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Xbox's new policy — say goodbye to unofficial accessories from November thanks to error '0x82d60002'
(www.windowscentral.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Simple: because they're cheaper.
Like, say you build a gaming PC that's comparable to a PS5. I think it would be extremely hard to come up with a combination of PSU, ram, mobo, GPU, CPU, wifi, storage, case, keyboard, mouse, and game controller that costs less than a PS5 and has comparable performance. Even if you picked entry-level components. And you still have to pay the Windows tax probably. And all of that was much more difficult than just buying a PS5 -- not everybody has the time.
Then again, rebuying all your games and paying way too much for them is something to take into account. But admittedly, the PS5's thing where you can play some PS4 games is pretty neat.
As a consumer, having certified static hardware configuration means you know exactly how it’s going to run off reviews on the same hardware. You know that you are going to get support the manufacturer and aren’t going to have to worry about the manufacturer of the motherboard pointing fingers at the manufacturer of the GPU or RAM or CPU if you have a problem. Updates and driver support is all handled by the OS.
But probably the biggest reason is that consoles already have the best name recognition, higher user adoption, and hardware is sold at a discount compared to comparable PCs.
Theres actually a single one on the PS5, it essentially has a chip to hardware accelerate storage to ram loading speeds that PC speeds cant fully tap into yet.
Playstation devs are just badly leveraging the sole advantage it has.
The Xbox is virtualy a pc.
You're absolutely correct about this chip - but it's actually possible to replicate on PC with modern GPUs and CPUs, as they have really fast decompression blocks for specific algorithms that would work for game assets.
The issue is that for compatibility reasons developers don't rely on them.
Isn't direct storage the windows equivalent?
it has some of the speed, but it's not quite the same. direct storage is something the Xbox would have access to, but xbox is not directly hardware accelerated in the same way the PS5 is. Think similar to FSR VS DLSS. one utilizes special hardware in order to achieve its result.
Console developers sell at a loss specifically to tie you to their ecosystem and get as much money from you as possible. Which is why it's so complicated to get a PC equivalent in specs to, say, a PS5 at the price of an actual PS5 - unless you go to the used parts route and learn how to assemble parts by yourself.
Because it is cheaper to develop for, so you tend to get games that take better advantage of the hardware and increase performance.
You also have consumer inertia too.
But are they worse than a $500 off the shelf computer?
Your graphics card might be cheaper than a whole console, but you still spent more money on a computer initially, so you would have to compare the cost of two consoles to one new computer and an upgrade.
And it likely is better performance now on PC versus console now for only a bit more money, but PC's haven't caught up on price for equivalent performance and likely never will.
And I say this as someone whose last console that was bought for its performance was a PS3.
Consoles are initially sold at a loss or no profit to incentivise people to buy games on their platform, where the real profit is made. However, at this point in time, yes, you can buy pre-built gaming PCs for around $500 that will run circles around an XBOX Series X or PlayStation 5. You can even buy a $300 office computer then pop an A580 or something in it and make it a fully-equipped gaming PC. Even more so if you use your own hardware and build it yourself.
If you're just looking for something that works out of the box when you buy it, there are tonnes of people on Facebook Marketplace selling custom-built gaming PCs for around that price range that will still outperform lastest-generation consoles.
Don't forget, when comparing performance, consoles generally use a mixture of medium/high settings to guarantee a steady 60 FPS whereas PC testing is traditionally done on Ultra/High presets.
I will say that PCs do require a bit more technical knowledge and maybe some tinkering to get the best performance though. If all you do is game and you know nothing about how to do anything else on the computer, I would recommend the console ten out of ten times.
I can also buy and sell console games 2nd hand though which isn't possible on PC anymore.
That said, PC piracy probably wins overall if you're looking the absolute cheapest option. But that's kind of a different set of arguments.
That's true, I miss secondhand PC games too.
PCs have other benefits too, such as free online access that would require a subscription on consoles. Unrelated to gaming, a PC can be used for other things too. The only non-gaming use for a console is as a home media player. A PC can do that and much more. A gaming PC also makes an excellent productivity machine, whereas you can't exactly edit spreadsheets and presentations on most consoles (except the Steam Deck).
I gamed on PC for many years and basically only moved to a console when I had kids a few a years back.
Both have benefits. For me, I like the not being distracted by other stuff on the console. Like if I sit down to game, on PC I'd often just end up on YouTube, twitch, check reddit, emails, whatever. I like that my console I just use for gaming.
I still play on my PC from time to time and there's obviously games that are only on PC, but my preference is console for the current phase of life and that's fine for me.
Back in the day, Nintendo got big on quality control. That's less of a selling point now that almost every big publisher is pushing for yearly releases and devs need to rush out unfinished games to meet corporate expectations. A console was also just miles ahead in user friendliness that a computer up until around the PS4/Xbone.
