Recently just started this. Liking a lot about it so far but I'll second all the comments on the voices. They're unbelievably cliche amine bad and insufferable. Might switch to Japanese of possible. Beautiful world and a great Ys-like gameplay though.
It's kinda pathetic that AMD needs Sony to tell them how to be competitive with Nvidia but I'll take it.
What does PS5 pro need FSR 4 for if it has pssr? Usually it's one upscaler or the other.
@OldGamer999 Yes, because a 90% market share of pc isn't enough, Nvidia should control all of console gaming too. PS6 can cost $1100 and only be 4% slower than PS5 with the same VRAM. PS6050 FTW! 😛
Leave Nvidia to Nintendo. Those two deserve each other.
@Sarxion I think switch 2 has a lot of legitimate demand simply because it's been sooo long in the waiting. Everyone that was hyped by the Real Soon Now Switch Pro in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 finally got it. And there's just so many Switch owners and it's the first upgrade in ages, with a much Michigan upgraded docked experience particularly.
However. I'm also somewhat baffled. Switch is is the first Nintendo I haven't eagerly followed and pre-ordered like a kid on Christmas since the Wii. Switchmas, switch 1 launch was the most exciting thing in ages. This time I didn't even bother watching the whole reveal, didn't pre-order, didn't know when it was launching and simply didn't care at all. Nothing about it is especially compelling to me and what would have been compelling they ruined with their software business practices. I've barely paid attention to switch the second half of it's life because Nintendos software just seems formulaic to me starting around mid way. And the hardware is just a faster switch. To an extent I think a good chunk of demand right now is simply FOMO based on past Nintendo launches, the PS5 XSX launch nightmare, and the NV50 launch people are used to if they don't buy it now it'll either be impossible or go up in price. Plus the bragging rights of simply having the hot new thing which seems to be a more important thing then ever to more people.
People are losing their minds at being able to play a 2017 open world game at 60fps for the low low price of $530. I was going to say this is worthy on Nvidia. Then I remembered it is Nvidia.
It will be interesting to see if the momentum continues and it's legit big demand or if you'll start seeing a ton up for sale from people that bought them with the intent to scalp without realizing there was sufficient supply unlike any hardware launch in the past 5 years. Even PSVR2 had a sellout preorder.
@Porco "furthermore, social media and influencers did not exist back in 2000. easily, 50% of all switch 2 sales were purchased by influencers for work purposes if anything."
Everything in this paragraph makes me want to buy large amounts of napalm and a DeLorean, not necessarily in that order.
Does anyone else remember when publishers were interested in producing the next hit game everyone wanted to sell like hotcakes and make them money rather than looking to produce "money spinners" to secure net margin targets? This is what's wrong with the whole industry.
Here's the only one sentence question he needs for his green light process:
Is this game simply chasing trends that others already did before us and therefore they're isn't a market for it?
X: No this is a unique title that stands out in the market without reinventing the wheel but Sony. We should make this game.
->O: Yes this game recycles trends and has no place in the market.
Shepard: Eff off Herman, you money grubbing lying Sackboy!
As someone done with console at the moment and totally switched to PC who's latest and only launch date purchase in years is a PlayStation Studios game (Stellar Blade) I say keep the PC ports coming.
From a cash perspective, the only major blunder Sony is making with PC is the region restrictions to the same markets they have consoles in. No idea why they're knee capping revenue in one of the biggest reasons for them to do PC.
For console I really don't think there's much overlap. I have no desire to play on console hardware at all so long as I have a much better PC.. the only thing that would make me play on console now isn't exclusives. It's if Nvidia prices just make it impossible to continue and ps prices don't feel similarly extortionate except more spread out over time. For console customers, they're not going to splash or the high upfront cost of PC without being wholly dedicated. PS5 is a "cheap" (up front but over time arguably more expensive) zero effort PC. The two don't really overlap much in market. Right now Nvidia sells PlayStation better than any marketing campaign Sony can buy.
I get why they and some fans like to stick to the exclusive software model but I still think that era ended long ago. It works for Nintendo because Nintendo has a captive audience Sony doesn't really. They did in the PS2 era but that ship sailed as they moved to become cheap packaged PCs. With PS2 they were competing with Nintendo. The exclusives just aren't why someone chooses between ps and pc anymore. It worked when consoles were really cheap and PC was really expensive and consoles completed directly. An exclusive isn't the consoles selling point anymore. Its size, ease of use, and, (seemingly) lower cost of entry are.
If pc hardware becomes cheap and much easier to use, PlayStation is in trouble no matter what exclusives it has.. But thankfully Nvidia is here to prevent such things 😂
This argument is completely broken every time it comes up.
The size of the gaming market is more or less finite. There are only so many customers (excluding mobile.).
