this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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The whole point of a console is ease, I pop in the disk, I play. If you take away that ease, it becomes just a locked down PC… why would you want that when you could just have a full PC?
Isn't it easier to turn it on and simply select the thing you want to play?
Yes. This is mixing up console advantages. The "game just works" one will still exist - in fact, it will pretty much be the only advantage left. Not worth the much higher cost of games and playing online.
Even at $100, it's still cheaper than games of yesteryear. If you take an average PS1 game, most sold for $50 in 1996, so $110 today. Games themselves are cheaper than ever, and consoles still have major advantages of just hooking it into a TV, and it simply works.
That whole "adjusted for inflation" thing is BS because the average wages haven't kept up.
That's part of the "game just works" thing. It's not worth the higher cost of games and playing online to me, but you do usually have to have some tech-savvy to use a PC that way.
Depends on how you take it, but wage growth has matched for core services and grown. Now if you are talking about education or housing costs, then no, they have went beyond wage growth. But electronics and energy? Wages have outpaces their costs and inflation quite a lot.
Okay, general cost of living, then. How much the average person can afford to buy has not kept up.
Depends on what you are talking about again, because in general Americans are able to afford more 'stuff' than they ever have.
I don't want to make digital seem better, but for this argument it is... you don't even need the disc, you just turn on the console and select the game. All from the comfort of your sofa. Hell, you don't even need to go to a store or wait for a delivery in the first place, all those bytes just come to you.
I think something to realize here is that A.) The above is why the majority of people just use digital at this point, and B.) Inserting a brand new game disc into your console still requires downloads, installing and often being online to do so anyway. Modern games rarely even fit on one disc, so the disc is less useful that it was in the XBox OG and PS1 days. It's more like what Nintendo is doing with the Game Key Carts.
I think the point us more tied to the eol for the ps3 when everyone lost all their digital content, whereas the same player on pc would still have all their titles playable on steam or gog.
THIS 100%
Modern game discs are literally just Mountain Dew Verification Cans™
You are correct. Which is why at this point you might as well go PC. Console games used to be playable without internet, just pop in and enjoy. I am not referencing the terrible experience it has become today (guess I am old). Nostalgia I suppose for an era that did already die.
Sorry, no. My video drivers fucked up while installing somehow and I had to blow them out with DDU and reinstall everything to get normal functioning back on my PC. I've had countless random errors, performance hangs, and more due to just random stupid Windows 11 shit that had to be identified and solved by repeated web searches and in a few cases obtaining and running specialized tools to cleanse my system of the filth W11 is full of.
NONE of this is part of the usual console experience. Exceptions exist, yes. And technical support when they occur is dramatically simpler because they're all the same.
I think you're forgetting just how fucking stupid the average person is, and how lazy they are. We're in the era of cognitive surrender to chatGPT. You think these drooling morons want to web search how to fix a driver installation somehow getting corrupted?
You're conflating the PC experience with the Windows experience.
You think Linux is going to be a better experience? What do you think someone will think the user will think when they encounter a program or game that simply refuses to run on Linux?
You're too deep in the sauce, man. I have to reiterate that the average gamer is both horribly stupid and extremely lazy. You gotta keep that in mind. People smart enough and dedicated enough to go through the hurdles associated with gaming on a PC are likely already using one as their primary or sole platform.
As someone who daily drives Linux since '96, I can say that while it's a much better OS and way less enshitified, driver issues, hardware issues, compatibility issues, and everything else above is just part of PC gaming as a whole. The problems I've had to fight with over the years most people would have given up and installed windows.
Console gaming is definitely way less problematic and when problems do arise, much simpler to troubleshoot.
Umm, I mean you just turn on your console and play the game. Even easier than popping in a CD/DVD and zero worries about scratching and having to rebuy the thing.
Because a console will still be plug in and play.