IGN: "Console Gaming is Too Damn Expensive, Something Has to Give."

A Ps5 Pro costs 800 euro where I live.
A Geforce 4070, which is far from mid, costs 669 euro where I live.
I'll do you one better, the Pro is €799 by me, while a 5070 is €579. Only a GPU of course, but still.
PS5 Pro is $970 CDN due to currency issues vs the $700 US. Newegg has the base 5070 gpu starting around $800. Pending the model it looks like $800-900.

And both Canada and US have similar annual wages in their own currency.

At 800 euros that's a rip off. That's over $1,200 CDN. Were getting the system at the equivalent of 620 euros.
 
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I mean you could suck 80 dicks for Mario kart or 10 dicks. Shit maybe even ONE dick.

Simple blow job economics. Keep on gayming!
 
we just had a goty contender with an AA budget.

Yes, some people will still look DF videos scrutinizing every single frame, but the reality nowaday is, most people do not care as long as your game plays well.

stop with development teams inflated by dozens and dozens of artist to raise your production values and start focusing on hiring the right people in gameplay design and other key roles, and put a director with a clear vision and good management skills at the helm

then you will have back an affordable industry
 
Didn't Ryan just buy a $700 PS5 Pro just because he wanted the best GTA6 experience on day one and he was concerned about further price hikes? I highly doubt he is personally getting priced out of anything.

Yeah he mentioned that in the video. The former part of your comment anyway.
 
I think it means you wait for price drops rather than buy games on Day 1. If you're patient, these $80 games will come down to reasonable prices in 6 months or so (excepting Nintendo titles).
An estimated 30-50% of all gamers wait for games to drop in price.
Giving users a powerful incentive not to buy games right away is a massive mistake.
 
Didn't Ryan just buy a $700 PS5 Pro just because he wanted the best GTA6 experience on day one and he was concerned about further price hikes? I highly doubt he is personally getting priced out of anything.
An IGN personality unaware of the fact that Rockstar's never optimized a game for a Pro console?
 
And you do? "the N64 sold over 32 million units globally", "Nintendo Switch Achieves 150 Million Sales". Game market grew x5.
Switch is essentially N64 and Gameboy combined, Nintendo merged two markets.
The traditional console market has not grown 5x since N64 days, I'm too lazy to add it all up but PS1+Saturn+N64 should not be far off from current gen totals IF you remove the assumed big chunk of handheld gamers from Switch's numbers.
 
I honestly think loads of people will choose to do that when next generation rolls around.

I mean, consoles are getting more expensive within the same generation. What do we expect to happen when new hardware arrives?
This will push people towards streaming services as Internet speed improve. Basically pay 40€ in front for a controller + monthly subscription for a range of games on ultra on your TV. People are already conditioned by Netflix not to own content, this is the logical next step.
 
Clown as always.


If you want to join the discussion then read the post I replied to, then you'd understand my context.
Dude. 4070 is barely mid. There are so many cards above and new series. Wtf. Its essentially 3080 and I know that's mid
 
Microsoft is sprinting toward their end game now....

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This is 100% the future.
 
Rofif lying about PC gaming? How shocking!

and faster than the Pro's GPU.
About the same according to df. In fact they used 4070 super as an example. But it doesn't matter. I don't see a sense to compare.
You still get way more buying a console than gpu alone for similar money
 
I keep seeing this take, but there is one VERY important thing to consider: the average wage has not kept up with inflation. You only have to look at average purchasing power to realize that things are not adding up.

People have much less money to spend on leisure activities than they did 20 years ago.


Same price as the PS5 Pro, but you don't only game on a PC, and you can buy games cheaper, don't need a subscription to play online, have retro-compatibility for pretty much everything, not to mention emulation etc etc... A console is a closed ecosystem, this alone is a BIG difference.

On the lifetime of a console, PC IS cheaper. Even if the entry price is higher.
You get games cheaply on console too. Physical etc. I don't pay for online because I don't play online. But yeah. It's bs you have to pay for that.
And I don't care you can do more on pc. E are talking about games
 
The 3070 was 50€ more expensive than the consoles back in 2020, now two gens after that, the 5070 is 20€ more expensive than these 5 year okd consoles, that's crazy.

Manufacturers usted to subsidize their consoles to the Milk the users in the long run with game prices, pay to online, etc.

Now they milk the users with all that even harder, but with the console too, just like Nintendo.

Which explains why they are making so much more money lately
 
I don't think they are saying PC gaming is cheap. It has always been more expensive. Nobody is subsidizing your PC. It's just consoles were always a cheaper option, and dropped in price as the generation went on.

