Submitted 5 months ago by commander@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Here’s a question. For ages back, the console market had three contenders. Who do you think would compete in the trifecta between Nintendo and Sony?
Normally, PC markets stay aside from that conversation, but it might be Valve and the Steam Deck. I’m just not sure if Valve is the type to be interested in running big promotions at Wal-Mart by Mountain Dew displays.
I don’t think Valve really wants to be in the hardware market. That said, with the success of the Steam Deck and the numerous Deck-alikes like the ROG Ally or Legion Go, I have to believe they’ll try to talk manufacturers into doing a Steam Machine 2 at some point.
Current Valve is trying to do what Google used to do with the Nexus phones. They’re setting a minimum standard for other companies and showing what the experience can be like.
I got my steam deck at bic camera in Tokyo.
So like. Maybe.
Rumor from many many years ago would be Samsung
That is a tricky question to answer, because the PlayStation and the Switch serve fundamentally different use cases, and there’s only a small amount of crossover between the two game libraries. If you want to play Nintendo games, you’ll get a Switch. If you don’t care about Nintendo games, you’ll get a PlayStation. They’re only superficially competing, and many console gamers will end up owning both.
There was still back and forth between PlayStation and Xbox. For the PS3, Sony went bonkers on architecture, and as a result Xbox won a lot of players. With the Xbox One, they made stupid plays on TV access and always-online, and Sony succeeded against their foot-shooting. Then, with the Series S|X, Xbox still lost but won back some consumers by introducing service-based game rental, which Sony followed suit on later.
The two have bettered each other by serving as competition to capitalize on the other’s anti-consumer actions, and by at least competing on pricing and ideas. Imagine if people called out the Xbox One’s always online, but PlayStation didn’t exist.
“lol, too bad gamers”
Perfect opportunity for the 3DO to make its comeback.
Did this story end up being untrue?
I can only speak from personal experience, but my local Target has heavily downsized it’s Xbox section. Nintendo and Sony get their own aisles while Microsoft is basically an end cap.
I saw a post saying it’s untrue but their only evidence seemed to be that their Target had not removed anything g last time they checked. Meanwhile I have seen a half dozen posts from employees and customers showing the Xbox stuff being removed.
They are going through their stock as the tarrifs keep hitting. Chips are gettingbsuoer expensive in the us.
Had to go into one of their stores and look for something last week, stopped by the games while I was there. The Xbox section was already looking small and barren compared the others.
This is in line with what I’m seeing locally. Weird they aren’t doing a fire sale like Sam’s Club:
I thought about getting a Sam’s Club membership to look for a Series X as another cheap UHD Blu-ray player. They’ve got to be gone by now at my local one
Instead of getting a membership, get a gift card. I don’t think a membership is required to send a gift card.
Mine still has them at $499
If Sony is doing it too, it’s the retail market that’s not showing results. Thinking most people order consoles online or from electronic stores.
You point the finger at retail and on some level it makes sense to want to funnel users towards your digital distribution platform to completely cut out the middle men and take the entire cut for yourself. So maybe it’s a lot of this…
..but i’m looking at that 50% subscription increase as a sign of what they want. Rent forever, own nothing.
Hardware has costs and overhead associated. They need support people and to have depot services. The cost to sell a console today is getting to be on par with a gaming laptop or desktop (not high end, but something that can play games.) The margin after retailer share has to be lower than ever, and sales tax tariffs are coming hard and fast.
You can develop your games with studios all over the world though and sell them through your US publisher for no import sales tax… especially if it’s on your subscription platform that is effectively impossible to tariff.
Ultimately Microsoft has a vested interest in Windows gaming, since it helps keep their market share and recurring subscription revenue. Few are linux gamers like I, and games are still being made that have 0 possibility of linux support, bf6 being the newest.
There’s a momumental challenge of escaping the microsoft ecosystem, and they’re pushing hard into the always online track everything you do on your computer and phone home to the mothership and sell your data to whoever is willing to buy it. Subscriptions will likely remove ads from future versions of windows.. and the holy grail of total control DRM is not far behind between forcing tpm/secureboot that ONLY works on windows 11.
…but i’m looking at that 50% subscription increase as a sign of what they want. Rent forever, own nothing.
What they wanted was a volume of subscribers to rival Netflix, and even buying out several of the world’s largest publishers for day and date releases in their subscription service didn’t move the needle. They still sell you their video games, and they’ve acknowledged through a very short lived $80 price tag on The Outer Worlds 2 they can’t get away with that price. Increasing their subscription service by 50% shows that they’ve given up on getting more people to rent forever. You know who hasn’t? Nintendo. They’re selling you a $100 peripheral that only works with games that you can rent from them and not own. There’s a wide swath of their back catalog that they will not sell to you and only rent.
The article points out that it could be good news for Sony and Nintendo. Then like the next paragraph “Sony doing it too lol”
Yeah, remember how microsoft said this wasn’t their last console and they aren’t getting out of it?
Yeah… they lied.
Is that the same with Sony? As they are doing the same thing
This isn’t a contradiction to that.
It’s a contradiction to them having a successful next console. This is Sega + Dreamcast vibes all over again.
I don’t think there’s much of a history of consoles being removed from shelves before a successor is announced.
The only issue I see here is that Sony will be getting greedy.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 5 months ago
GamePassBox is not popular while people struggle to afford even the basic costs of living? Who could have predicted this?