187
Saying that hardware price increase is good cause it forces the devs to optimize is not as good as it seems. (lemmings.world)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
63 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hi, this is a quick post I make to talk about something I keep seeing online everywhere.

A lot of people say that the price increases will force developers to optimize and to work with what hardware they have to make good games and stop using AI gen and DLSS tech as an excuse for poor optimization.

The big problem is that nobody thinks about those people that don't have the hardware right now.
Those people that were waiting for a discount to buy a PS5 or a PC and now they're left stranded.

Current-gen consoles are getting really hard to find and a lot of people have been left out, stuck on old-gen and old-games.

playing old-games is not a bad thing but you may have missed the fact that even old consoles are getting reaaally pricey thanks to scalpers and speculators of the market.

This is madness people. Fight AI, don't embrace it!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 11 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Honestly I hope the ENTIRE console industry completely dies off. Hopefully Nintendo bites it first, but they're all fucking shitty as hell (for SO many reasons) and I hope they all go extinct by the time Trump does.

There, I said it, I'm not sorry, and I will die on this hill. I don't even think there's any reasonable counter point beyond it being a simple entry point with easy to plug in pre-configured boxes.

So fight me. Consoles suck, and they should go extinct.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 10 child comments
    •
  • [–] 22 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    Which would you rather have as the dominant platform. Consoles, or cloud gaming?

    Because if “market conditions” kill consoles, they will shrink PC gaming hardware sales too, and I don’t want a world where devs target cloud gaming first.

    I’m not trying to defend consoles and their predatory practices, but you can’t separate them out. If subsidized console hardware is too pricey to sell, then PC gaming components will absolutely atrophy too.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    First, I wasn't saying it would be market conditions doing it. Honestly I'd love to see all the companies eat the shit they've already stepped in.

    Preferably it would be people wising up and realizing that they are factually bad compared to PCs. Demand would (in this good timeline) drop to zero overnight and kill them off immediately.

    Not sure why you're so sure that cloud would be the next winner either. Until network speeds get above the speed of light, as long as real time games exist, cloud gaming will never be very popular. It'll be at best the "gaming you have at home" meme.

    The delay will always be too much for any serious game where real time input and reactions are core components.

    So I don't see cloud gaming ever getting huge.

    And even in your version, if PCs do take a hit (they already are with the RAMpocalypse), it's still a smaller hit than being defunct.

    But overall the main point is no technology should ever be locked down to one company. If your hardware only plays games allowed by one company, then you've got yourself a piece of shit. Period.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 child)

    Not sure why you’re so sure that cloud would be the next winner either.

    Because, in aggregate, gamers are stupid consumers.

    I hate to be so blunt, but they have, repeatedly and demonstrably, made uninformed purchases. They buy bad games on launch day, complain, then turn around and do it again. They buy hardware known to be a lemon. Heck, they’ll hardly even look at AMD or Intel GPUs now simply because there’s isn’t a minimum amount of effort made to shop around.

    They are going to just buy the cloud gaming subscriptions if that’s all that’s financially viable, and it’s what’s popular in their YouTube feeds or Discord channels or whatever.

    Keep in mind that I’m talking about the bulk market. Sure, plenty of us will turn our nose up. But the R&D required to develop consumer hardware requires volume, so updates will get slimmer with less money in the pool. It’s already happened with the AMD 9000 GPUs (as shrinking sales could not justify a big-die 7900 successor).

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Yeah. I'm fine with gaming being a much smaller industry if we can keep people with toddler level IQs out of it. Much rather have quality over quantity.

    I don't even care if graphics get better, tbh. Games should be good, not necessarily fancy. Fancy doesn't hurt, as long as making it fancy doesn't cut into the quality of the project.

    Keep the writing and gameplay top notch, develop new hardware to meet certain needs, and that's it.

    VR is an interesting frontier (haven't experienced it personally), but for most games pushing the graphics is only done to stand out on the shelf.

    But new paradigms aren't necessary most of the time.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I don‘t really see a future where game consoles die but gaming PCs don‘t because of hardware shortages. It‘s either cloud all the way or this becomes the era of mobile gaming even for core gamers.

    Personally I hope we can somewhat return to normal in a few years. That is after the bubble popped and even the last investor realized most data centers won‘t get built anymore.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    My stance has nothing to do with the current hardware market. I just wish gaming could evolve past the Weenie Hut Jr stage, at least for most people.

    But it seems that they never learn enough to move up past preschool level in that sphere.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Challenge accepted!

    The Steam deck is pretty cool because it is just a really nice handheld PC that lets me (or, more typically, my wife) play everything in my very extensive Steam library.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Maybe it was unclear, but by "console" I was implying a locked down device stuck with only using software licensed (or whatever the applicable legal term is) to a specific company's hardware.

    And given that a steam deck (love mine btw) isn't locked down in any way beyond having native access to a specific vendor's store, doesn't apply (neither does steam machine).

    Any locked down technology at all is kinda suspect, tbh. Capitalism is fucking horrendous.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •