I read recently that PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse, and also Xbox has been gutted by layoffs, and there's a backlash against Nintendo for the switch 2 pricing.
Is the age of the console finally coming to an end?
I read recently that PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse, and also Xbox has been gutted by layoffs, and there's a backlash against Nintendo for the switch 2 pricing.
Is the age of the console finally coming to an end?
It's just loud Internet people. The Switch 2 is the second fastest selling game system of all time, and is keeping up with the trajectory of the first Switch, which shipped the most units of any gaming system. It'll probably get further boosts as Splatoon Raiders comes out (Splatoon is huge in Japan) and other anticipated titles.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2026/06/switch-2s-first-ye...
I can't say I know anyone IRL who has any interest in leaving PlayStation. Nobody buys movies there and people who care about physical games are a minority...there are already Slim models without optical drives and GameStops are mostly Funko Pops because most people buy games online. It's too soon to have actual concrete data besides useless internet sentiment reporting though. And a lot of that is just vague anger about prices for all computing hardware being up...and everything else in the US.
We're also at the ending stages of the PS5 lifecycle, but before a PS6 announcement. (With an unprecedented price increase this late in the cycle.) So there's no buzz about what's next, a large base of people who already have the existing thing, and an expectation that it will cost more.
Meanwhile, the anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 is on the way, and a PC release isn't on the table anytime soon.
>I can't say I know anyone IRL who has any interest in leaving PlayStation
As a counterpoint to that. Most of my 30+ year old dad gamer friends (all of us are the type to own a PC, switch and ps5 pretty much) all are considering whether this will be our last sony generation as most of us are either physical copy people or suspect the pricing will be bad without a second hand market to compete.
I don't think there is a mass exodus coming up, but a slow decline in console gaming for certain types of gamers, peaking in ps6 and digital only coming out is possible - whether that is more of a hit than the control of the market Sony will get from digital only is another question though.
For example I doubt it'll stop many playing GTA 6, but general purchases on Sony vs PC may be weighted to the latter a bit more now than previously as that physical collection part is dead now for Sony, and arguably worse than the PC market in terms of there being only one store front for digital.
When I was a PS3 guy I remember the prices in Playstation Store typically being $10 or more higher than what you could get physical copies for, and things never went on sale. Having one storefront for all game sales seems like an absolutely terrible deal for consumers.
Part of what I've always hated about consoles is the inevitable push toward an entirely new generation of hardware when the current hardware is more than capable.
The best games I've played in the last year would run on a PS4 and probably even a PS3 with a little optimization, yet we're already at the "end" of the PS5. It's so disingenuous. We should be squeezing everything we can out of the wonderful hardware we have today instead of chucking it for the new shiny thing, but instead we're force fed a new box, with a new exclusive title, with graphics you can barely distinguish from what we already have and more restrictions on what you can do.
Microsoft already switched its release support to the "series" model. There are still big games coming out on PS4. With the PS6 expected to be very expensive, we may very well see games simultaneously released on the 4, 5, and 6. We may be moving away from discrete console generations. Older consoles still have a massive library you can cycle through as well.
Yeah, the console companies want to be profitable, but consumers are pushing for new stuff, too. I don't care a whole lot about graphics improvements, but going from HDDs to SSDs was a huge improvement and worth the upgrade for me. And software engineers as a whole have long favored requiring new hardware over optimization for current hardware. I hope the great electronics crunch will curtail that.
John Carmack said it in about 2011, if you cannot make your game vision work on a 360 or PS3 you are doing something wrong.
I get that we have made huge strides in rendering tech, but the broad idea behind that I can still get behind.
Other than higher res assets, shaders and cleaner rendering; I havent seen anything that probably couldnt be done on those systems and still broadly have the same overall feel.
The PC is worse in this regard since everyone's hardware is different. There's rarely much optimization going into PC games compared to consoles.
I don't think you really understood my point then, maybe I didn't make it clearly.
What I meant was we abandon perfectly good console hardware, not because it's outdated or obsolete, not because games demand the cutting edge, but because profit margins demand the consumer spend 500+ on new hardware every 5 years or whatever. It's nothing to do with the software and everything to do with shareholders.
The PC is the exact opposite of this.
There are no PC games that force you to buy a whole new device. There are games that your 5 year old PC might struggle with, but they're still compatible.
The top games on steam are mostly things that would run on 15 year old gaming rigs.
