You can get a gaming laptop for that stick bazzite on it or use steam big picture on launch you’ve got a platform that does +60fps 4k HDR with 40 years worth of games. Consoles are getting very close to being irrelevant unless you like sports titles.
Theres only been one reason to buy a console for over a decade:
Exclusives and Natively Developed Titles.
Sure, you can play Monster Hunter World and The Last of Us on PC, but they look worse and handle like a classic japanese car.
A classic Japanese car? Like those nimble little things that drift down crazy steep mountains and stuff?
+60fps 2160p from a $700 gaming laptop is extremely unlikely. Unless you only play old games or really light stuff.
Only the lowest tier gaming laptops are at that price point these days. Laptops are more expensive than they were 10 years ago.
Even not running at max, you won’t get anywhere near 4K 60fps on a $700 laptop. A laptop 4050 at 45W (the best you’re going to get at the price) will only achieve 80fps in GTA V at 1080p high (not max). What chance will it stand at 4K? Then remember that that’s an 11 year old game (albeit one that’s had updates).
Even if it did have the horsepower, the 6GB VRAM would be used up immediately and render games unplayable.
I think people are underestimating how expensive gaming laptops have become. The $700 ones are good for eSports and old games. They are not 4K gaming machines.
Then on top of that, the laptops in that price range will have a 250-500GB SSD. Not enough for a reasonable amount of new games.
Using a laptop as a console that you can occasionally unplug and play on the go is a good idea. But if you want 4K you’re gonna be paying a hell of a lot more than $700 lol
I do even more appropriate if you count DLSS like the pro is, “play older games” basically what Sony has atm
Even with DLSS or FSR, you’d have to be at a decent resolution for upscaling to 4K not to look bad.
“play older games” basically what Sony has atm
I don’t really get what you mean. Almost all new games that come out will have a PS5 version? Am I being dumb here and misinterpreting you?
E: I checked BestBuy (the only US PC retailer I know of, I’m not from the US), and the best GPU in a $700 laptop is a RTX 4050 laptop edition, power-limited to 45W. Looking at benchmarks, this often struggles to reach 60FPS in GTA V at high settings - a game that released 11 years ago! And remember that’s 1080P!
Not only that, the SSD in it is only 500GB. So just 3-6 modern games once you factor in the Windows install.
You’re looking at a significant price if you want to use a laptop as a 4K console. Even with DLSS, which will render the game at 66% of the display resolution, you’d still need a capable 1440p gaming laptop. And 1440p is ~80% more pixels to push than 1080p.
At $700 you could build a pretty decent PC that would last a lot longer (3060 12gb, Ryzen 5 5600, 16gb of DDR4), and build a steam library that you’ll have 20 years from now. I’ve had the same monitor, keyboard and mouse for an easy 10; controllers don’t last that long. They’re reaching a point where there’s less and less of an actual argument for owning one.
build a steam library that you’ll have 20 years from now
How do you know that Steam will be around in 20 years?
Use GOG instead. The DRM-free game installers will outlive Steam :)
How do you know that Steam will be around in 20 years?
Use GOG instead, since the DRM-free game installers will outlive Steam :)
How do you know Windows will keep compatibility in 20 years? Valve money partially goes into Proton/WINE development and an evolution of that will absolutely be around in 20 years, just WINE was around 20 years ago already. CD Project doesn’t put any GOG/Cyberpunk money into breaking the Windows monopoly. (Also plenty of titles on Steam come without DRM because DRM is optional.)
How do you know Windows will keep compatibility in 20 years?
I didn’t mention Windows anywhere in my comment? GOG has Linux versions of games too, for games with Linux ports.
plenty of titles on Steam come without DRM because DRM is optional
That’s true - for the DRM-free Steam games, you can just keep a separate backup copy of the game files. They usually run fine without Steam installed.
My GOG games run great on wine, it just takes a bit more work to install them. Wine has better support for early windows games than windows does now.