Most of those customers have a finite amount of money they are going to spend on the gaming industry, including hardware.
The cost per game and the cost of hardware have risen significantly, reducing the quantity of games consumed per individual.
The discretionary income available to spend on gaming has been reduced for most of the market.
Even with "no games" each notE3, there's a huge glut of A and B list "must have" hype games far outnumbering what most of the market can afford or have time to consume. That leaves very little market opportunity for these C and D listers
This has nothing to do with subscriptions and value. There's only so much money in this pool, and "devaluing" content doesn't change that. Someone's going out of business and the argument is simply about who, not if. If content is "devalued" at least more people try it. The only one "devaluing" hurts is the mega publishers with a massively marketed hyped game that will sell millions of FOMO copies at full price forever. They have all the markets money on their table and devaluation robs them if default revenue. For everyone else, those mega publishers will still consume the markets revenue either way. The smaller games are practically charity if they're pulling in money by sales with or without subs. There's just not enough market with enough income and time to consume everyone's full price content. Someone goes down either way and they're arrogant enough to believe they have the market to not be the one.
If you're Activision or 2k or Nintendo or Sony, yes this devalues your guaranteed default sales. Honestly even Sony is becoming less a part of that group these days but they're sales model depends on a loyal core at launch price for now.
As somebody who refuses to buy day one games at this point I actually broke my own ethos and bought this on launch on PC. It's a good price full price and was on launch sale, why not?
Idk if it's just pc smoothness or a year of patches but I'm finding the game far more enjoyable than when I tried it on PS5 launch. It's quite good. AND works beautifully in VR making it amazing for me. And Sony stopped requiring linking to PSN, also great! Ok really surprised how it's hooking me in a way it just didn't last time.
Maybe this will remind publishers that you can get more sales with lower prices than just charging a million dollars at launch. Or just that models in catsuits sell. Either way.
Refreshingly shocking to see a PS show feature mostly Japanese content and devs, and surely not a coincidence they did so as switch 2 launches and is the most generic corporate thing possible.
The presentation was a step up too which was nice to see, though personally I'll never love the presentation of these modern directs. They still lack hype to the point they didn't excite me at all then when showing games I know I'm hyped for. But anything is better than the switch 2 presentation. I'll forever yearn for the rock concert bombast of the old stage shows. Now to get that we have to watch Nvidia shows with Letherman making jokes that would make a UbiE3 groan.
It's the state of the industry when Nintendo its launching a new console and I neither know many details nor much care. Sony wins #notE3 by opening with Tetris. And most of the best parts of the PS5 show were games that would have been at home on Vita. Who says you can't go back?
@NeonPizza Nintendo, yeah, their top leadership is a finance guy, their US leadership is an EA guy and former proctor and Gamble marketing guy. They're joined at the hip to Nvidia that's the epicenter of everything wrong in gaming. They're but interested in innovation. Iwatas question was always "is it fun?". I'm certain their new question is "is it further monetizable?". They're investor controlled by activist investors that iwata made a career of flipping off when they pushed. They get THEIR people in now. It's a bank. Nothing more. Nintendo is a product made by bankers for bankers now.
Oh I love a portable system I can play the same games I can play on a big screen. It's why deck and legion and ally exist. I do have a problem with a system that wants me to pay $80 for a self contained version of those $20 games with no cross save though 😂
Idk where Nintendo goes next. I don't think switch 2 will be the hit they wanted. The price breaks it for the bulk of the switch market and people will go back to their tablets. Especially in this economy. And they seem bent on chasing trends. We'll see what the trend is years from now. I was all Nintendo back in the day, lost faith in them with N64, they pulled me in big time with wii and 3ds even wiiu. And switch and now switch 2 have totally lost me. The $100 alarm clock is their only worthwhile product right now. It feels more iwata than switch 2. And that's probably because it IS iwata. It's his QoL device he kept talking about in the wiiu era. One last "real" Nintendo product before the Deck lite.
@NeonPizza with all the high end headsets, dream, super, meganex, simnoum etc, 4090s barely can handle great fps and res at quest 3 resolution on demanding games, and especially flat2vr. Even 5090 chokes on most of that. For native vr games that aren't super demanding like flight sims you can get away with native res but otherwise, yes, no GPU exists that drives these things at native res. It's going to really heavily on software upscaling. The plus is you can turn AA off at these resolutions. It's be soft but screen door less images in most cases. It's a good question how ultra wide will look being upscaled. Though I'll get 2 modules. One ultra wide and one high fidelity (the boon of super you can swap your optical kit). Elden ring low fov, Skyrim wiiiiiide. Minecraft.... Lol.
