Man, everyones jumping in onto the handheld gaming PC segment. Pretty cool. Hopefully it will light a fire under Nintendo’s butt to do better with its hardware.
Yet the sales figures show Nintendo have amazing sales.
PS2 - 159 million.
Nintendo DS - 154.02 million.
Nintendo switch - 125.62 million
Gameboy/ Gameboy colour - 118.69 million
PS4 - 117.2 million.
3 out of the 5 top sales belong to Nintendo. So regardless of hardware, Nintendo is a loved gaming system.
Whereas Xbox is number 9 on that list with the 360 at 85 million. So the console war seems to be between Nintendo and Sony at this point.
I think Nintendo knows it’s market pretty well. I have both a switch and a steam deck andO have a lot of the same games on each. The deck is obviously the higher power unit. I got it just a short time ago to try to play through my backlog, although to be honest I’ve logged more hours on new purchases like Stray and Dredge. It’s a good system.
The switch outshines it in a couple of places, though. First, they got the form factor - specifically the size and weight - better than steam did. It’s smaller and lighter, and I think the battery lasts longer. More importantly, the games that run on the switch were made for it. There’s no squinting at tiny fonts or trying to figure whether and how to use the trackpad to control the mouse bits. If it’s on the switch, I can be pretty sure it is playable on the switch. I’m still getting used to the issues with scaling down the desktop experience to a deck, but already I’m thinking I won’t be playing a lot of cyberpunk without booking up a mouse, keyboard, and monitor.
In short, the deck and windows handhelds need to perform at the level of a (low end) desktop (because they’re playing desktop games) as well as worry about scaling and transforming the UI. The switch doesn’t have that problem, and the trade off is a more limited (but still extensive) library.
The switch is my first Nintendo device since the NES, and the first party content isn’t what made me finally try it. I like playing games like Diablo on it. I think Nintendo, by owning the entire stack, can serve up a better and more curated experience. If I didn’t have a library of a couple hundred steam games that I’ve never played, I’d probably not have considered getting the deck. I am enjoying it, and some games are phenomenal, but from a performance-that-actually-impacts-the-user perspective, Nintendo might just come out on top.
Asus and Lenovo clearly put no thought into how controlling windows desktop with a controller feels worse than pancaking your own testicles. The steam deck trackpads are far from an amazing experience for desktop input but it is at least usable and not the worst thing ever.
If this form factor is here to stay, and hopefully it is, Microsoft will probably adapt Windows to it (also hopefully). SteamOS is very good though, can manufacturers not just use that?
As long as you don’t use it for Office, Microsoft isn’t going to spend money on it. Their cash cow is M365 and Azure, they don’t even care when every single gamer pirates their OS.
Eh, this and the Ally are cash grabs, I doubt they intend to spend the money needed to support custom software long-term. They’ll just hope that Windows updates don’t mess it up and if they do, they’ll blame Microsoft.
They don’t; there was an internal tech demo that never went anywhere but was spread around online a few months ago with a bunch of misinformation that Microsoft was preparing to fight the Steam Deck head on.
I second this. I’m planning to start switching my devices from Windows to Linux in a couple of weeks due to good experience I’ve had with the Steam Deck
These devices are honestly quite fast, the overhead is similar to the overhead on an entry level gaming PC (to be fair, that is still a substantial overhead, but people accept it)
It’s got some ground to make up if it’s going to try to take on the ROG Ally. Still, competition is exactly what this space needs ATM - can’t wait to see where the market is in a few years!
As a current Switch owner deciding what to pick up next time I spring for a new system, the lack of anything portable from Microsoft and Sony is kinda wild to me.
I agree with you about the brand loyalty. But the fact remains, they put out a console in 2020 that in some ways was actually weaker in power than the console they put out in 2017. Great for customers since it’s so cheap, but not great for developers when other modern systems are so much more powerful. Larian can’t even put out Baldur’s Gate 3 on XSS because it can’t handle split screen for that game, which means no XSX version either.
As for games… Everyone’s different but as a big fan of the Xbox during the 360 era, the Xbox Series have no (exclusive) games that have appealed to me personally. And the ones that I am excited about (Fable, State of Decay 3, Everwild) have no release dates and are almost certainly years away.
