At least PC gamers dont get constantly butt f***ed by microsoft, thats for damn sure. paying to play online? please.

1. You can get a high quality rig for under $1000 if you're smart. Then when the next generation of hardware-demanding games come out for PC, all you have to do is switch out certain components. It also beats the price of paying $60 a year for online access what Steam/PC apps provides for free.

2. It also doesn't have the restrictions bounded by a console environment.

3. That is opinion. There hasn't been a huge push for either genre because a) the control scheme doesn't suit a gamepad b) the online architecture seems challenging to get right. PC developers have been doing it for years.

4. If you know what you're doing it can be as easy as that, but I guess if you're lazy and/or impatient, sure.

5. You can find the right setup to be able to do that on PC.

6. If rumours are true, DRM on consoles is about to get a lot more popular.

7. Diablo 3 is just one game. The quality in PC exclusives spans back decades. The back catalogue of exclusive games for PC is unrivaled, and that includes classics, not just 'quantity over quality'. There are plenty more on their way, but made by indies.

Either way, if you supplement your PC gaming with Sony or Nintendo consoles (or vice versa) you can't go far wrong. With PC you see the benefit of ultimate choice. If Microsoft had it their way, PC gamers would be paying more and it would be a closed environment on an open platform. See landog's comment below for those benefits.

Consoles biggest stregth is that it is convienant to use, and doesn't take any sort of tech knowledge to use. Most of your comments were very subjective or entirely inaccurate.

1. A mid-level rig will cost you about the same as say the next gen consoles releasing...maybe a bit more depending on how you want to use it. Long term though you will save money on games and upgrade costs to the next generation, and will likely play all games with better quality right off the bat...with notable exceptions.

2. Can't argue there as there is no first party in regards to PC. If you prefer the console exclusives then that's your only choice to play them. PC does have a lot more exclusives than all systems combined though, and many are AAA. Overall PC has the most support of any game playing machine out there.

3. Very myopic view, and completely subjective.

4. Somewhat true here, but PC's have made great strides in this regard. However despite what digitalRaptor said above, if you aren't tech minded it is not a simple thing and has it's own disadvantages not being a closed system.

5. Quite a few games can be played with a regular controller. 360's controller works with a PC by just plugging it in, and DS controllers work with a driver install. Mouse/KB are preferable though depending on game, and in this regard PC offers more choice. Also I know several people who play their PC's just like they would a console on a TV, and they don't even have high end rigs. This will probably become even more true with Steam pushing their big picture thing.

6. DRM is on consoles as well, or maybe you've missed the whole online pass thing. While I don't put stock in current rumors, there is a possibility it could become very restrictive on the next consoles. PC has the benefit that at least a day after release you can get a DRM free version of the game if your that fussed about it.

7. Trollish comment not worth discrediting.

I'm a Sony fan, and love my PS, but don't deny that the PC has it's strengths over consoles, and all this bickering over which is better(on both sides) really depends on the person, and not the platform.

These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse

Contractual agreements are not the same as “gentlemen” agreements. If you think that they work with their distributors a month before production then their entire business model is trash. They work with companies like nvidia constantly for building the graphics cards they need. They work with companies that build motherboards years in advance. This is what proper business planning does.

They are not buying components on a whim like a consumer. So again, considering the ram isn’t a singular module and is integrated into the motherboard I highly doubt they wouldn’t have a final schematic that they are supposed to be building around.

If they are delaying production another 3 years then it’s obvious again this is an after though project and is just trying to be responsive to their bad execution they had the last 14 years.

It also isn’t far fetched to use their failure to produce first party titles the last 7 years including the highly anticipated games I mentioned all being cancelled. That they would continue to you know… lie

Yeah with FSR 5 they should be able to offer a much cheaper version of Helix.

Series S is what has killed Xbox Series so... Will they dare?

The factors are largely external. Covid and Russia-Ukraine war causing inflation led to the first price increase in 2022.

Then we get Trump's tariffs increasing hardware prices, AI boom causing a RAM crisis, war on Iran causing a worldwide fuel crisis which impacts the cost of everything.

Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum. The last few years have been a shitshow and lot of it was definitely avoidable.

LucasRuinedChildhood,

For sure. No disagreement on the external factors doing a lot of this. Where I have to gently push back however is on two fronts:

1. The pandemic definitely caused some issues: asynchronous development was a big issue and really complicated timelines and affected game quality. At the same time, when it comes to price hikes, it's really difficult to know what was genuine necessity and what was taking consumers for a ride. The pandemic brought about "stag-flation" which was increasing prices and stagnant wages, which was a problem caused by supply chain constraints. There was also "Greed-flation", where companies that were slightly affected or had no issues took advantage of the situation and squeezed everyone citing supply chain issues when there were none.

2. It's definitely true that the tariffs, AI boom, and RAM crisis were all things enabled by tech broligarchs throwing money at this caricature of a world leader, one of them being Satya Nadella. I don't think Sony and Nintendo have contributed much to this problem if at all, but Microsoft's Nadella I feel was instrumental in causing every one of those issues. Microsoft as a company contributed to both candidates (though they gave Harris 4x as much if I recall), but Nadella was all in on letting AI run wild. He paid for unregulated AI, and got a war that's not a war (even though Trump called it that at least five times on television) that screwed up helium access. So for me, I feel that one of the players in the gaming industry is a key architect of these issues, and for that reason I struggle a bit to think of it as "external".