'It Has Plateaued': Should We Be Worried About Console Gaming's Future?

Honestly the Switch 2 is the only future console I have any excitement for.

Steam Deck or literally any other portable PC over whatever the hell Nintendo regurgitates next.

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They're keeping the layout and "adding more storage", even though you can easily buy a 1TB SD card for your current Switch. So, in all honesty, it's just a Switch with a bigger screen. At least on a Steam Deck you can play an order of magnitude more games on it, with -much- better variety.

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- And the games actually go on sale
  
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- I can also play over a decades worth of games from my library that saved my saves. And there's no monthly cost.
  
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- Well, there also seem to be credible leaks that it'll have some sort of duel screen system, potentially functioning like the DS. It's probably going to be more than just a bigger switch.
  
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Not remotely comparable, but sure, if you are like many here already a hobbyist PC gamer, you probably rather want a Steam Deck.

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- Handheld game systems of a similar size that play mostly the same games seem pretty comparable to me.
  
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The fact that "plateaued" is a cause for concern is everything wrong with our global economic system. Infinite growth shouldn't be a necessary component of stability. A plateau should be a goal to aspire to.

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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!

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The economics of consoles made more sense when computer power was expensive, and the choice was an underpowered home computer with so-so graphics and sound or a dedicated game machine optimised for drawing sprites and scrolling the screen responsively, with the extra costs subsidised by the price of (uncopyable) software. When PCs caught up, the consoles started looking internally like x86 PCs with souped-up GPUs (and, of course, draconian amounts of DRM baked in). Now with devices like the Steam Deck (and similar form-factor devices running Windows in game-console mode), there’s no real reason to buy a dedicated game-playing machine.

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Consoles have gone almost nowhere since the xbox, of course they aren't going to be generating infinite growth. The ps5 controller is the first change in consoles I've seen in years that was genuinely interestingv outside of graphical quality. Nintendo is, of course, an exception to that. Every console they release is either genuinely different to the last or meaningfully upgraded, other business practices aside.

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There's no need to worry about it, because long-term, this is a good thing for everyone. The market didn't tolerate multiple home video or audio formats for very long, so it's kind of a strange anomaly that we tolerated it for video games as long as we did. Now the concept is coming up on the end of its usefulness, especially since the platform holders won't let up on certification/patch fees, online subscriptions, external digital storefronts, and all sorts of other concessions that have historically made them more money but maybe don't make sense in the modern era.

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Everything is in a tough spot. Wait for the global economy to not be literal garbage and you'll see stuff like gaming consoles pick back up.

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I got a different take from this article. The economy doesn't really play into the fact that games are so big today because you have to make it bigger than the previous one. Same with the console stats. Gotta make it more powerful. But we are at a point where most people can't see the difference between PS5 and PS4. It's going to be even less obvious when PS6 arrives.

I agree that it's time for a hard reset.

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- Focusing too much on image detail improvements over game play is definitely a problem that most AAA games have.
  
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- Depends on which games though. Like a CoD or FIFA will continue as usual, small visual upgrades but still yearly releases with minimal changes. Going from a PS4 to a PS5 with those games will hardly be a difference. I think current generation consoles focused more on higher resolution and higher framerates anyway, which was a welcome change to me, since a lot of games on PS4 ran like sub-par 30 FPS.
  
  But if you take games like Horizon Forbidden West, it's a pretty significant visual upgrade from Zero Dawn. Same goes for Spider-Man on PS4 and then Miles Morales on PS5, visually looks like a pretty significant upgrade.
  
  Perhaps not everyone notices the visual fidelity moving up in consoles, but honestly that's never been all that different with previous console generations. Unless you compare games from early in the life-cycle of a console, and then another game from the end of a new generation console. It still mostly gradually happens over the lifetime of a console generation.
  
  I do think graphical progress has been slower than before, mostly because they seem to have shifted focus on higher framerates and resolutions. But in 5 or 10 years we'll look back at these visuals as laughable. I remember feeling like this every few years, like thinking something looks like the most realistic game ever, and 5 years later you look back at it is being pretty mediocre compared to new standards.
  
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This is it, guys. Console gaming’s over now 🙄

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Year of Linux gaming when?

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PC is the only console I'm excited about. Switch 1 was already collecting dust and I'm still waiting for that Metroid game that was supposed to be on it. However portable devices are on the rise, like Steam Deck for instance. I'd currently rather get that, than a Switch 2. we don't even know what games S2 will have.