Yeah. I stopped buying XBox after they let my account get hacked and restored none of my purchased content.
I occasionally consider giving Xbox another try, but then the whole tiers of systems and naming nonsense takes long enough to parse that I remember why I stopped buying Xboxes.
Call me dumb if you want, but I still see a big issue in MSFT's naming convention for XBox. They need to stop trying to be clever and just do something sequential.
I don’t think it’s hardware, more brand and exclusives. The casual player bought a PlayStation 4, so they buy a PlayStation 5. The gaming enthusiast knows that there’s just more varied and interesting games coming out on Sony’s platform. In terms of performance, the Xbox also frequently under performs against the PS5 regularly (not by significant margins usually, but still) when on paper it should be the more powerful console.
Myself, I have an Xbox Series S along with a crappy old 1080p plasma and 3 years of Game Pass, and I’m at a time in my life where I don’t have the time I used to to play loads of games all the time. I’m happy with the Series S, but if you’re coming fresh to this generation of consoles, I can’t see why you wouldn’t just buy PS5 as that’s where the games are.
20 million units of a gaming console hardly sounds like a crisis. People have gotten far too used to sales number of mobile phones. Consoles are not something everyone buys.
@Hdcase Microsoft has a focus as publisher to publish on PC/Steam, Playstation and Switch, alongside mobile platform and TVs with pre installed streaming and access to Game Pass. The Xbox consoles is only a slice of the entire eco system Microsoft is building up.
I don’t think it’s hardware. It’s a differentiator. Tell me why I (or whoever) should pick an Xbox over a PlayStation?
Microsoft tried to answer that question with Game Pass, seemingly going all in on that concept, paying or outright buying publishers to bring their games to Game Pass. Some people may love Game Pass, but most people I know either never subscribed to it or only tested it when it was like 1,-€ for a month or whatever.
What else differentiates it from the PS5 in a positive way? Sure, the Series X is a bit more powerful than the PS5, but it’s close enough that it basically results in slightly different behavior for games with dynamic resolution scaling, with the PS5 sometimes even pulling ahead oddly enough (probably a more mature SDK, not sure).
The controller is…well, a decent controller. It doesn’t do anything special like adaptive triggers, yet it costs almost the same as a DualSense, and if you count in the optional (!) battery pack, it’s quite a bit more expensive even.
Playing online costs just as much as on PS5 (why do you have to pay extra to play online in 2023, anyways?).
Of the few mentionable exclusive games, most are honestly just mediocre (also in terms of critical acclaim).
What’s left? Backwards compatibility for 360 games? Sure that’s nice, but surely not a system seller for most people, especially when they don’t already have a ton of 360 games.
I just don’t see many cases where someone would prefer the Xbox Series X to a PlayStation 5, without even taking into account what platform their friends are on.
If you want to win market share, deliver a better product. With better services. With better conditions. For lower prices.
That is how it works. Crying to the public about how unfair it is because Sony has such a large installed base already because of how Microsoft fucked up the Xbox One generation (at or even before launch) is NOT how it works.
I don’t think it’s hardware. It’s a differentiator. Tell me why I (or whoever) should pick an Xbox over a PlayStation?
What else differentiates it from the PS5 in a positive way?
The thing is, it’s not even Games Pass or the hardware. For me, as a PC gamer, having an Xbox would be redundant. Anything an Xbox can do, my PC just does strictly better without a cumbersome UI and additional online subscription.
I own a PS5 for access to Sony exclusives when they launch, instead of waiting 1-5 years for the PC ports. I also get access to PS Plus’ extensive classic collection and indie collections, which, regardless of the price of the subscription, broadens my gaming library extensively–something Xbox simply doesn’t do.
Why would I purchase a console that only gives me access to the same games on a worse system vs a console that expands my library considerably?
100% this. I was bored and felt like setting money on fire a week ago, and figured I should grab a Series X finally. Went and looked through exclusives and, woof.
I have a PS5, but wanted to get the Series before Halo Infinite came out. But since it was on Xbox One as well, I justified the purchase because Fable would eventually be out as an exclusive.
I definitely would have waited if I knew Infinite was going to be shit.