Backwards compatibility! I can still play games from decades ago on my current PC. On a console you're in luck if the game you played on the last generation is rereleased on the next one
You're not locked into a store, a network, or even an operating system.
It's true the AAA devs don't optimize much but my point is that Microsoft don't decide that you have to buy a new PC every five years and there are a bunch of new games coming out for it that are literally unavailable on your old one.
(Well ok technically they do exactly this but it's called an Xbox and it's a failure right now)
I would argue that in some spaces it has gotten better. Ever since the Steamdeck became popular, that kind of set a lower bound on hardware. Games have ended up being optimised a little to run on that because it is another potential 5 million+ customers.
Splatoon is mainly a competitive multiplayer shooter but the new Raiders game is a more traditional adventure game, I expect the sales for it will be insignificant as far as actually pushing new consoles.
Consoles made sense as a product category where specialized graphics hardware was not generally available for consumer PCs.
We have this now, every PC has some kind of graphics hardware, and has for many years. Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands, but the technical justification for their product category hasn't existed for 15+ years now.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
That's unfortunate and infuriating I'm sure
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.
That doesn't really make sense. Consoles have always occupied a different space to PCs, not least because they plug into living room TVs. Very few people are going to trade that for a (considerably more expensive) PC.
Gaming PCs also require specialized knowledge, more maintenance, etc etc. Consoles are pick up and go. I very much doubt they're dead yet.
You'll likely see a lot more Steam Machine-like PCs because of this. SteamOS fixes most of the problems you mention. Price is the new normal and you should expect next gen consoles to come closer to it. It's not a bad deal anyway when you consider the bigger library, cheaper games, and no subscription required.
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
At that point I’d say we’re talking about a PC/console hybrid anyway so the distinction gets a little less useful.
But why? The Steam Deck and Machine are pick up and go like consoles by default. Only a small minority care that it's actually a PC you can use for things other than games.
The only thing that sets them apart is Steam's hardware isn't locked down.
I think they still make sense for the non technical user. Having an idiomatic control makes setup far easier than on a PC and the UI for a console is designed to be used with a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse. This makes dealing with a television easier. I don't see consoles disappearing ever for those reasons.
Also isn't a huge (maybe the largest?) audience for gaming these days children playing games like Roblox and Minecraft and Fortnite etc? For whom it's parents buying the equipment, so unless you have a tech-savvy parent they're likely to just buy a console.
The largest gaming market, by about an order of magnitude, is mobile games like Candy Crush. But we should differentiate the market further because most of us probably don't want to be making Candy Crush.
I think those games are mostly played on tablets these days.
But there might be a generational change coming. Basically the entire cohort of parents in my kids’ kindergarten is much more intentional about what kinds of games they’re playing and how they’re spending their “screen time.” I see a lot more people just giving their kids retro-consoles and emulation rather than setting them loose on the kiddie grooming and dopamine receptor-frying skinner-boxes.
I suppose it’s one of the benefits of having a generation of parents who grew up with formative memories of playing video games themselves combined with a growing awareness of UI dark patterns and their long term impacts on cognitive development and well-being.
-----
I don’t think the appeal is just to the less technically inclined masses. I’m a developer with a MacBook Pro and a Linux workstation. Proton has come a long way, but consoles just work for the most part; I never have to question whether the game will function and perform well on the console (setting aside the random buggy messes we see).
Then there’s the convenience. I don’t want to play games where I work. I want to play on my TV. I have no interest in moving my workstation into my living room. Streaming with Moonlight works well enough, but there’s still lag. Even if I wanted to move my PC to the living room, the setup isn’t as nice. The Steam Machine has HDMI CEC and can power on with a controller — all the major consoles have had that for years.
Even if I accepted all that, no one else in my household could play anything while I’m working on my computer.
Things are a little weird now. If I’m going to have to go all digital, Steam Family is by far the best option of those with DRM. But, due to the astronomical cost of components, consoles are still pretty attractive.
> I never have to question whether the game will function and perform well on the console
Thanks to recent moves by Sony, this is no longer the case!
Can you please elaborate? The recent moves I’ve seen have been announcing a shift to digital-only and another about clawing back movie purchases. Neither are appealing to me, but also aren’t related to game performance or compatibility.
The obvious next step will be to claw back game purchases. Come on now. This is extremely obvious.
> Come on now. This is extremely obvious.
