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[SpongeMonster30]

we can always play indie games that won't require a monster rig. Godot is the perfect engine for that. Plus, with the graphics plateau that caps at around the ps4/switch 2 era of tech, we can play games that are optimized for those platforms for the foreseeable future. We also have FSR 4/DLSS4 to help cope with more demanding games.

Tldr; just play indies.

 

[L*][*N*K]

But but almost everyone buy a new version of Iphone every year? I thought that lack of money is the problem?

Who is everyone, I don't know a single person who buys a new phone every year it is always a once in 3-4 years

 

[Hadoukens]

I have so many Indie 2d games I don't know where to start.

Expand your genres

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

I hear you OP. I'm definitely not hurting for money but I can't justify enthusiast-level PC gaming anymore.

Hell, I recently sold my 5090 for $3500 and downgraded to a $700 9070XT. It felt so wrong having such an expensive GPU when the games are just as fun and look almost as good on a card that's 1/5 the price (and still expensive).

Hopefully demand + supply equalize and the prices come back down. For now, I'm going to be a cheap ass gamer.

 

[RCU005]

I don't understand something. When Sony announced the PS3 after a mega successful PS2, when they really believed everyone would buy it, not questions asked, they hit a brick wall when every fan got disgusted by the $600 price tag. The PS3 sold horribly until the rebranding and price cut to $299.

Why doesn't this happen now?!! Valve just increased the price of the Steam Deck by $300!! That extremely abusive! I don't care how justified they think it is. Sony might have thought the PS3's. price was justified due to the technology and features it had, but people didn't care! These price increases should be $50 max. The fact that they are doubling the price is ridiculous.

People need to stop buying shit!! The PS5 PRO shouldn't have sold at all at $700, yet people gave Sony their money. At $900 there is no way the sales didn't collapse. If they didn't, then that is why they are charging so much! Why are consumers not putting a stop to this, just like they told Sony to get off their high horses with the PS3.

Next gen consoles probably will cost at least $999, but should they? We as fans, need to stop this! It doesn't matter if it's tariffs, or the industry's self-inflicted RAM price hikes. If the price is not what it should be, any company should NOT be selling like hotcakes!

 

[Moochi]

There will be a flood of cheap components once the AI market crowns its top 2-3 companies. We may hit a point soon where a fundamental change in chip design to serve AI has unintended spillover, with cheap, powerful chips for gaming.

 

[riko]

Who is everyone, I don't know a single person who buys a new phone every year it is always a once in 3-4 years

I've got two friends who do this. Boggles my mind. I am on a 4.5 year old phone and completely happy.

 

[ReBurn]

It's going with me on a road trip this Sunday. Switch 2 in the hotel.

 

[DreamcastSkies]

Consoles are approaching cell phone prices.

Even with my salary, let's say my 5080 build I got for around 2K will cost me 3000. I built it when I made around 90K even with my new job and salary of 150K something about 3K for a high end PC just seems gross.

For consoles? I dunno man. Rather go backwards than forwards if 7-800 might be the norm - no way are they subsidizing hundreds per unit anymore and I just don't feel like anything more than 500 for a console is worth it and I was even considering a Pro but 900 dollars is a hell no.

Maybe I'm just accepting I'm watching the death of personal and open (key word, OPEN) computing, affordable gaming and high end home compute.

A collapse may be inevitable/needed. I think what we can do individually and collectively to preserve gaming history through the collapse might be fun.

 

[Avid Reading Horse]

Consoles are approaching cell phone prices.

Even with my salary, let's say my 5080 build I got for around 2K will cost me 3000. I built it when I made around 90K even with my new job and salary of 150K something about 3K for a high end PC just seems gross.

For consoles? I dunno man. Rather go backwards than forwards if 7-800 might be the norm - no way are they subsidizing hundreds per unit anymore and I just don't feel like anything more than 500 for a console is worth it and I was even considering a Pro but 900 dollars is a hell no.

Maybe I'm just accepting I'm watching the death of personal and open (key word, OPEN) computing, affordable gaming and high end home compute.