How many people actually download and store those installers though? I think GOG is awesome too but practically if you exclusively shop there you have the same problem unless you have a massive NAS on hand
I’ve still got my original installers and CD keys for Unreal Tournament 99 GOTY, Need for Speed Underground, Trackmania United, and a bunch of others, and even some DOS games, so there’s at least some of us that keep the installers. I have a few of them on USB hard drives I’ve collected over the last 25 years or so… I really need to move them onto my NAS. :)
I used to buy directly from the publisher though. Some of them still have working download links, for example Ubisoft/Nadeo still have a working download link for Trackmania United even though it’s nearly 20 years old now.
How many people actually download and store those installers though?
… The hundreds of GOG-based torrents disagree with this sentiment. You don’t need EVERY person to store it. Just a handful of seedboxes can feed the world sort of thing…
Edit: But this does risk someone being malicious with the torrent of course…
Replace the 3060 with an equally-priced AMD card and you’ll actually get something decent for your money. Nvidia is horrible at these “lower” price points.
I mean, if you like horrible driver stability; sure. There’s a reason NVidia has like 75% of the market share, and it’s simply because they have a better product. Drivers are more stable, everyone develops for CUDA processing, lots of games only support DLSS for frame-gen, all of the GPU accelerated AI stuff is all NVidia centered, etc.
It comes pretty close to feature parity in terms of ownership. My kids can play my steam library on their own computers, I can play it on any machine I own, I don’t have to pay them any kind of rental fee, and they maintain my software for me.
Only thing I can’t do is what…sell my games to someone else? I don’t do that anyways.
I’m not betting on Steam disappearing in the next ten years. I probably wouldn’t even bet that they’ll disappear in my lifetime. But, they could, anything could happen, and then you don’t have that library anymore. Physical is the only way to truly own.
It’s too expensive. $500 is already too much for these things.
But capitalism’s gotta capitalism.
$700 is actually probably a fair price for a PS5. You can’t really build an equivalent PC for less than that. $900 to $1,200 would probably be close to how much manufacturing the PS5 Pro costs.
But PSN subsidizes these costs, which is why these systems can be this “affordable”.
the fuck you are smoking? my first desktop kost that much and it ran crysis really fucking good
These days a good GPU costs almost $700 just by itself, mid range is almost $500, value is $400, budget is $250
The 4060 or the 7600xt are about in the ballpark for the original ps5, but you can’t beat the price if you don’t already have a computer with most of the components
I doubt it costs that much. You’re looking at it from buying PC components perspective. But they are mass producing identical boards with components that are 4+ years old by now, except the GPU. The cost of production is probably around the same as it was for non-Pro when it was released.
900 to 1200’s an insane guess. This many years out R&D’s sure to have chilled out and companies that buy parts by the millions get them at much lower prices than individuals, plus partner companies that kit out their facilities to manufacture those parts recoup their investments in those facilities over time as well. I’m sure Sony’s still taking a few bucks hit on the sale of a console but it’s nowhere near close to double.
If you think $700 is bad, it’ll be £700 in the UK.
Which is $913.
Also:
-
median household income, UK (2022): £32,400 ($42,265)
-
median household income, USA (2022): $74,580
A PS5 Pro is 26% of the typical UK household monthly income.
A PS5 Pro is 11% of the typical US household monthly income.
The US pricing is bad. The UK pricing is absolutely insane.
I stopped buying consoles after they wanted to charge me to use the internet. That’s not how this works.
So, 24 years ago? If so, I’m right there with you in the “getting old” camp.
This is yet another nail in the coffin of physical media. Or, in other words games you actually own instead of long term lease.
It’s not like physical media makes any difference anyway these days.
Actual disk often gets just a glorified installer, and even if it includes the entire game you’re likely to have to activate it online anyway.
The “own your games” ship has sailed long ago, unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups.
This in my opinion is one of the valid use cases of a blockchain/NFTs: they provide provable ownership of digital goods. This means that if implemented, in the future we could actually own games music movies ebooks etc. The only remaining step would be a decentralized torrent-like system that allows the users to download the licensed content that they own via their nft.
How would that support “First Sale Doctrine”?
How would an NFT help in any way? We’re not lacking the means to prove you bought the game. We’re lacking companies willing to sell you games and laws that prevent companies from saying “buy” when they mean “rent”. If we got to a place where torrenting software you’ve bought in the past is legal, we don’t need NFTs to accomplish it…
If you can’t modify it, sell it or know what the game software is even doing then calling that “ownership” would be rather lacking. I mean in terms of traditional ownership, not the modern definition: “page 69 of the EULA defines “purchasing” (the software) as a limited, non-transferable lease which can stop working at any time due to dependency on a proprietary server code we will never share I fucked your mom”.
