I was seriously considering getting a PS5 until I saw the costs of the games + hardware.
PC player complaining about the cost of a PlayStation is new to me. Isn’t it normally the other way around? Isn’t a PS5 about as expensive as a decent GPU alone?
Yeah the PS5 is pretty reasonably priced for what you get. I think the issue is two fold:
- We already have really expensive machines that probably play games much better than the PS5 in frames and quality so buying another machine for a handful of games is just not in the cards.
- Many of us much prefer keyboard/mouse and using controllers is really hard when you’ve not done it in many years.
I think we just wish Playstation was more friendly to PC players and not have these long exclusives (they’ve gotten a lot better recently though). Microsoft for example is a lot friendlier to PC players than Sony. Pretty much all MS first party games are on PC pretty much day one and many of them are on GamePass day one as well.
All MS first party games are on PC because MS owns the PC ecosystem. Not because MS is friendlier💀
Yeah while MS does also “own” the PC ecosystem via Windows, I’d bet MS probably makes more money off of an individual Xbox player than a PC player which should make them a bit less friendly to PC.
For starters:
- Steam takes a 30% cut of all sales
- Sales and prices are usually much better on Steam than consoles so a lot of people wait for that number to drop over time
- For most multiplayer games you need to pay for Xbox Gold which is upwards of $50-$60 a year (or gamepass which is even more, though you get more out of it).
- You have to buy the console (this really depends on if MS actually makes money on console sales though) to play the game too.
Microsoft doesn’t have to put their games on PC if they don’t want to and in the past they kind of didn’t (no one liked GFWL). They could totally go the exclusive route again, but I think MS knows that Xbox die-hard will buy an Xbox console and obviously buy the games on the xbox store for whatever it cost. PC players will also buy it if it’s a good game and a good price and, this is crucial, is on Steam.
PC players are an untapped resource of potential customers; That’s why Sony finally decided to also cave and put their games on Steam. Money is money, but the difference is MS is betting big on GamePass and good-will right now since they are behind Sony in sales. I think because they’re behind Sony and trying to earn that good-will back, MS becomes more friendly to PC by putting their games on PC day one and on GamePass day one whereas Sony is still going with the 1-year (or more) PS5 exclusivity thing.
The interesting thing will be if MS ever gets back on top again, who knows what that looks like, but it’ll probably suck.
Your last line reminds me of AMD Vs Intel battle. AMD was cheaper and better value for a lot of years till they were lagging behind Intel on performance. But the moment they attained parity with Intel with their Zen CPUs, they also started pricing their CPUs higher than Intel and also completely abandoned the low end market. Intel’s cheapest 12th gen CPU is currently more than 20% cheaper than AMDs cheapest Ryzen 5000 series CPU here in India.
I agree with most of your points. Just wanted to point out that for MS games Linux compatibility is not planned. Not saying that other studios are supporting Linux, very few are but I wanted say that MS is Windows friendly not PC friendly.
If PC is your platform of choice and you’re looking for alternative then yea, ps5 or any other console won’t fulfill that need. If you’re looking for a complimentary console then ps5/switch are perfect depending on what you’re looking for in exclusives and functionality.
I just want Bloodborne, Ghost of Tsushima, and FFXVI on PC. The first is a wash, the second might be coming soon, and the third needs a year to be ported.
Pretty decent mix of situations, I guess.
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That’s all true and it’s never really bothered me because, possible hot take incoming, PS exclusives are pretty milquetoast. I will concede that Sony’s first party studios have honed their ability to make “open world third person action game with crafting and stealth elements” with impressive consistency, but that’s the most common genre of AAA game and IMO Sony isn’t even making the best ones, just accessible and consistently above average ones.
If you want that kind of game you have a zillion options on every platform.
As someone who played and enjoyed most of the PS exclusives, +1 for the take. What games do you think are “the best ones”?