Congrats. You're a cheapskate. +60k in yearly income and you're crashing out over +1k to your build every couple of years?

Not to go all Hollywood Hitman here, but if you have an all-of-a-sudden cheaper-by-comparison hobby that you neglected while living the life of a brokie gamer then by all means, invest your new disposable income into something that makes you happy. The hysterics.... it's not the 'death of open computing' just because you can't get 2x the performance every couple of years at the same price point at the moment.

I can see being concerned about the price trends and what it means for the industry. More affordable hardware means more gamers and that's good for everyone. But don't act like you personally have been priced out, because you haven't.

 

[kiphalfton]

Consoles are approaching cell phone prices.

Even with my salary, let's say my 5080 build I got for around 2K will cost me 3000. I built it when I made around 90K even with my new job and salary of 150K something about 3K for a high end PC just seems gross.

For consoles? I dunno man. Rather go backwards than forwards if 7-800 might be the norm - no way are they subsidizing hundreds per unit anymore and I just don't feel like anything more than 500 for a console is worth it and I was even considering a Pro but 900 dollars is a hell no.

Maybe I'm just accepting I'm watching the death of personal and open (key word, OPEN) computing, affordable gaming and high end home compute.

Wait, you got a >60% increase in pay going from your old job to your new job? Damn.

 

[Pop]

Enjoy the future of gaming

 

[iQuasarLV]

Even with retro gaming prices are going up. LOTRO just announced a 48% price hike for annual VIP subs on a 2007 game. It is going to foster a huge resurgence in piracy since no one is going to take price hikes serious for games that came out decades ago.

 

[simpatico]

Current Rig
7800x3D 32GB Mobo Micocenter Combo at the market bottom for $500
used 6750XT in Taco Bell parking lot $200

Spending $800 to turn up ray tracing one notch is not happening. I'll grab another motherboard at the end of the AM5 lifecycle just because the one that came in that combo is pretty low end. Targeting a used 9070 XT in a Taco Bell parking lot during the next GPU release. There's always someone in a hurry on FB marketplace and I'm happy to oblige. I got the graphics whoring out of my system in the 5xx and 6xx Titan era. What I have now is running everything that came out this year just fine. RE9, Forza 6, 007 etc. No problems at all. I'm honestly spending more time on my Deck in potato games like SteamWorld Dig and Nine Sols.

I'm lucky that a lot of the newer really taxing games don't appeal to me enough to make me want to chase a $ 2,500 GPU. Back when I was buying the high end stuff of every release the games coming out were on another level of quality. The guys out there who bought a 4070 and are already feeling like it's time to upgrade, I wonder what they even got to play on that thing. Not the brightest release calendar period for the games that actually need for that card has to offer.

Moving forward, I just take each game as its own value prop. Not owning a console takes off a lot of pressure to buy. If you own a console there's a certain amount of pressure to own the first party stuff. Like "I'm losing value by not owning these games I'm marginally interested in". I know a lot of people say "I won't buy a game that does X or if the pricing model is Y". I give everything a chance on its own merits. I'm buying less big publisher stuff than ever. I was extremely jaded on indie stuff in the PS360 era when XBLA hit the scene, but the past few years that's really been where I'm find the most real gaming magic. Shit even having a 5090 or even a 5080, there's probably a bit of pressure to own the big graphics whore titles.

I know how most of gaf feels about streaming games, and I wish there was another way to get there, but I'm hoping for a streaming future for the tippy top high end. Otherwise every big budget game for the next decade plus is barely going to be targeting a fucking 4060. Sony is in the best position to do this, and I'd be first in line to sign up, but I want to see Naughty Dog make something that can only run on a 5090 type rig and stream it to customers. This is the only shot we have at not doing another decade in the PS4 Pro gen. I don't want streaming, I just see it as our only realistic way out of mainstream spec purgatory. Switch 2 early success and PS6P have sealed our fates.

 

[Hugare]

If PS6/next Xbox etc. are too expensive to make, then keep pumping current gen games.

We don't need better hardware. Most devs can only launch one AAA game per gen anyways.