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I mean damn, 20 years ago before the ps3 launch you could get a ps2 for $129. Now consoles are going up in price as the generation goes on, and PS5 pro is $700.

I'm not complaining and will spend more than $700 on a z2 extreme handheld this year, but the days of MILFs impulse buying a console for their kids are probably gone.
These days if you want. MILF to buy you a console, you've gotta earn it.

Grandma has needs too.
 
Console gaming has always been expensive and it was far more expensive for games in the early 90's which people often overlook, in socalled glory days of games

The price of games (rather than Hardware) has always been the biggest barrier to real growth in games sales (not hardware)
 
Increased costs of gaming are nothing compared to rent, food, activities. You buy one console you can use for 5 years. If you are a little patient you can buy games with pretty good discounts 3-6 months after they are released. Only Nintendo games being the exception.
 
Console gaming too expensive?
Stupid ps5 or ps5 pro is cheaper than mid graphics cards... alone....
I feel it's quite affordable. people just are used to 60$ which .... let's look at OBLVION.
2006, 50$... that would be 100$ today. yet games are not 100$. They are 70-80 and way way way longer.

Also, console games look essentially the same as pc games nowadays. There are not 2 hugely separate completely different versions. It's the same game running on pc and console. And consoles are 4k, 60fps, have screenshots and so on. Just like pc.
It used to be that you showed ps2 game and pc version and the difference was clear. not anymore.

Everything got 2-3x more expensive in last 5 years alone. Look at gpu prices or food... OR WHATEVER.
Console is cheaper than mid smartphone ffs.
This misconception about console games looking the same on pc is fucking ignorant. I started playing RDR2, a relatively old game, on pc after playing the Xbox one X version. You have no idea on a 4k screen and a good graphics card about the difference in clarity, and details like volumetric and fur settings for example make. You need to stop watching compressed youtube videos and do a proper real life comparison.

If you can't afford or don't want a good pc that's fine. But don't act like a Mercedes is the same as a Volkswagen because they both get you from a to b.
 
This misconception about console games looking the same on pc is fucking ignorant. I started playing RDR2, a relatively old game, on pc after playing the Xbox one X version. You have no idea on a 4k screen and a good graphics card about the difference in clarity, and details like volumetric and fur settings for example make. You need to stop watching compressed youtube videos and do a proper real life comparison.

If you can't afford or don't want a good pc that's fine. But don't act like a Mercedes is the same as a Volkswagen because they both get you from a to b.
your example is comparing last gen game with it's years late release on pc running on modern hardware.
That game did not got current gen patch.
BUT STILL - It's not worlds apart. It used to be that the models, levels and everything was different.
You take any modern game that's current gen and you would not be able to say which is which.

I have lg c1 48" oled on my desk. ps5 pro and pc connected to it.
Now that pssr exists, stuff looks about the same as dlss games.
REsolution and framerate. Both things that change from console to pc... and both of these things are good enough already on consoles.
Not to mention no stutter and shader compilation on consoles.
 
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This will push people towards streaming services as Internet speed improve. Basically pay 40€ in front for a controller + monthly subscription for a range of games on ultra on your TV. People are already conditioned by Netflix not to own content, this is the logical next step.

That thing about ownership need not come into it either - Xbox already lets you stream games you own that aren't on gamepass.

For some players, the question will be "do I play anything that requires a locally installed game for it to be enjoyable?" Or more simply, "what's the difference?"

I install pretty much everything I play, but the last two games I played were Blue Prince and Balatro. Those experiences would not suffer from being online streams.
 
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We can keep costs down, it is easy :

1) Make weaker hardware
2) Make this hardware reliable and keep it for 10 years
3) Get rid of resource wasting engines such as UE
4) Go back to optimizing games

Back then, developers managed to fit Road Rash, Phantasy Star and Sonic on a Master System. These games use everything the console has, and they are not wasteful in any way.
Nowadays, you need a fucking miracle to have a game properly using the hardware, for example, Metroid Prime Remastered or Xenoblade X. Every game out there is brute-forcing its way through stupid engines and infinite middlewares that embed a ton of features that are totally useless to the gameplay, yet are there and require the consoles to be more powerful.

Thankfully, the dumb quest to get always better hardware at lower price has ended. Reaching the diminishing returns state will bring back some common sense into video-games development.
 