The console experience is different enough though. I have a PC I can game on with no issue, but I rarely do, because i love my sofa, my LG OLED and my soundbar. At the end of a tiring working day, after taking care of my chores, putting the kids to bed, I just can’t get back to the computer, especially if I had to use it all day long for work…
But, at the end of the day, it’s all a matter of preference: do you like PS 1st party kinds of games? Go for PlayStation. Are you more eclectic? Go for Game Pass. Your kids want a potent enough machine for Roblox and Fortnite? The Series S is there for you. Do you travel a lot? Go for a Switch or a Steam Deck (loving mine btw).
Plus, the ultimate question: How much does a PC/a console or a new game cost in your country?
At the end of a tiring working day, after taking care of my chores, putting the kids to bed, I just can’t get back to the computer, especially if I had to use it all day long for work…
Those are the days I Miracast my PC to my TV and curl up on the couch with a wireless controller.
My soon-to-be 7-year-old has a Switch that fits his Minecraft / Pokemon / YouTube needs, and I have my PS5 for exclusives that don’t have a PC port yet (I’m currently playing through FFXVI, for example.
Plus, the ultimate question: How much does a PC/a console or a new game cost in your country?
I currently live in the States, so any average price you look up in USD will apply. I built my own PC, I purchased my PS5 on sale, and I will build myself a new PC when my son is old enough to be trusted (under supervision) with my current PC, if any of that matters.
@Vestria@narc0tic_bird Yep exactly. When it comes down to similar platforms, experiences you can't have on the other platform(s) are what differentiate them at the end of the day IMO.
It's ironic and somewhat revolting to see the behemoth that is Microsoft crying that it can't compete and it needs to acquire other publishers, when it already has a collection of studios and franchises, means to fund brand new studios and make even better hardware. If they aren't competitive now, it's because of their own bad decisions.
Although it seems that despite their hardware not being as popular, they seem to sell GamePass for PC at least decently.
Can’t compete… because Sony is paying publishers to make games exclusive for the PS5.
As a PC gamer at heart exclusives suck.
Over the years I almost bought a console on a few occasions due to exclusives, or games shipping first on console.
Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV, then GTA V.
By the time RDR2 came out I had bought an Xbox One S - because it was the cheapest 4K BD player on the market.
Oh, the irony. Still haven’t bought a 4K BD. Prices were ridiculous. Probably still are. Found that 4K streaming titles on Apple TV were so good I didn’t need better than that.
But since stumbling into the One S led me to buy RDR2 on release day.
Halfway through I upgraded to the One X, and when Series X came out I had it less than a month later after putting in a pre-order about a month before release.
A colleague who pre-ordered PS5 six months before I even thought about the Series X had to wait 7 months from release for his.
I agree that exclusives suck, but acquisitions are worse in every way. At least with a deal you can hope that eventually the game will be out for everything, or the next one will. Now if anyone hopes to get a Bethesda game on other consoles again, they are out of luck.
But also, if first-party XBox games were more appealing they wouldn't be in this situation. Sony can't lock Nintendo out of the market because people want Mario and Zelda anyway.
And yet Sony's Horizon series has been overshadowed by Zelda.
Only hardcore gamers, who make up for a small part of the market, believe that Nintendo somehow doesn't count as far as how this market competes. That somehow it's a separate market because the specs aren't comparable. That's not how it works at all. The entertainment budget being fought over is the same.
In any case, all this is a separate matter. The point is that aside from Microsoft, the other console makers manage to attract buyers through first-party games. Same goes for Sony. A lot of people bought Playstations for God of War and Last of Us.
Of course they did, but the world be so much better if games were available for all platforms and the platforms competed on the merits of their hardware and software instead of the merits of their exclusive titles.
Switch is the third best selling console of all time behind the PS2 and the DS. I highly doubt that most people who own switch own something else. What you’re saying applies maybe to the core gamer audience, which is honestly pretty small.
In fact, the issue is that Xbox “never”* has done it’s own thing, and because of that they are hardly relevant in the console market.
*their entire branding is “gaming box for gamers”. The only time they strayed from this was with xbox one where they for some reason decided a “DVR that can also play games” was the way to go.