Best rated game of the year looks like a Game Boy game

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

At the last total collapse in '83, only Nintendo emerged from the rubble. More than 4 decades later, it's not implausible that something similar could happen.

 

[Fess]

90K not 900

Oh I meant 90k, sorry, it's a lot in my world, I make 30k a year

 

[NeverYouMind]

At the last total collapse in '83, only Nintendo emerged from the rubble. More than 4 decades later, it's not implausible that something similar could happen.

The market is more fragmented than ever. While publishers will fold there will still be games releasing on the daily.

 

[Mortisfacio]

The prices are pretty absurd. It's caused me to update less often. I used to get every new GPU series release from NVIDIA. I've got a 4090, but skipped the 5090. Have no idea what 6090 prices will be. I'll end up paying it, but at this point $5k for a 6090 seems like a lowball considering 5090's are currently $4-4.5k on various retailers.

I'm expecting my next PC build to cost between $6-8k. That's insane. Granted I beef it up because I do other things with it for hobbiest and work stuff, but still. My wife is going to see the cost and tell me "we could have gone on another trip with that money". And she's right.

 

[LyricalShrike]

Your salary went up nearly 70% and the PC you buy once every 3-5 years went up 50%. Everybody wants their salary to increase while purchasing power of the dollar remains the same.

 

[MacReady13]

If gaming moves to cloud and/or subscription only, then i'm out. I have a large enough backlog to last me a lifetime. I'll acquire older games via emulation on my PC and play forgotten games from my past. It's not my fault these fuckers think we need to keep upping the stakes on bleeding edge graphics to push this medium forward. Gone are the days of gameplay focused games cause all everyone wants to talk about is why my fucking gaming pc shits all over someone's ps5 pro because I can see the light through the windows reflecting on the vase better on PC and in higher resolution over their console brethren. Fucking pathetic.

 

[Deficit]

If the main goal is to play games and you can't afford the PC but you can afford the console, why set an arbitrary number on the amount of the console.

So if you like gaming, and are willing to pay 2k for a gaming pc to keep gaming, but not willing to pay > 500 for a console to keep gaming, why?

What about the PC offers you so much more percieved value in your opinion that you would be willing to drop the hobby over it, keeping in mind these purchases are only made every several years....

I think PC gamers just don't want to swap back to consoles and would rather quit gaming and it less about the advantages of PC and more about identity. You love your PC identity and don't want to become a console pleb, correct?

The vast majority of my gaming library is on PC.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

If it gets too expensive or becomes digital only we have generations worth of games up to that point to play.

One of the reasons I started physical game collecting.

 

[Durin]

Only thing that has really changed for me is I've bought less new AAA games, played more of my backlog, and got more games on sale.

Also with graphics hitting diminished returns, I'm likely to firmly go back to mid-tier hardware with my next build than bothering with something like my rtx 4080 again.

I am expecting that hardware prices will go back down in the next couple years as the AI craze hits a limit and other memory makers exist now, but if it doesn't go all the way back down I'm not feeling a need to buy as high-end in future. Consoles are another story, because if $600-900 becomes a thing for them, I'll be waiting longer to get any since paying over $500 for a few exclusives ain't worth it for me, while a PC justifies itself for other non-game apps + work for me.

 

[WoJ]

I'll ride out my PS5 Pro until at least 2030. I'm basically saving for new hardware now. Ill either get a PC or PS6 Pro. But I'm honestly not that concerned. I own more games than I could play for the rest of my life. Developers will target current hardware longer which is okay by me.

 

[StereoVsn]

I think somewhere in the very near future we're mostly gonna be retrogamers. I don't intend to make the push into cloud gaming myself. Once local hardware dies so does my interest in gaming. It's hard not to doom about it honestly.

Yeah, I am in the same boat. I am not going to bother with cloud shit and worst comes to worst I got decades of games to play across PC and consoles.

 

[K' Dash]

there are enough excellent games (much better than anything releasing today) I have not played, released before 2008 that I wont be able to finish everything I want to play before I die.

The industry could crash tomorrow for all I care, I'll never run out of games to play.

