I can't believe that cartridges will end up outlasting discs.

Also games are expected to just work without having to do anything technical beyond signing into an account or basic video settings.

A decent gui, not fiddling with settings, widespread hardware specs. Games that expect a gamepad and will work with it. Novel input techniques.

I know I came out swinging on consoles, and I absolutely am biased. Instead of trying to one-up you, the best I can do is explain my position.

My biggest gripe on consoles is that it's a form of vendor lock in. Unless you follow in the footsteps of someone like Gary Bowser (Canada), you aren't playing newer Mario, Metroid, or Zelda games on a PC. That's pretty much the same with all exclusives.

Emulation is just now catching up to the PS5, and I suspect that's part of why they are moving from physical media. Xbox series x has no emulator, likewise Switch 2. This means that one needs to purchase several consoles to play these exclusives. I'm not going to lie, I have probably spent $2000 on mid-grade hardware over the past decade, but I just finished my major upgrades last year-unless I was need RAM.

As far as the GUI goes, I think it's fit for purpose. My desktop is configured differently because I use it for many things. If I wanted a gaming system that has a UI built for navigating games I could build one, but that is not a skill or expectation I would have for many. Supposedly, SteamOS can handle this, but we are getting pretty deep here. I think this gets deep into fiddling with settings.

So, as far as fiddling with settings goes, that is one of the biggest strengths a console has. If you have no technical skills, and like most can't navigate from your documents to your program files, I can't blame you for buying a console. Or, like some technical people I know, they spend all day fucking with settings and don't want to touch a computer when they get home.

I'm not sure what you mean about widespread hardware specs. The game is optimized for that particular hardware. Assuming the devs did their job right—and that's not always true—the game should run flawlessly on the console. Same goes for PC though. I bought a beefy video card last year because my 10-year old system was struggling with Clair Obscure. The same week they released a patch that fixed the issue.

Can you explain about games that won't work with a game pad? Steam I believe allows you to force a gamepad to work, but I'm far as away from my system at the moment.

For novel input techniques, motion controls are just not making it to PC. I played Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (both of which I purchased and have hardware to pay it on, TYVM) holding my phone under my game pad to add motion controls. It sucked. I have searched for an alternative, I don't have one.

I believe you need to power on the television and the PS, locate the correct input, log in?, navigate to the game, and then play. You may need to locate a controller. I imagine it still has regular software updates, etc.

My process for gaming PC Linux is to awaken my PC, log in, click the game and wait for Steam to launch it. From there, it's just regular updates. I might still need to go find a controller, depending on the game.

The biggest difference is that the console game is (should be) optimized for that platform. There have been plenty of terrible ports both ways, but you usually know that the game will just work. I on the other hand spent an hour or so getting to know Wine so that I could play og baldurs gate. I could have just bought it again, but once is enough.

Was it the roommate that was a hot mess, or the PlayStation?

You establish your own piracy hoard because there's no point in playing along anymore.

Oh, I know they'd never let that happen, that was mostly sarcasm sprinkled with the tiniest amount of wishful thinking.

The PS5 will continue getting games for quite some time, I imagine. The lack of physical media won't stop most people from getting a PS6, but its price will. It will never have the install base the PS5 does, so their games will be cross-gen for years into the PS6's life cycle just like with the PS4 and PS5.

Yeah, there are currently plenty of games for me to catch up on and buy before the deadline, most notably that physical copy of Silksong coming out in October (?). I'm just annoyed because I waited THIS long to get one, this is my first PS, and I then read this announcement a month later. I told my wife that with this console, if I was gonna splurge on it, would not be full of digital games like our Switch, only physical copies. So, I'm glad I can use PS4 and PS5 discs and that they have a large library full of stuff for me to spend my time and money on, just a little peeved that they had to do this at this scheduled time. But hey, who knows, maybe the announcement leads to public backlash and they reconsider their plan to phase out physical games. I can dream.

Exactly this. Now we just play the long..long..long waiting game until we're able to properly jailbreak the PS5 (not on 5 year old firmware) so we can use the dang thing we own as we see fit.

That’s just untrue. There’s so much to play. Lots of gems out there.