I was talking about game compatibility and you brought up an utterly unrelated point and referenced non-specified “recent moves by Sony”. Forgive me for giving you the benefit of the doubt and inquiring if there were platform changes that would affect compatibility.
Clawing back games isn’t a particularly new risk. If you issue a chargeback, Sony bans your account, losing your library and any wallet funds you may have. And I already indicated that if I have to go all digital, then Steam is far more attractive. But there’s no guarantee any given game I buy on Steam is going to play on any given device. If I purchase a PS5 game I can be fairly certain it will run on a PS5 and what the performance is going to be like.
But, yeah, thanks for reminding me: physical games are still a major benefit for consoles. I buy Switch cartridges almost exclusively because Nintendo's DRM implementation is horrible for a family library. I lend games to friends and family members. I've even sold games and bought used ones. Steam Family is great, and the best of the current DRM options. But, while physical still exists, it's a good reason for favor consoles that has nothing to do with technical acumen.
How does that relate to "I never have to question whether the game will function and perform well on the console"?
The point being, if the game says its made for that generation of Playstation, it will run well on that generation of Playstation. There's no comparing specs to figure out if it'll run well on your specific hardware arrangement.
When I get a new Switch game, I know it will play perfectly fine on my Switch as how the developers intended it to be experienced. When I try and play a new game on my PC-gaming handheld, who knows how well it'll run until I try it or spend time reading reviews from others with similar hardware trying to play the same game.
> Consoles made sense as a product category where specialized graphics hardware was not generally available for consumer PCs.
This has almost never been true. GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64.
Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't. Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows, except for GPUs, which should probably be renamed to Model Training Units.
I would posit that what we're seeing is a reflection of a content problem, not hardware. Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base. People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.
> GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64.
Video cards existed, but 3D accelerators didn't really catch on until the 3dfx Voodoo, which came out about the same time as the N64. Even Quake II which came out a year later still offered software rendering.
> Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't.
I'm only a single point of data, but I was a console gamer that transitioned to PC gaming, but that transition happened during the N64/PSX era. It was near the end of the PS2 cycle that I was full PC.
> Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows
Because prices are at all-time highs. I have a monster PC that I probably spent around $6,000 building, but with prices skyrocketing, it'd run me $10,000 to build it today. A few months ago, it would have been $11,000.
> Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base.
In the AAA world, this is true. So many gamers that only play Call of Duty, Fortnite, Minecraft, or a sports game. For CoD and the sports games, they reliably buy the latest release every year despite the lack of anything really being different.
But the Indie world is huge and full of innovation. Balatro, Stardew Valley, Disco Elysium, Slay the Spire, Cuphead, I could go on.
> People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.
I don't think that's true at all. Maybe for high-level play, or if the streamer has highly entertaining commentary, but otherwise definitely not true.
But back then you had to have a PC and experience with it to install drivers, install games, mess with configs etc.
The draw of consoles was the ease of use. N64 problem solving was just off/on
What PC GPU was in mainstream consumer use before the N64?
The 3dfx Voodoo1 was very mainstream (and market-defining, even). It predates the N64.
This is incorrect.
N64 came out in the USA in September 1996.
3dfx Voodoo was released to consumers in October 1996.
Oh noes!
[dead]
Consoles don't have true 'generational leaps' any more either, the huge leaps forward in tech used to drive excitement/sales.
Now we get incremental improvements, cross-generation games, and backwards compatibility. And AAA game development isn't exactly doing well these days.
[dead]
>Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands
This is entirely wrong. Consoles have been riding consistency and ease of use. Sure, if you look just at the spec sheet consoles make no sense. But when you look at the whole experience combined with price, this is where consoles have always won. It's always been easier to hook my console up to the TV and start playing. The Steambox closes this gap with the overall experience, but still loses out on price.
If consoles continue to enshittify, this might change.
Another appeal of consoles is being able to sit on a couch and play. Most PC chairs are not as comfortable.
The thing with PCs is... they are open. Open means piracy and more importantly it means cheats.
A console is a far easier thing to defend against cheaters than a PC - absent true hardware vulnerabilities (which become more and more expensive, now that stuff like voltage glitching, clock cutting and whatnot is all known and accounted for), you are basically limited to botted input and AI-assistance based on what can be seen on the screen.
Specialized graphics hardware hasn’t been the selling point of having a console since at least 2002 with the first XBox.