Gaming has been gone for a while (my opinion, not stating it as a fact)

 

[OuterLimits]

Contraction and correction.

In the case of smartphones. The biggest market is low-mid range. (around 70% of the market) and around 100-600 dollars?


Apple only represents like 20% of the smartphone market and they sell them at a profit. A lot of peope "buy" phones with some kind of plan too

Perhaps payment plans are where things are headed with consoles as well. Either pay completely up front or a monthly/yearly payment option.

 

[Hoddi]

Games will always be made for the hardware that people own. If high-end hardware explodes in cost then games will simply be made for the cheaper hardware.

I'll never touch cloud gaming though. If push came to shove then there are thousands of older games that run on very modest hardware.

 

[_Ex_]

The future? You will play streaming games you never own on hardware you lease.

 

[mrpants]

We go retro, dumpster diving or clear backlog games that doesn't require high end specs to play.

And honestly this might turn out to be a good thing in the sense that game developer have to take into consideration to optimize their games to run on older less powerful devices

Thank God we kinda hit the peak a while ago with graphics and now it is more about making the game fun and optimizations. If they can't do that then they don't deserve our hard earned cash

 

[Danjin44]

For now I'm doing fine. As long as good games continue to release I will continue to play them.

 

[{insert code here}]

Contraction in the AAA space and expansion in the AA space is my best guess. Outside of the massive IP's (GTA, Elder Scrolls, CoD, etc), I think games that can be made for under 100M and can run on sub-500$ hardware, that's probably going to be what the next ten years looks like.

 

[viveks86]

 

[A.Romero]

I live in the third world earning a fraction of what you make and I haven't stopped gaming.

I'm sure you'll adjust if you are really interested.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Perhaps payment plans are where things are headed with consoles as well. Either pay completely up front or a monthly/yearly payment option.

Xbox/PS haven been doing somethings like that I think. And people can always use their credit cards anyway. But what I was talking about is that smartphones are very cheap. A $250 phone is more than enough and Phones tend to lose a lot of value pretty damn fast too.

Once the AI bubble pops, I think sony needs to do somehting drastic to kind of pressure the industry to do more with less/be more efficient. It feels like developers are not taking advantage of the tech already or/and better tech hasn't materialized in better and truly impressive games overall; they are wasting performance in "laziness" / incompetence.

Because the real issue is not the price per se, but that the value is not there. So, right now everything feels very uncertain that it really doesn't make sense to release new hardware.

 

[Yamisan]

Consoles cell phone prices? What no ? Your income has increased too... if it hasn't you have no business gaming at all.

 

[Gamer79]

Emulation is the answer

 

[Walliwallipaloo]

It moves forward without you. You are aging out and the hobby is just transforming to meet the needs of the folks that become the target demographic.

It's just killing itself, actually.

Some might argue that it's being murdered. And I might be inclined to agree. Games have been eating Hollywood's lunch for a while now.
Just saying

 

[danklord]

Life will find a way

 

[evanft]

God I hate doomer posts. It's like people have the memory of goldfish.

There are over 120 million current-gen consoles out there. There are millions and millions of PCs of various configurations. Those people are still going to buy games. This idea that a temporary increase in the price of certain components will have any real effect on an industry that has to make plans for development into the 2030s is absurd and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the world.

 

[MayauMiao]

If current gaming industry come crashing tomorrow, I have plenty of collection that will support my gaming habit for years to come.

So many backlogs, retro collection I barely even have time to even try all of it.

Gaming will eventually recover once the industry trims away the unnecessary fat (activists, overblown budget, "AAAA" game).

 

[PendekarRajawali]

I'm still rocking my 360

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

Have a kid and introduce him to gaming from the basics. Start with older stuff, retro, emulation, indies, etc. Work him or her up to AA / AAA over the course of years. Or befriend someone with a kid.

It's called the cycle of life. You aren't the focus anymore. No more big man babies.

And it will keep you with cheap local hardware you own.

And you'll have a good time, promise.