You're right. Hardware is close enough to parity to be irrelevant. The competition in the 2-party console market (Nintendo doesn't count, they're in a different league) is in exclusive titles. It's why the MS-Activision merger had so much focus on Call of Duty and such: MS will take all their new titles exclusive as soon as they can and that's what drives sales. People choose consoles based on what games they want to play, or what consoles the friends they play with use if there are cross-platform titles.
Exactly. Nintendo has targeted game styles that are largely being shared by smaller developers. AAA devs pretty much have to push visual boundaries in order to sell consoles while Nintendo focuses on whatever new major feature their newest console has (Wii: motion, WiiU: semi-handheld, Switch: hybrid handheld). Nintendo hasn't tried to compete with the big consoles at least since Gamecube. And their focus on few, high-quality titles for first party series means they have nearly guaranteed success every console generation (actual guaranteed success with pokemon).
I don’t think it’s hardware. It’s a differentiator. Tell me why I (or whoever) should pick an Xbox over a PlayStation?
They know it's a losing battle to try to build the same product as an entrenched competitor after they burned themselves with the Xbox One, which is why they much prefer you're a subscriber to Game Pass, with an Xbox or not.
Some people may love Game Pass, but most people I know either never subscribed to it or only tested it when it was like 1,-€ for a month or whatever.
They've got like 25-30 million subscribers, so it's quite popular. Probably half or a third as popular as Microsoft would like, but it's popular. I myself have plenty of friends who want to play more games than they can afford, and now they can afford them because of Game Pass. Especially the flash in the pan zeitgeist stuff like Exoprimal or Rainbow Six: Extraction that they can say they've played but will never touch again.
What else differentiates it from the PS5 in a positive way?
Quick resume. To be honest, what sets the PS5 apart from the Xbox hardware in a positive way? The SSD speeds that ended up not even mattering much for Ratchet & Clank, from what I hear of the PC port.
The controller is…well, a decent controller. It doesn’t do anything special like adaptive triggers, yet it costs almost the same as a DualSense, and if you count in the optional (!) battery pack, it’s quite a bit more expensive even.
By contrast, I know tons of people who hate the PS5 controller, not the least of which for its short battery life and inability to swap batteries like you can for Xbox. As a fighting game player, I know competitive players who hate the d-pad, and Sony did everyone dirty by requiring the use of a PS5 controller only even though the entire scene has had controllers for a decade that would work just fine, and even work on the PS5 when running a "PS4 game" on a PS5. Xbox's controllers are backward and forward compatible. If Sony had some kind of reason for requiring the functionality of the new controller, sure, have at it, but they put this requirement in place for games that make no use of the new controller's features at all, which is a dick move.
If you want to win market share, deliver a better product. With better services. With better conditions. For lower prices.
I think they did exactly that, but as far as which console sells more units, it's still PlayStation, because they have a couple of games that, at least for a couple of years, you can only play on PlayStation. But I think Microsoft saw that they were never going to be able to compete with that directly, at least before their acquisition spree, so the Xbox is just a low-cost machine that gets you into Game Pass, long-term.
Is the Xbox controller being backwards/forwards compatible actually a feature? I thought that the only difference between them was the presence of a share button. Not to discount your point about it being bs that ps5 games require a new controller.
I guess the answer to your question about what hardware advantage the ps5 has it has to primarily be the controller. The new vibration and adaptive triggers are super engaging. I also personally prefer the way it feels to a ps4 one. Unfortunately I don’t have an Xbox so I can’t compare. Obviously that’s a personal preference thing though, it’s completely valid for you to dislike them.
That said, let’s be honest, I got it for the exclusive games.
It's for playing a PS4 game vs playing a PS5 game. If you want to play the PS4 version of Street Fighter 6 on a PS5, you can use PS4 controllers. If you want to play the PS5 version of Street Fighter 6 on PS5, you must use PS5 controllers. Basically just arbitrarily forcing you to buy new controllers when the others would have worked fine.
Game Pass is great if you want to try a lot of different games and see what you like without having to do research or worry about whether or not a particular game is worth your $$. Especially if you like playing small indie games and tend not to replay them anyway - this way, $10-15 and you can play multiple new and old indie games for the price of one (or less), plus try a few of the big games, and maybe get surprised by games you didn’t think you’d like but gave a shot because they were included. And if you do want to replay any eventually, by then, the price will have dropped and you’ve still saved $$.