The selling point of consoles is that they’re a software platform, with development incentives, standardized hardware, standardized UI conventions, and a centralized storefront to be able to conveniently and natively play stuff on your TV without fussing about.
Valve has barely started to muscle in on the platform benefits of gaming on a PlayStation or XBox, but the more they start to do so the more they end up making design trade-offs that start to look like another console.
I get where you are coming from but that is a little reductionist.
PlayStation I think is just going to have a slow bleed as the benefits to the platform seem to be... A new God of war in a few years?
Xbox is being scrapped for parts and is now a zombie console. I suspect they are going to try the 3DO model and try to out source the hardware to any company that wants to buy their SOC and OS licence.
Switch 2, actually doing damn well. Credit to Nintendo, they can be a little rough on pricing something's but they know how to stick to the core of the business. They have managed to keep the momentum between generations and that is difficult to do.
It is a shame, if it wasn't for the high hardware costs, the Steam cube could have made a real don't in Sony/MS but that is not the world we are in. But a PC in a box that isn't locked down can never achieve the same kind of margins that a console can.
To be fair had RAM prices not screwed up the steam machine consoles would have been dooms earlier. They are about to enter a slow decline before death
Consoles are suffering from the RAM price crisis just as much as PCs.
> PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse
PC is even more digital-only than Playstation. No one buys physical games on PC. The only difference is that Valve has been a very good steward over Steam. Theoretically, PC can get as enshittified as PS.
I guess there are other DRM-based purchasing platforms, and there's also DRM free ones like GOG so PC gamers have choice, but those feel niche mostly.
The thing about PC though is that there is no exclusivity. Steam built an extremely well respected brand but if that were to turn, the moat is shallow, install a competing client and buy games from there instead. The only internal competition for consoles is digital or physical retail (Or I guess buying game codes could be pseudo-digital).
The difference is that there is no one steward. You don't need steam, there are lots of other ways to get your games. GoG, Itch.io, Windows Store, or just the developers webpage.
On PlayStation, switch, or Xbox you have only one gatekeeper, and they do not respect you
Nintendo will always exist, which I'm mostly okay with
I wouldn't be surprised if consoles got replaced by video game streaming. Not the next generation and probably not even the generation after that, but that will be most likely it.
Video game streaming requires a high quality internet connection to a nearby data center. It can work in certain places but there's always going to be places where it doesn't work, and consoles don't have that problem.
Well Sony is actively working on that problem- the plebs in these internet-starved countries won’t be playing anyway, as with no optical drive in the future ps6 users are going to be tied to PSN which isn’t available on half the planet.
Jokes aside I do agree that streaming doesn’t work reliably for all game genres and client geographies, mostly due to latency
The question is, when does the market that does have that access start to completely crowd out the market that doesn't have that access?
In a lot of the metro area where I live cloud gaming over 5G wireless is actually very feasible. I do it from time to time. I've tried it in a few other cities as well, with generally positive results.
There are some games that just don't work well over cloud streaming though.
> PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse
Source? Is that reddit?
It simply doesn't make sense.
HNers continue to never know that they are in their own bubble. The same reason why Linux on the Desktop is an ongoing meme.
PC gaming isn't exactly in a healthy place either (at least when it comes to hardware pricing/availability). Post-Covid GPU prices were bad enough even before the AI bubble ruined everything.
Yeah. I gave up a couple of years ago after Epic broke my account and I lost my purchases irrecoverably. I have actually started playing board games with people now. This is so much better for me. And cheaper. And you can't taken them away.
Retro gaming is an increasingly popular option, too. These days I have more fun messing with Amigas, C64s, and cheap emulation handhelds than big modern games.
Retro hardware prices have been going up fairly significantly though, especially for Amiga stuff.
That backlash was nearly entirely on that other social media website that HN hates being compared to. And yet again, not representative of actual people. The xbox part may be true. I’d be extremely surprised if any PlayStation users in volume move to PC, that might be another loud opinion from that crowd due to the physical disc outrage. They would pay twice as much, have a less seamless experience, and still have worse graphics/performance.
I say this as a primarily pc gamer. It’s not for most people.
People age out of wanting to sit in their bedroom with a handheld and become adults who have living rooms. For home gaming there will always be demand to play games on a real sized screen.
Some adults then lose that living room to their offspring and have to go back to playing in the bedroom.