Compared to my previous take this one is ice cold, but Elden Ring and Tears of the Kingdom.
but TotK is just GMod with Zelda models and poorly written furry fanfic. Some great elements there, but nothing special, and I’d say it fits in your ‘above average open world games’
Hot take
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So hot that it feels like I’m playing a totally different game than reviewers
Just quickly checking Amazon, a 3060 will run people a little less than $300. Now, if you want the newest hardware, yeah, it’s overpriced to hell and back and we’ve been complaining about it for about half a decade, but a 1060 6GB from 2016 still handles a vast number of games, it’s what my wife runs in her build to date. In addition, games tend to cost more digitally on console because there’s no competition of storefronts, whereas PC has key and bundle sites plus countless competing storefronts that want your money, or even Epic and GOG that regularly do “please use our service” game giveaways.
Either way though, nobody wants to pay an additional $400 just for the privilege of playing a handful of games. That cost is almost 6 full-priced games alone.
It’s more that a PC capable of playing games is something a lot of PC gamers are going to have regardless of whether the PS5 has exclusives they want to play or not. Its something they might go onto use for stuff like Blender or video editing or any other productivity based work. So the idea of dropping the cost of a GPU just to play exclusive games is not the most enticing, since it’s not hardware that is going to do anything but be able to play games.
So console are cheap to someone that will not have a device that is satisfactory for gaming, but when you already do and will the price is steep. Since at the point you may prefer to spend that money towards more PC upgrades, or buying other hardware that offers something that is lacking in your set up like nice speakers or a VR headset or headphones or just save the money.
So for a console to catch the eye of a PC gamer I think the switch has actually done the best job. It’s not just another display dependent hardware that PC owners already have and will have, but something portable. It offers a unique hardware experience that makes it more alluring to buy than just gatewalled games being what makes it stand out.
Games are free on PC, or at least very cheap if you insist on actually purchasing them
Pc is the plattform with the most exclusives if you consider many mmorpg’s and a lot indie games.
Also just due to sheer age, which makes it the platform with the most games period, dating back to 1995 in terms of games you can play on modern hardware without an emulator (I know it’s getting harder to run Windows 95/98 games now but it should still be possible with effort for a lot of games, unless Windows 11 got rid of something)
If you wait long enough, they won’t be exclusive anymore, or you’ll be able to emulate them.
Loads of other games to get hyped about in the meantime at least.
Sony will probably follow a 3-year lag release cycle, so yes, they won’t be exclusives eventually. However, emulation is highly unlikely given that almost 10-year old PS4 can still not be reliably emulated.
To each their own but I disliked both of those games. The only ps exclusive I’m interested in at all is Spider-Man and it will come to pc eventually. Probably just going to get a pc when the ps6 comes around.
Not really my type of games, so… They can keep 'em.
Although I am quite against all that exclusivity silliness.
They are more watching than playing. All coming to pc anyway now, so could grab them super cheap eventually anyway if you really wanted.
I do have a firm policy regarding games that are and were exclusives. I don’t buy them even if they eventually come to my neck of the woods.
If they didn’t want my money then, they aren’t getting a dime now. Pretty simple.
But as I said, neither game really had any interest to begin with. So there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have picked them up anyway.
Yeah, was more the point of why even buy consoles at this point if you really enjoy gaming. Consoles are great for quick plug and play sure, but with just minimal setup you can have a much better machine that pays for itself in the long run due to the cheaper games and lack of forced online subscriptions.
I agree, I don’t think any exclusives are good enough to justify buying a specific console.
I think you are vastly minimizing the “plug and play” aspect of consoles and that the common person has a machine that can run games with a “minimal setup”. While PC gaming has plenty of benefits: I think you’re downplaying how much time, money, and energy you have to waste to PC game.
Steps to play on a console: 1) Turn on the system, 2a) Maybe if you’re unlucky and a new patch comes out the same day you want to resume playing you have to patch the game, 2b) Play game (possibly even resume playing where you left off so you’re literally instantly back into the game). Time-to-play: Maybe 20 seconds? (granted a little longer on last-gen, but also this gen you can be back in a game literally within 5 seconds).