The way forward for consoles these days is to have more interesting hardware, but Microsoft is resistant to just having gyro in the xbox controller so don't hold your breath for the next xbox being anything worth looking at.
If you use windows, this is the way it will be on PC in a few years as well.
Didn't we lose one of the two main gpu producers recently?
Lose one? I'm not sure what you're talking about, to be fair. Are you thinking about EVGA no longer making GPUs? They're just making the boards, not the chips, many competitors exist.
We have 3 major players providing GPUs in the PC market: Nvidia with a significant lead, AMD, and the newcomer Intel.
EVGA, that's who I was thinking of. So we still lose them really from the forefront. Also like Intel and AMD isn't pushing for further control. Exactly what I meant.
Evga is an AIB(and a single one in a goant pool), not a GPU designer like Nvidia/Intel/AMD are. The equivalent in console terms would be like madcatz dropping out of the accesory creation game. The only difference is that the accessory makers also have a hand in the hardwares design, but not the actual compute core itself.
I appreciate you clarifying that, they were one of the largest would you not agree? Anyway point still stands, not enough competition in the gpu designer market would you agree?
one of the largest yes, but the latter part of your statement is completely off.
just talking about nvidia AIBS alone off the top of my head, theres: MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, Zotac, Galax, Colorful, Inno3d, PNY, Gainward, Palit.
and this is just nvidias optioins. There's a lot of competition. EVGA was a favorite to those living in the U.S due to having reletively better customer service, but it was far from not having competition.
If you count integrated GPUs (which still absolutely dominate the non-specialist PC and laptop market), Intel are hardly a newcomer. Their foray into discrete GPUs is new, but the distinction is fairly arbitrary from a technical perspective.
Both Intel Arc and the integrated SOC GPUs use Intel's Xe architecture. There are obviously big differences between integrated and discrete GPUs, but they're largely implementation rather than base architecture. Implementing something on-die is a different task than implementing something on its own wafer, but that's not where the serious design legwork goes.
I assume he meant EVGA. They're a hardware company that used to manufacture graphics cards designed by Nvidia but exited the GPU market because of unfavorable contract conditions eating into their profit margins.
Plenty of other third-party manufacturers exist like Sapphire, XFX, PowerColor, Zotac, ASRock, Inno3D, Colorful, MSI and ASUS.
As for the main companies that design (and also manufacture) GPU's: AMD, Nvidia and more recently Intel.
No? Nvidia and AMD have been the main competitors for a while in the high end space, and Intel recently entered that market after dominating the integrated GPU space.
I think the moment that happens, it'll truly become the year of the Linux desktop.
Over the course of fifteen years, we went from WINE being able to run nothing but World of Warcraft in a playable state, to thousands of games now being playable through Proton with equivalent or even sometimes better performance than Windows.
Valve were wise to put their eggs in the Linux basket, because they've evolved Linux as a gaming platform by leaps and bounds. Steam Machines may have flopped but the Steam Deck has sold millions and given developers legitimate reason to support Linux (or at least SteamOS.)
There's been talk about Microsoft plastering ads all over Windows 11 or making Windows 12 a subscription-only OS. Linux is free, open source and ad-free.
While there some advantages to that static more gate kept setup that we all could argue about for years on end, the answer to your question boils down to money and control like pretty much everything else.
because having a stable, unchanging platform is a lot easier to code on and extract performance from than the 100,000,000,000 billion possible combinations of PC hardware.
edit
You can get angry over it all you want, it doesnt change the fact that its the truth.
In fact, the state of games in general is shit because a lot of you fucking goblins with more money than sense keep running out and pre-ordering/day1ing games and fawning over them no matter how much of a broken piece of shit they are, and white knight against any and all criticism. Maybe if YOU stopped creating a market for shitty, broken, badly performing games, They'd stop fucking releasing shitty, broken, badly performing games.
But no, you don't want to be responsible for your actions, So you want to take it out on everyone else.. because god forbid it ever be mommies special little angel thats at fault.
So remember that next time you want to scree about consoles or whatever else. Cause they are not the problem. People like you are.
I don't have a lot of time for gaming, and my desktop computer I built 12 years ago still works for what I need it for (and the occasional Rocket League rounds), so the PS5 is just easier. Plug and play when I want to.
Been playing games I got through the PS+ Extra for two years, and haven't purcy for a single game since, as I'm a patient gamer, and the selection of games is right up my alley!
Oh, and if I'd have the money (and time), I'd get aPC instead. Maybe when the PS6 is released.
But its 2023, pc gamers get free games every week on epic without having to pay for an online subscription, and thats solely just epic.
Its not my fault, so why don't you go take a breath.
Ah yes, shooting the messenger cause you don't like the message.
What a fine argument.