FACTS:
1. Gaming consoles are just PCs with a ton of limitations imposed on them by the manufacturer

Everything is freedom vs convince.

It was not true for the generation before the previous one. But since PS4 and Xbox one it have become true.

I love my ps5 lol

But cheaper

@Root gaming consoles don’t get released every year, new ones come out 5-7 years after the last gen. Spending 500 bucks and getting decent performance for those years or more is a huge plus. Of course, a nice gaming pc will kick my poor little ps5 to the trash in terms of horsepower, plus all the flexibility that PCs have in general

I am an absolute PC fanboy but even I have to admit that consoles are not just limited PCs.

They are specialized PCs with unified hardware and software.

That benefits the gamers and the developers.

But there are many downsides obviously.
Limited performance, customization and the ability to use mods.
But most important: They brainwash you into the believe that a gamepad is good for shooters and RTS games.

PC master race 🤘

That’s just one fact. Where are the rest?

@Lensflare Agreed with everything you said 100% my dude. One thing that I would say tho, for some reason I merk mfkers better on warzone with a controller, my team still believes this to this day, we switch from time to time on keyboard. One game that is impossible to play with controller on the PC for us is Rainbow Six siege. We have altogether abandoned that game due to the toxic community, but you get my gist

PC Masturbrace for the win!

So gaming consoles are smartphones.

@Root a console has a cycle of 5-10 years. New generations tend to 10 years and cost 500€.

Comparing that with my 3500€ PC Rack. Really what are you talking about!

@KDSBest Ah re.

@KDSBest you don't need a 3500 dollar PC to play new games.

Actually for me consoles are less convenient. The TV is not as good as a monitor. Couch while comfortable not a good for me as office chair. Controllers have the battery hassle. To play the games I want I need 3 devices. And replace them after a few years (don't have that much space in my TV closet).
You need a subscription to play games online and receive updates. Games are extremely expensive.

So yeah for me it's highly inconvenient and far more expensive. Only really liked the wii. That added some value with unique controls and gameplay. And games that you can play with a group (offline multiplayer) is fun and doable with a console.

@hjk101 also controllers are compatible with PC as well, so it's not a weird choice if only keyboard.

I use dualshock4 controller with my PC regularly which is very convenient for action games and platformers

Quite true, but

Fact2: consoles have traditionally forced some devs (yes, I said some. don't bring Cyberpunk into this) to optimize their games for a specific set of hardware that they otherwise wouldn't have.

@jiraTicket not anymore. It's a "put more hardware in it" game now. Just like with all the PC software as well

@hjk101

I agree... but that's why I play on a Switch a lot ;)

@iiii I am fully aware that the hardware is just a PC. But despite that - the fact that there are basically a set of consoles which have a specific hardware setup will make some game producers at consider optimizing for that setup. If nothing else they know there will be separate reviews for each platform and the console reviews will take into account how well the game runs on the hardware.
Whereas a standard PC review will not.

@jiraTicket that's why Sony have put an insanely fast SSD into the console so that any sloppy loading would be fast anyway. I can't really see how that can go wrong. /S

Also by the example of Cyberpunk we all know that reviews mean nothing.

@iiii Yes, I know Cyberpunk makes this argument weaker.
But consider that the reason Cyberpunk stands out as a negative is that many other games ARE optimized for consoles. Like Uncharted for instance.

If consoles did not exist and everyone just had custom PC:s I'm quite sure there would be less optimizing - as it's not as clear for a PC consumer to see which games run well on their custom hardware - than it is to see which games run well on a console.

@jiraTicket we also have lots of examples of game ports which run horribly on almost the same hardware as consoles.

@jiraTicket
I don't think, that Cyberpunk 2077 is any argument here. It is the one extreme outlier in an ocean of console-first games.

It isnt as obvious as when consoles only had one GiB RAM - but the console focus is still visible everywhere.
Look for actions requiring longer button presses, quicktime events, button-mash combos, bad default keyboard control assignments, missing controls configuration dialogue, auto-aim features, missing world state persistence (like enemies respawning when revisiting an area, disappearing items, debries, and bodies), save points...
Apart from eye candy there is not much you can add to a console-optimized game to make it use the additional computing power a gaming PC offers. Modding is the big thing here - as it allows the community to fix the console-optimization on PC - like the famously horrible menu in Skyrim.
But even with modding, you can see the games origin pretty well most of the time.

