the article is more about AAA games than consoles, and i agree with the article’s takeaway. graphical improvements have been an Emperor’s New Clothes situation for about a decade for me now. the reason we have those hundred hour AAA games is because with today’s technology, the only advantage big studios have over indies is sheer volume of content. people are starting to wise up to that more and more and those studios will have to find a different way to justify those massive budgets and price tags or simply go under
as for consoles, though? i think the average PC gamer underestimates the value of things Just Working to the vast majority of customers. PCs themselves are having a tough time against smartphones and chromebooks and computer literacy is decreasing from gen z to gen alpha as a result. the seeming failure of the newer xbox and playstation has more to do with the aforementioned dying AAA market and the fact that they’ve become dumbed-down gaming PCs themselves instead of Just Working. the Switch successor will probably not be great but still sell gangbusters because Nintendo is monopolizing the market on Just Works, even if just barely!
the article is more about AAA games than consoles, and i agree with the article’s takeaway. graphical improvements have been an Emperor’s New Clothes situation for about a decade for me now. the reason we have those hundred hour AAA games is because with today’s technology, the only advantage big studios have over indies is sheer volume of content. people are starting to wise up to that more and more and those studios will have to find a different way to justify those massive budgets and price tags or simply go under
as for consoles, though? i think the average PC gamer underestimates the value of things Just Working to the vast majority of customers. PCs themselves are having a tough time against smartphones and chromebooks and computer literacy is decreasing from gen z to gen alpha as a result. the seeming failure of the newer xbox and playstation has more to do with the aforementioned dying AAA market and the fact that they’ve become dumbed-down gaming PCs themselves instead of Just Working. the Switch successor will probably not be great but still sell gangbusters because Nintendo is monopolizing the market on Just Works, even if just barely!