Steps to play on a pc: 1) Turn on pc, 2) Turn on (or launch) steam/egs/gog/etc, 3) hope game was updated, 4) hope drivers are updated, 5a) launch game, 5b) maybe sign into another 3rd party launcher, 6) load fully into the game, 7) play game. Time-to-play: 1-5 minutes depending on if the computer is fully off or just in sleep. Possibly much, much longer.
But WAIT, maybe the game isn’t running great so you have to alt+tab out and make sure you didn’t leave something running in the background, or your 100+ tabs in chrome/ff/etc are hogging all the ram and needs to be closed; maybe new drivers came out that you need to download/install to get the game running right, maybe the new drivers made the game worse and you have to revert them. Maybe the controller you wanted to play the game on disconnected or otherwise malfunctioned and now you have to restart the game the get it to pick up the controller. Maybe the DRM on the game has hitched up and you’re locked out of the game. Maybe you get a windows update that closes the game for you so it can helpfully install whatever new updates are available for you. etc etc.
I can’t say my experience playing PC games comes even close to that.
- My PC is already on - it’s a multipurpose machine, so I was already using it for something else.
- Steam opens on startup, no need to open it.
- Steam auto-updates the game in the background. No need to wait.
- I don’t think I’ve ever needed to update a driver to play a game. Also, regularly updating most drivers is actually not recommended, and you should only really be updating them if something’s broken. Graphics card drivers you might want to update now and then, but even then it’s rare that a graphics card driver makes a game suddenly playable. This seems comparable to firmware updates for consoles, although the last two consoles I used were a Switch and I think a PS3 so my memory’s a bit hazy there.
- Yes, third party launchers are obnoxious. It still only takes maybe 10 seconds at most to get most games opened though, from my experience. Not all games use third party launchers either, but sadly a lot of the bigger games do.
- Being able to continue easily where you left off does seem like a benefit consoles have. It’d be interesting to see that on PC, although I have yet to find a need for it since you can save practically anywhere in most games anyway, with the exception of cutscenes and tutorials I guess.
It takes me maybe 10-20 seconds to get most games that I play open on my machine, excluding the obnoxious splash screens games have when you open them which is the reason I think #6 might be a compelling argument. With the splash screens, it’s easily 2-3 minutes because more than half of that is sitting there staring at some stupid brand logos.
Of course, I already have a PC for other reasons, and the PC’s hardware is more than capable of playing games (moreso than most consumer gaming consoles at least, if not all), so I’ve never really felt like there was much reason to get a console, with the exception of a Switch since it’s a handheld. There’s already an enormous catalogue of games to play on PC, so it’s not like I’m missing out on much. Also, I might be a bit unique in that I’m using my PC all the time anyway. For someone who doesn’t use a PC very much, I could see a console being more appealing due to it being a dedicated gaming device.
Bingo, you’ve described my experience exactly. My computer is almost never off.
That’s wasteful.
PlayStation exclusives are basically movies with gameplay sprinkled in instead of the other way around. Makes it boring for me
I feel this. Spider-Man 2 is coming out in October for PS5 and it’ll probably be at least a year or two until we get it on PC.
I have ADHD and Spider-Man is one of my hyperfixations/special interests, so it is going to be painful for a bit there. lol
I bought a PS4 specifically for the first Spider-Man game. Played the crap out of it and the DLCs. I really haven’t touched it since. I honestly never thought they would bring their games to PC. Not going to get me this time!
Spiderman is what got me to purchase a PS4. I’ve rebought almost everything on PC though so I think I learned my lesson this time (still waiting on Bloodborne and Ghost of Tsushima 😞).
The PS4 is an amazing value for the number of fantastic exclusives that it has, even though that number is dropping. You can still play Uncharted 1-3, TLOU2, and Ghost of Tsushima just to name a few.
the whole horizon series is mid at best, I’m craving a ghost of Tsushima port and tlou 2
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