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I'm still waiting for that Metroid game that was supposed to be on it.

Metroid Dread came out a while ago.

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- I think they might be talking about Prime 4, which was initially announced back in 2017. Dread wasn't announced until 2021.
  
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At least 3 Mario, Zelda, and Kirby games each. Maybe 1 or 2 metroids, splatoons, and megamans. At most one first party kart, party, and smash.

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- The switch only had Super Mario Odyssey. I don't count rehash with a short new bonus level. SMO was amazing, but where is SMO2?
  
  Zelda Totk is basically Botw and you just need the later to have the same map. Also both Zelda were no traditional Zelda's, they were mostly sandbox games.
  
  Kirby was largely seen as too easy, one really has to be okay with that. I was hyped but didn't expect it to be that easy. Left me kind of disappointed.
  
  Metroid Dread, I wish it hadn't been a 2D platformer as there are so many of them. Most interchangeable. Looking forward M4 still.
  
  Megaman, I'm no fan of so I can't say much about it.
  
  Splatoon is amazing and a big selling point. Same with smash, but you could just own one of the dozen different versions on a different system and would not notice.
  
  Pokémon has always been my selling point, but everyone knows the issue with those. I literally have more fun playing old DS Pokémon games, even though challenge never was their strong point.
  
  Nintendo Switch 2 is just Nintendo. While with a portable device you could play so many indie games on the go that either have expensive Switch ports or don't exist for the Switch at all. Switch 2 is not going to change that. And yeah, I asked myself a lot if I have just outgrown Nintendo games, but truth is Nintendo changed a lot and so have their other publisher releasing for Nintendo systems. I'd not have as much fun with old games, who I have never played before otherwise.
  
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Console manufacturers will have to adapt and liberalize self-publishing to stay relevant. AAA gaming continues to enshittify, and indie games / smaller studios are the ones releasing the good titles.

Valve knows this, and the ease for developers to release on Steam means they’re well positioned to ride out the transition. By comparison, releasing on console means signing license agreements, getting access to proprietary SDKs, submitting your game through an approval process, getting each update reviewed, etc etc. The barriers make releasing on console very unappealing for smaller developers.

So IMO if the consoles want to ride out the decline of AAA games, they will need to reinvent their image and how they interact with smaller studios and indies.

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When sustained sales is a bad thing and growth not being continuous is cause for question. Incredible.

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No, why would I give a shit? Let them die.

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It was a bad generation with the chip shortage and ballooning development costs.

I'll wait and see how the next gen goes before making any judgments

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Lol. 90 hours games. Fuck that shit. I've never been on board with that nonsense. Give me a decent 8 hour game and stop destroying the lives of your employees with never ending crunch.

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It must be nice to be so rich you can afford so many 8 hour games though.

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- So you know that really neat trick, where you don't buy the newest games and you can get most of them for a few bucks?
  
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- Well, I have kids. So that 8 hour game will last me a month. Combine that with a 20 year backlog...
  
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I'd say even PC, in terms of hardware, has plateaued. Many PC gamers are staying on Nvidia 1080 and 1070 cards, because gaming just hasn't moved up past that graphical level - and it really shouldn't, because quite a few human eyes just can't see much detail beyond then - and developer budgets quite often don't catch up to make use of all that excess hardware.

This might mean we effectively stay with the PS5, or even the PS4 generation, for quite a long time, while still generating ideas with what we do in that level. Probably the biggest thing we have to do now is control gaming budgets better. Try watching the credits of any Ubisoft game, and think "Someone approved all of these hires." Meanwhile, rewind to Half-Life 2 and they played through the entire credits of the game during the opening sections without it taking a half hour.

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Yes. The writing is on the wall, I think. Between Valve and Microsoft, I think the line between console and PC is about to blur, hard.

Valve starts selling a new generation of Steam Machines, Microsoft develops a handheld and pivots the Xbox brand to be a PC gaming label standardized to a handheld and set-top form factor, and suddenly Sony and Nintendo are swimming in a much smaller ocean. The PlayStation 6 not being PC-compatible suddenly makes it “a weird non-PC” instead of a category leader, and the Switch 2 by all accounts just becomes an echo of the previous generation, treading water on Nintendo franchises.

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Good riddance.

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