I speak from experience
I think the steam deck proved otherwise too..
I haven't had enough motivation to sit on my couch and game after a long day ..
But the same game, in bed, on my deck was so much nicer..
All I can now say is having a dedicated device, that's not your laptop/computer to play games is definitely a market - be it Steam machine (/custom builds), hand held gaming, or just regular consoles..
Yeah so get a PC and install some games
I would say the future is cloud gaming.
The cloud gaming echo chamber has conveniently arrived to save the day by mimicking the solution to fix the problem the same industry created. Problem, Reaction, Solution.
Sadly, the future might be phone gaming. The mobile gaming market is as big as the console and PC markets combined.
Phone gaming with a USC-C display or simply cast to the TV, and Bluetooth remotes. It might not be as bad as it sounds. My phone has 12GB RAM, 256GB NVME SSD, a decent GPU and a dedicated AI chipset as well.
Sure, it won’t beat a tricked out gaming PC with some $4000 GPU in it, but it will probably be competitive with console gaming. Granted, the PS5 is 5-6 years old by now, but my phone has more power in every measure.
My “dream” everyday device is still a phone that docks with a display, keyboard and mouse, and magically transforms into a desktop OS. On the to mobile apps would allow access to the same data, but touch optimized instead.
That's a Nintendo Switch. The general purpose docking OS was what Win8 was supposed to be but it was flubbed horribly.
These are basically different markets that only compete with each other because there are finite hours in the day to engage with media, not because they’re offering variations on the same thing.
It’s similar to comparing Netflix to the Criterion Streaming platform. Technically you’re doing the same thing, sitting on the couch watching a big screen, but the experience being pitched is a totally different one and the target customer doesn’t really overlap.
They compete for finite dollars, too.
There was a time when regular families had desktop computers at home. The marketing was intense, the machines were expensive, and the sales numbers were real. The PC was the gateway to all of the spoils of the internet and things were booming.
Now families tend to have a collection expensive personal pocket supercomputers, instead. It's hard to justify the cost of a properly-stodgy computer when everything is online and the machines that everyone already has in their pockets are Good Enough to get things done (including entertainment).
I suspect people who've gotten any depth into both desktop and mobile gaming don't think they're even remotely substitutes.
Gaming on a phone is definitely not for me. I've been using PCs for several decades; it's possible that mobile gaming will never be my jam.
But I can accept that I'm not everyone.
I suspect that we'll have whole generations of people who manage to grow up and grow old and without ever having, or even seeking, the opportunity to spend quality time gaming on PCs.
I think that's alright. Things are allowed to change.
I'm pretty sure it's just exposure and time. Mobile is a great format for keeping yourself entertained on a subway. Desktop or console is a great format for actual games. People have more phones now because you need phones and you don't need desktops - that has nothing to do with the enjoyment you have gaming on each.
You used to be able to dial TIM on a landline phone to check the time (for free?). Then you (if you were a computer nerd) checked it on your computer, then on your cellphone. Because that's what was available. There was no connection between knowing the time and landline phones - people just had landline phones so it was a convenient way to deliver the service. That's how it is with mobile games now.
Remember Java and Flash applets? You could make anything you wanted as a native application, but RuneScape took off because you didn't have to install it.
I've got college-age extended family members who don't have any memory of a desktop PC like thing being in their home. Parents might have brought home a work laptop from time to time, but outside of that by the time they were like five the family machine had already been scrapped.
The "big family computer" became an iPad.
The Steam Deck is basically a way to play PC games on mobile. You can imagine a world where people can just plug their smartphone into a KVM and just use it as a gaming PC. Modern phones have enough computing power to play most games being produced today since a lot of them are indie or B titles that aren’t actually that intensive. And even the intensive AAA ones, if developers were willing to optimize for it and go for lower res graphics they could do those too. And they can definitely play any game that’s more than 10 years old.
I was thinking more about competition with suppliers than consumers.
If you are a games studio and have resources for three projects this year, do your investors want to see a phone, PC, or console game?
Its ok for some thing but the lag is simply too much for popular genres of games.
If cloud means AWS then probably, but I think the serious cloud gaming people are generally trying to get you connected by fiber to a data center in the same city.
Sadly, I agree with you. I don't like it, but it seems pretty clear.
What is that, like stadia?
Nvidia GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud Gaming, PlayStation Plus Premium, Boosteroid are modern options among others.