Gaming is so new to humans we think we have any semblance of what a "cycle" is. Gaming is 0.001% of human history. We have no idea what cycles gaming will go through in 200 years as part of the cycles of technology. Ride the wave. Welcome to life.

 

[Unfortunatecookie]

Three paths with one possible plot twist:

Path 1: PlayStation decides to subsidize the PS6, Xbox does the same for Helix. Both consoles launch at well-under $1K and are viable platforms for software development.

Path 2: One of the two companies — likely PlayStation — subsidizes their console, the other doesn't. This could (comically) recreate the Wii60 situation where you can buy two platforms and still be cheaper than buying one. Since Microsoft doesn't need Xbox but Sony needs PlayStation, the probability of the PS6 being the cheaper platform is much higher than the probability of Helix — and not some Samsung or ASUS-branded Xbox — being cheaper. PlayStation becomes the only viable console for next-gen, a number of (popular) devs exclusively support PlayStation because the math around Xbox is terrible, fast-forward to 2030ish and Xbox Helix is officially announced as the last Microsoft-made Xbox.

Path 3: Neither company subsidizes their consoles, they both launch at $1,000+ after taxes. The PS5 becomes a necessary platform to support due to its massive installed base, PS6 and Helix suffer tremendously at retail, both next-gen platforms become terrible investments for both developers and publishers; leading to the PS7 and Helix 2 being unnecessary avenues to pursue, potentially leading to radically different cheaper 'consoles' — pretty much platforms that share zero DNA with traditional consoles — after the PS6 and Helix.

One possible plot twist: PS6 handheld. If Sony continues with the (heavily rumored) two-platform strategy, the PS6 handheld could be the solution to keeping next-gen alive. For example, if the handheld is $500 and the console is $900, the former can get the ball rolling while the latter struggles at retail until the component supply chain unfucks itself. Could be preeeeeetty funny seeing the spiritual successor to the Vita being the key reason the PS6 doesn't completely collapse as a platform. It would be like a bench warmer who never started all season being the reason a team wins the championship.

 

[I'm nobody]

People who bitch alot about woke this and sad that

Should move on to knitting

Ill be gaming till I'm on death door step
Unless they can download me at some point and I'll game forever

 

[Haint]

Consoles are approaching cell phone prices.

Even with my salary, let's say my 5080 build I got for around 2K will cost me 3000. I built it when I made around 90K even with my new job and salary of 150K something about 3K for a high end PC just seems gross.

For consoles? I dunno man. Rather go backwards than forwards if 7-800 might be the norm - no way are they subsidizing hundreds per unit anymore and I just don't feel like anything more than 500 for a console is worth it and I was even considering a Pro but 900 dollars is a hell no.

Maybe I'm just accepting I'm watching the death of personal and open (key word, OPEN) computing, affordable gaming and high end home compute.

My guy if you're making 150K and can't find 3K every 3 years (which should be utterly inconsequential at your income level, that's about $80/month) you got much bigger problems than the price of GPU's.

 

[crackajack]

Consoles are approaching cell phone prices.

Cool! My last phone was under 400. 256GB version would be a bit cheaper of course. Snapdragon 8 Gen3 isn't highest end but when it's good enough for Steam Frame it should be okay for some time.

 

[Hudo]

Don't care. I can play my old shit like C&C Tiberian Sun, Heroes of Might & Magic III, WarCraft III or Age of Empires II and lots of other old games till I die. If the industry doesn't want me to participate (and spend my money), I don't fucking have to. Good luck trying to sell 2 billion copies of GTA 7 when no one can afford consoles or PC hardware. Both the gaming and hardware industries can get fucked.

 

[Dorfdad]

I think somewhere in the very near future we're mostly gonna be retrogamers. I don't intend to make the push into cloud gaming myself. Once local hardware dies so does my interest in gaming. It's hard not to doom about it honestly.

Why though? Of cloud can keep advancing and offer the same experience as local would you still feel this way? I know alot of you love collecting physical and I get it, but it seems that even those games need patches anymore. It's not like cartridge or cd days.

Also I'm with you on retro, I just wish there was a way to modernize them for today's TV's without ruining them