I mean, I can actually own a bunch of stuff as long as it doesn’t have some sort of proprietary DRM bullshit attached to it.
The problem isn’t that there’s no way to obtain media in a non-bullshit way. The problem is that distributors don’t want to provide media in a non-bullshit way.
unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups
Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer. I try to buy games there instead of Steam, purely for this reason.
Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer.
Note that this is a major selling point for GOG and available on most of their library, but unlike their early days, not everything is DRM-free.
Is it possible for modern games to fit on a disk?
I think it would be an interesting change if brand new games had a hard limit on file size so they can fit on and play from an actual disk.
Absolutely. It just depends a lot on the game of course. A blueray disk can contain over 100 GB. But a game could be split over several disks too. It was rather common to do that with CDs on the original PlayStation.
It does if you rent
I’ve been using gamefly for a while, I can’t rent digital only games
The difference is the price of buying discs vs. buying from a digital store that has no competitors.
I’ve bought almost exclusively second-hand discs for my PS5, because they’re like half the price for the exact same content.
Sadly it’ll probably be just a matter of time before those will be phased out as well, one way or another.
For $700 they could at least throw in a 4k Blu-ray player.
Then again, I ponied up extra for the disc version of the original ps5 for that exact reason, only to find out the media player software is a giant piece of garbage that was clearly given no effort. So I can’t say I’m too surprised.
I remember thinking it was bs when half life 2 required a steam account and now everyone loves it.
For better or worse, the landscape has shifted since then. I can’t imagine people love Steam for being Steam, but rather for being the most consumer-friendly platform on PC.
Refunds? No questions asked if it’s within 2 weeks and 2 hours of playtime.
User reviews and ratings? Yes, and even comments on those reviews.
Community content? Steam discussions, guides, art, etc. Even mods with the workshop.
Bribes development studios for exclusivity deals? Nope! Devs can release games wherever the fuck they want.
Platform support? PC. Not just Windows, but going out of their way to make Linux a first class citizen. They even support Crapple despite its miniscule market share among PC gamers.
unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups
or you straight up pirate it.
There’s not a lot of brave souls doing this as a passionate hobby any longer. Now it’s for the clout, to inject malware, or to receive monetary donations. Or all three!
I hope I am wrong, and we can get back to the passionate hobby, but it’s looking kinda grim from my point of view.
IDK. Between the price tag and lack of the disc drive IDK how many people are gonna buy this thing. It’s probably just for people who HAVE to have the highest graphics, to keep them from getting a gaming PC until the PS6 is ready for them.
I’m not sure. If that is their strategy they’re dancing on a razor. I mean, the market is pretty slim. Basically, you can get a pretty sweet gaming PC for the price they’re offering. And if you project the amount of games you’ll get and estimate the price differential with prices of the same games on a PC you might be able to uprate the specs a few times. I would say that a PS5 with a reasonable amount of games is probably worth a similar amount to a $1k PC.
Or, in other words games you actually own
Newer games rarely have the entire game on the disc. Usually there’s mandatory patches that must be downloaded to play it. I’ve seen games where there’s only a few hundred MB on the disc while the whole game is maybe 15 or 20 GB.
This means you don’t really own the game, since if Sony (or Microsoft or whoever) take down the downloads for the game, you won’t actually be able to play it any more.
Essentially your choice is between a physical license key (the disc) plus a download of the game, or a digital license key plus a download of the game.
And now, the physical licence path is even less accessible. The thing with the physical licence key is it’s transferrable even if the actual data is stored elsewhere. It’s a thin veneer, I mean, Sony could gate access to this data to the first account/machine that activated it. So even this advantage is taken away.
Some enterprise software used to (or maybe still do) use USB dongles for licensing… I’m honestly wondering if games are going to move that way too. Given the fact that practically every game needs a launch day patch, why even have a DVD/Blu-Ray if instead you could just have smaller, more reliable USB dongles? I suspect that in the next generation or two of game consoles, we’ll no longer see discs at all.