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About the same according to df.
It was the closest NVIDIA equivalent at the time. The other one is the 3070 Ti but it has 8GB.
In fact they used 4070 super as an example. But it doesn't matter. I don't see a sense to compare.
You still get way more buying a console than gpu alone for similar money
Yeah, the console is better bang for your buck, no shit. Being affordable gaming machines is half the reason for their existence. Besides, now the closest equivalent is the 5060 Ti 16GB. It doesn't cost $700.
 
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PS5 Pro is $970 CDN due to currency issues vs the $700 US. Newegg has the base 5070 gpu starting around $800. Pending the model it looks like $800-900.

And both Canada and US have similar annual wages in their own currency.

At 800 euros that's a rip off. That's over $1,200 CDN. Were getting the system at the equivalent of 620 euros.

The Pro doesn't belong in this conversation though because its an outlier case.

Its really tiresome the way its constantly being spun as it being representative of console gaming* as a whole when its so much more expensive than anything else, and also a SKU that's not been impacted by recent price hikes.

Very happy with mine, but I accept that its just a bit of luxury that I absolutely do not need.


*Not pointing the finger at you, just saying it seems like if any console model gets brought up in topics like this, its the PS5 Pro despite it being a way better deal than the 2tb Series X
 
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That can't possibly be true.

My co-worker buys 1 iced caffe americano a day MINIMUM.

250 business days x £4.35 = £1087

That's only counting the 1 she buys as she also buys another at lunch which I haven't included.

The issue with gaming in its current form is that developers don't give a shit about optimisation anymore. If you want to charge people more for your games, then we'll hold you to a stricter standard than we already do.

Games releasing in a buggy state only to be given a "We'll fix when it's out" promise note is disgusting and extremely anti-consumer.

If you can't optimise a game for release, than maybe you should delay it or stop trying to do shit you cannot do.
 
We just quickened our pace on the inevitable march towards streaming and subscription services being the way we play. I'm okay with it.
 
We just quickened our pace on the inevitable march towards streaming and subscription services being the way we play. I'm okay with it.
how can you be ok with it? not owning anything? relying on services and servers....
Isn't this your hobby? You are here after all
 
how can you be ok with it? not owning anything? relying on services and servers....
Isn't this your hobby? You are here after all
We already don't own anything. At least with physical formats, they can't take them away. However, there was a recent report about discs wearing out after about 20 years or something.
 
I would pay hundreds of money for a concert too since it's something that involves real people and not a bunch of pixels on the screen.
For someone like me, I find it hard to justify to pay that much to go somewhere to listen to a worse version of a song that I could just listen to on an album whenever I wanted.

Warped Tour tickets used to be $25. 20 years later, Coachella tickets are so expensive that 60% of ticket buyers financed it. How soon before we get a statistic like that in the games industry, where 60% of console buyers financed the purchase?
 
Three pages into this thread of everyone whining about console price increases and not one person acknowledges that tariffs are the cause? It's not Microsoft, folks. And it's not just the xbox either.
 
We can keep costs down, it is easy :

1) Make weaker hardware
2) Make this hardware reliable and keep it for 10 years
3) Get rid of resource wasting engines such as UE
4) Go back to optimizing games

Back then, developers managed to fit Road Rash, Phantasy Star and Sonic on a Master System. These games use everything the console has, and they are not wasteful in any way.
Nowadays, you need a fucking miracle to have a game properly using the hardware, for example, Metroid Prime Remastered or Xenoblade X. Every game out there is brute-forcing its way through stupid engines and infinite middlewares that embed a ton of features that are totally useless to the gameplay, yet are there and require the consoles to be more powerful.

Thankfully, the dumb quest to get always better hardware at lower price has ended. Reaching the diminishing returns state will bring back some common sense into video-games development.
This one gets it ☝🏻
 
Three pages into this thread of everyone whining about console price increases and not one person acknowledges that tariffs are the cause? It's not Microsoft, folks. And it's not just the xbox either.
It's not tariffs, would only affect the US if that was the case. It's the sum of inflation and general costs of production not actually decreasing anymore like they did previously.
 
We can keep costs down, it is easy :

1) Make weaker hardware
2) Make this hardware reliable and keep it for 10 years
3) Get rid of resource wasting engines such as UE
4) Go back to optimizing games
1) that'd work until one company made their hardware stronger and everyone flocked to it. Plus, games are already too expensive is the argument being made.
2) arguably the only option here - a console's purchase price divided by the length of the generation.
3) and 4) this means increased dev costs.

Imo, the only way to keep costs down is to reduce developer time and team size, which means curbing things in some way. A quick look at what people here regard as "trash" would suggest that people won't embrace lower fidelity experiences and that publishers will be driven by that and will be inclined to spend a little more to make something that has more of a wow factor than other games on the market and hope to reap the benefits.