This is offset however by the fact it’s still buggy and frustrating as all hell sometimes. I hate the way it works with virtual drives. And it doesn’t work for stuff you want to mod or play the dlc for (no way no how am I actually buying a game/dlc on that platform).
I’m not. I’m playing on PC 95% of the time, and I play the Sony exclusives only in single player on my PS5 anyway.
What I’m saying is that this could be a differentiator for Microsoft that they just don’t seem to be interested in (it would obviously lose them a lot of revenue from existing customers at first). I feel like more people would get an Xbox for multiplatform games if they save over 50 bucks a year because they don’t have to pay for online play. Heck, I’d probably spring for a Series S for the odd round of Sea of Thieves and the likes on the big screen TV (I know, I could connect my PC, but it’s just very comfortable that way). But having to pay for online is a no-go for me, especially because it’s not my primary platform.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the folks that only play FIFA or the likes would get a Series S if it’s marketed correctly, and they didn’t have to pay for online play.
That was a royal “you” in direct response to the question in your post. Regardless, the cost of multiplayer on consoles has been a factor since multiplayer started and will continue to be because it’s a guaranteed way for those companies to subsidize the massive overhead that is their server farms.
If you don’t understand or can’t figure why a service like Game Pass requires a fee, then you are either woefully ignorant of how technology and security works, or you are being willfully disingenuous motivated by loyalty to a specific platform.
That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. These services cost actual money and MS historically has had a significantly more reliable online service and a huge reason why is the Live charge. Sony only managed to have a reliable service when they started charging for it. I feel like a lot of people with the sentiment above didn’t play games when online CONSOLE multiplayer was born.
I was talking about the ability to simply play games that I already purchased online. Game Pass was a different paragraph and context.
If you really think Microsoft or Sony requires this yearly subscription fee to keep the service running, just look at equivalent PC services like Steam (or, you know, Xbox Live online play, which is free on PC) and realise how wrong you are. Microsoft and Sony get a big chunk of game sales (30%+), they are fine.
Actual game servers are hosted by the game publisher, not by Microsoft or Sony (unless it’s a first party title, of course). Publishers don’t get a single piece of the subscription.
Whenever people ask which console they should buy, my first question is “what do your friends play on?” Hardware/Games you can argue till you’re blue in the face. Playing with friends should be a main motivator in deciding what platform you choose, if you are limited to one.
Xbox owner here. I love the xbox for gamepass, have been subscribed for years. Think I also prefer the xbox controller. I miss some of the exclusives of PS5.
But it’s very much an opinion I believe. I totally understand if people buy a PS5.
You do realise that the game developers/publishers need to host the actual game servers themselves, and they don’t get any piece of the PS+/Xbox Live subscription cake, right?
Yeah sure, the store, friends network, voice chat and what have you do cost money to keep operating, but how does it all work so well on PC then - where it’s free - yet on console they want >50 bucks a year for it? They get 30%+ from game sales, you can’t convince me that paying for online is anywhere close to being required for sustainability of the service.
I used to think that not having a built in rechargeable battery was a dull idea.
However: Whenever I wanted to play on my PS3 the batteries were empty and the controllers needed to be recharged.
Around the time I got my first Xbox I came to the realization that I had more units than I ever thought consuming AA or AAA batteries, so I decided to go all in on rechargeable batteries.
I love it. Whenever my Xbox tells me that the controller needs new batteries it takes me 20 seconds to swap in a new pair.
I don’t ever think about having to plug the controller. I don’t care if I pick it up and it’s dead. Etc. etc.
And best of all, there’s literally no drain when it sleeps. My switch controllers drains the battery when it’s resting. The PS3 drains the controller. Don’t know about the PS4 and PS5.
Honestly, if I had not been burned previously by Xbox losing my online purchases, I think I would consider buying an Xbox for game pass.
I don’t hate the concept, and I’ve heard great things about the Xbox game pass library.
I’m also not a big fan of not actually owning my games. I have 40 year old games that I still return to every year. The idea of finding something special on Gamepass and having it just disappear like a streaming show does… Not compelling to me.
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