than most because these chips are ubiquitous, but in the end there'll be a correction.

Right now there's no impetus for anyone to dial back the doomsaying is all.
 
Smartphones actually give you a pretty big variety of models depending what you need and how much money you're willing to spend. You can go cheap or super expensive. With consoles you get either 1 or 2 models per ecosystem and you have to accept the prices or go somewhere else.

People who are invested heavily in a particular ecosystem will likely continue to support it. We'll probably see less cases of owning more than one console or a good PC and a console. And it's definitely not going to help the gaming market to grow and attract brand new customers. It's not going to be that easy with 600-700$ as the bare minimum needed to join the party.
 
Zacfoldor said:
If the main goal is to play games and you can't afford the PC but you can afford the console, why set an arbitrary number on the amount of the console.

So if you like gaming, and are willing to pay 2k for a gaming pc to keep gaming, but not willing to pay > 500 for a console to keep gaming, why?

What about the PC offers you so much more percieved value in your opinion that you would be willing to drop the hobby over it, keeping in mind these purchases are only made every several years....

I think PC gamers just don't want to swap back to consoles and would rather quit gaming and it less about the advantages of PC and more about identity. You love your PC identity and don't want to become a console pleb, correct?
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Why do console gamers with very strong preferences not understand that people have their own preferences? I can (and do) play old ass PC games like HoMM2 as well as modern PC only games. Also I'm never paying for online play and cloud saves.
 
Guilty_AI said:
I honestly still can't see cloud gaming taking off.
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I don't either, especially since I can't see how it's feasible to scale it effectively. I mean, all this AI datacenter bullshit is a good indicator of the amount of money you'd have to throw around to have enough hardware capable of servicing hundreds of millions of people if the aim is to have everyone streaming instead of running games locally.
 
Honestly, it's too hard to tell. Never have we seen stuff like this before. I mean, ever since I was a child, the longer a console was out the cheaper it'd get. It wasn't until this gen where it went up instead of down. It's trippy to think about.

All I know is that I'm holding onto everything I currently have for as long as I can until this hopefully blows over. Or the issue evolves in a way that benefits us. Though I have no idea how or when that would be.

Probably a great time to chip away at that backlog honestly.
 
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Let's call this "The Purge" where only real fans of gaming that are willing to spend money on their hobby can own stuff. It's pretty much like golf or bowling, if you are an amateur that like to play a course per month you don't even own a set of clubs or a bowling ball, you just go rent it and play it. Gaming is heading that way. However don't be afraid, mobile gaming will always be for you there.
 
Puscifer said:
Consoles are approaching cell phone prices.

Even with my salary, let's say my 5080 build I got for around 2K will cost me 3000. I built it when I made around 90K even with my new job and salary of 150K something about 3K for a high end PC just seems gross.

For consoles? I dunno man. Rather go backwards than forwards if 7-800 might be the norm - no way are they subsidizing hundreds per unit anymore and I just don't feel like anything more than 500 for a console is worth it and I was even considering a Pro but 900 dollars is a hell no.

Maybe I'm just accepting I'm watching the death of personal and open (key word, OPEN) computing, affordable gaming and high end home compute.
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I mean, it's a balance, right? I just picked up For The King yesterday for $1.23 when the regular price is $19.99.

Consoles you typically pay less up front, but the games aren't often on extremely good sales.
On PC, you can easily pay much more up front, but then you can almost always get brand new or still recently new games at pretty good discounts.

RE9 launched Feb 27th at $69.99, and less than two weeks later was on sale for $43.99. That's on top of the mountain of free (to keep) games that are given away all the time on PC.
 
Edit:NVM the thread is about hardware, not software...

We all carry powerful phones in our pockets. Gaben could decide at anytime to release a standalone steam APK for android.
If PC hardware goes to shit we'll still be fine, we just won't expect AAAA graphics.
 
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I am in no way defending these prices but I really think we spend way more money way dumber stuff but when it comes to gaming we rather lose the hobby than just accept that it is not as cheap as it used to be anymore
 
hell would be:

cross-cross-cross-gen
re-re-remakes
digital only
middle of the road games designed for every market simultaneously to recoup massive dev costs
everything sold out in 14 seconds to bots/scalpers
something even worse at motion clarity than sample-and-hold
 
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