Essentially, I think the reason that games are getting more expensive is because gamers are toxic and driven by a need for things to be as shiny as possible. Publishers are responding to what the market has told them repeatedly will and won't sell.
 
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Console gaming too expensive?
Stupid ps5 or ps5 pro is cheaper than mid graphics cards... alone....
I feel it's quite affordable. people just are used to 60$ which .... let's look at OBLVION.
2006, 50$... that would be 100$ today. yet games are not 100$. They are 70-80 and way way way longer.

Also, console games look essentially the same as pc games nowadays. There are not 2 hugely separate completely different versions. It's the same game running on pc and console. And consoles are 4k, 60fps, have screenshots and so on. Just like pc.
It used to be that you showed ps2 game and pc version and the difference was clear. not anymore.

Everything got 2-3x more expensive in last 5 years alone. Look at gpu prices or food... OR WHATEVER.
Console is cheaper than mid smartphone ffs.
The point is we expect getting new stuff as good as the old stuff.
 
Three pages into this thread of everyone whining about console price increases and not one person acknowledges that tariffs are the cause? It's not Microsoft, folks. And it's not just the xbox either.


Because that's bollocks.

So, you mean that after evil orange man leaves prices will go down? LOL.

BTW, in Europe games are even more expensive than in the USA, they been like this for years already. Were they preparing for his coming years in advance?

Corporations are taking the opportunity to raise the greed bar to outrageous levels.
 
3) and 4) this means increased dev costs.
Only if you still want to release on every platform under the sun.

Otherwise, I disagree. This means lower dev costs on the contrary, because dev costs are driven up by the tons of totally useless features and stuff that are put in the games. Again, look at perfectly focused games such as Metroid Prime Remastered, Metroid Prime 4 and Xeno X. These games look very good and they run on a Wii U/Switch... Optimized for one console only. And then you look at Zelda Link to the Past or Yoshi Woolly World, or Mario RPG, that use "generic engines" and they all perform worse, lower res, fps drops, slowdowns etc... And you reach a situation where no amount of work could make this work better, because you have limited control over the resources wasted by UE or Unity.

In Xeno/MP, developers got rid of everything that was useless. For example, Xeno X doesn't have collision detection between characters/monsters, yet the game is perfectly fine and never needs it. They had a vision of what they wanted to do and built their game engine taking into account the hardware constraints. This is something almost NOBODY does nowadays. Everybody just makes a game on a random PC engine so that it can run on all platforms... like shit. And then you waste your time trying to make it run properly, but you don't have the extended knowledge and understanding because you didn't build/assemble it yourself. Layers and layers of opaque features and functions stacked one onto another. This is called "being trapped".

In the meantime, Dead or Alive 6 looked like a dream with close to no loading times on Xbox One and PS4... And facing this game, you get UE fighting games. When was UE needed to display two characters over a background lol ? Low res, long loading times etc... Tekken was an absolute joke and looked awful on PS4One compared to DoA6. Purpose built engine, in-house engine is the way to go.
 
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Console gaming has always been expensive and it was far more expensive for games in the early 90's which people often overlook, in socalled glory days of games

The price of games (rather than Hardware) has always been the biggest barrier to real growth in games sales (not hardware)
The upfront cost of a gaming PC can be steep, but the long-term value is hard to beat. The same games are often cheaper than on consoles. Over time, that adds up to a much larger library for a fraction of the price.
 
I'm personally not at all offended by $500 hardware, especially considering the costs versus building a PC.

The recent price hike announcements on games, however, are definitely ridiculous. That being said, they're only expensive if you're a slave to your own FOMO. All games, except Nintendo first party games, go on sale, sometimes massive sales around $30 off MSRP, as early as 6 to 8 weeks after release. Just fucking wait and then buy. I simply do not understand why so many gamers have such poor fucking impulse control.
 
Nintendo has already started this. The other two need to follow suit and bite the bullet of pushing their console to it's very edge/limit of time until they finally release a new one, especially after they all standardize ray tracing and AI upscaling, either next gen or the one after.

Decade-long waits between generations would be preferable.

Yep, ten or so years isn't unrealistic. I'm a pc gamer first and foremost but I flog mine to death before upgrading. My current one was bought in 2016 (i7 6700k, gtx 1080 32gb ram), cost me €1700, I'm upgrading next year, will probably cost me about two grand but I'll be looking to get another decade or so from it.

In the closed-off world of console development games shouldn't suffer as they do on pc.
 
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