@Oktokolo brilliant point

@Oktokolo what you call a 'console first' design is actually a 'gamepad' design mostly. Which is not something bad as gamepad is a better way of playing many games by the overall design of those types of games (like platformers).

@iiii
The input device preference is indeed a big part of it.
I almost exclusively play RTS basebuilders and 1st. and 3rd. person 3D RPGs and shooter (stealth gameplay prefered). So i basically only look at games where keyboard and mouse actually are the better choice.
Therefore i might be a bit biased because i only see the cases, where console-orientation worsens my experience and none where it benefits me.

But a big thing in RPGs is the missing interactivity and persistence of game worlds. That is a relict of the past where consoles just did not had enough RAM. They still have less RAM for the actual game world than the average PC used for games (16 GiB RAM + 4 GiB GPU RAM is standard now).

Also a big thing in RPGs and shooters is the NPC AI. AI needs more CPU than RAM. And that basically hard limits the amount of real NPC you can have doing something at the same time.
Assassins Creed "solved" that by having swarms of dummy NPCs which all do the same thing at the same time...

Ok enough, gaming is all about having fun. I had a blast playing demon souls on ps5 and Mario oddyssey on switch. They aren’t making use of the superior tech a strong pc has to offer but even the Super Nintendo is still imo one of the greatest gaming machines of all time

@d-fanelli I still wish Nintendo would produce something that could compete with the other major consoles. I still love my switch, but damn it if it is not far behind in what we want it to do

@AleCx04 compete in terms of gpu cpu power? Yeah it’s way behind the series x and ps5 in terms of that but still impressive how it can run crysis remastered

@AleCx04 but what do you want it to do? It plays games just fine.

@Oktokolo Agree.

My point was just to comment that while ”consoles are just PC:s now” - they still have a huge influence on how games are developed and optimized for specific setups.

Your point about experiences optimized for the gamepad is a good addition to that.

@jiraTicket is optimization for gamepad a bad thing in your opinion?

To some extent I think one of the positives of the console market brings is the massive sales of a specific controller.
Yes it sucks for us PC gamers when keyboards+mouse isn’t supported but on the other hand, I never think something like the WiiMote could’ve made it big time if Nintendo was just a PC developer who sold it as an accessory.

It’s often easier to force adoption of something when a console manufacturer sells millions of units with the same prepackaged hardware and controller.

@iiii Nope. gamepads are good. And I think that if consoles had never existed we would have terrible gamepad support. Cause it’s way harder to build gamepad support for the fragmented PC accessory market than for standardized console gamepads.

@c3r38r170 ?

@iiii true, but for comparable hardware to PS5 it is at least 1,5k

@KDSBest the main question is do you need such hardware. Games don't utilize all the capabilities of hardware at launch. It takes time to learn it

@jiraTicket most gamepads now utilize XInput which is standardized and behaves virtually identical despite using original Microsoft controller or third party one

@iiii purchase Vampyr, play it, and the let me know if it runs fine on it.

I get that it is a port, but looking at how much this thing struggles to get even decent fps is a kick in the ass.

The only ported games it plays well are those from orevious generations. Getting a ps or an xbox console is not an issue with this, they could both run nintendo games if the deal was there, the other way around is not real and nintendo is only good at running nintendo games or old ass ports. So no, it doesn't run games just fine.

@AleCx04 if it doesn't play some games well, doesn't mean it is worthless

@iiii you're going to have to point me to the section in which I said it was worthless. If anything I said I like the thing, but want for it to do what its supposed to (play games) well.

Of all of Nintendo's previous consoles, this is the one that literally fails at being able to play its entire repertoire. I don't see why it is too much for me to ask that a gaming console does just that: be able to play its entire catalogue of games. Which it (currently) cannot.

@AleCx04 it plays almost all of the games, except those that are not suitable for it in the first place but we're shoved in anyway. At least that's how it looks.

@iiii and you know how that gets fixed? by actually producing a console that can compete with all the other generations.

@AleCx04 or by producing software suitable for the console. Not all problems are fixed by throwing more hardware at it. That's why software nowadays is mostly a hot pile of shit.

@iiii that's an old story, when console were their own architecture.
Since they are all X86 and very much due to good engines close to the PC. This information isn't true anymore.

Console and PC Dev are very similar nowadays.