You know they're offering Super bundle for $2400 with the OLED module and one qled. Meanwhile they're offering the OLED module (same engine as dream but in a cartridge for super) for $1100 for people that already ordered qled for 1800...?? I'm going to see if they can upgrade me to the bundle of ultra wide plus OLED for that price but it'll delay me to Christmas 😂. Otoh I'm not sure. OLED blacks sound great but it's its still less fov than quest 3. Is that really an upgrade? Maybe I'd better stick with 57ppd despite the black.
They haven't announced the ppd for dream air/super OLED kit. It's supposed to be 104fov to preserve stero overlap, but they had ours Dennis demo units with wide 120fov and even Sebastian from mrtv the overlap obsessive tought it looked great so they're considering widening the fov and shrinking the overlap I think. So they don't actually know the PPD. Less then 50 that's definite.
Oh fresnel is garbage. But pancake isn't the only lens. Super qled uses large single element aspherical lenses. Pancake is only necessary when the screen is super tiny like moled and small headsets. The plus with pancake is there's no sweet spot at all. The negatives with pancake are the glare and bloom and godrays and the fact it eats 80% of your brightness. Super OLED is pancake, it's identical to dream. I don't think the brightness is a motion clarity issue. That was an issue on psvr2 precisely because it was OLED and because it was processing 10bit HDR. The back lit qled won't struggle with that but it may have artifacts from the dimming changing, and some headsets do have enough mura that people keep complaining however mrtv said at its worst is better than q3 mura which I don't see any mura on so I think it's nitpicking. (Nits ..... Pun not intended 😂)
Pfft modern Nintendo kids=fornite kids I think. REAL Nintendo fans still have our Virtual Boy, the first consumer VR kit...... 😂 For the 3 months you could buy it. I'm some countries. Nintendid what Nvidia does 😆 iwatas Nintendo was so fun and inviting. The modern Nintendo kids, Nintendo itself with its EA based management, it's partnership with freaking Nvidia..... It may be the worst of gaming now. Makes me sad.
@NeonPizza Of course OC would never be main stream but if PC isn't advancing tech nothing else is either. We've hit a brick wall and tech has stopped. We're officially in the post technology society where tech is just having AI advance to do everything for you. Hey Alexa, describe what playing video games was like.
I was going to say $2200 for that dream air is insane and then I realized that's what I'm paying for super with the 57ppd and ultra wide modules too 😂 could add the mold module, same as the one in dream air for $1100 but meh.
Right now moled has to be tiny fov. The screens only come too small to do wide. Plus it's a catch 22. Everyone wants small physical headsets but the catch is that means needing small screens and not having the depth and wrap around for lenses that make a wide screen. So tiny headsets will always be like looking through binoculars, and wide view sets must be bulky. I'm very curious about the new ultra wide module. Also curious how the $400 modules are now $700, but I still get it for 400 as a preorderer 😊
Problem is good VR needed graphics to keep advancing and it's clear graphics has Halted AND becoming niche and boutique. I think people are going to reel with the price of next Gen consoles and sales will be awful.
Stand alone will obviously be the bulk of VR but it's stuck being glorified phone games. Gorilla tag, social games blah blah. That, too, will keep it a novelty.
After you see proper games in VR you're going to rethink your GameCube target lol. Indiana Jones in vr is absolutely mesmerizing visually.
I'm still not sold on moled as the end all. Yes the pixel density and low mura and blacks is magical. But it comes at the cost of tiny fov and an extreme price tag. And pancake is painfully overrated. We'll see how the dream air goes but every other pancake devours all brightness and has god rays and glare for days. Even quest 3 which, to my, honestly defeats the point of the great OLED blacks of you're just casting glare across it.
@NeonPizza fwiw, I still see VR kind of dying but not for the reasons we all used to worry about. It's Nvidia and the state of computing and gpus. Take a look at how they're openly ignoring rtx50. Then look at pricing. The $2000 5090. Has jumped to $3000 actual MSRP from most vendors. And apparently that's gonna jump another 15% because Nvidia lost 5 billion from their AI chips being banded in China and moving the new chips to tsmc USA. So they're jacking up prices. $3500 to buy a card with 30% more performance of a $1400 card a year ago. That's not a vr card. That's an enterprise computing card. Meanwhile all the other cards are less performance than before while being significantly more expensive.
Vr depends on the idea of graphics performance increasing over time to get where it needs to be, but it seems we're done with that. Graphics performance is not only not getting better it's actually reversing. She tier chips are worse performance than the predecessor. All while becoming less affordable. I don't see VR really moving ahead much of we are in an era of processing regression where we're going backwards toward 2010 computing. 2d gaming SD affected too, including switch 2, PS5 pro etc. The improvements are all from ai image generation, not from actual performance increase. And the introduction of artifacts and terrible input lag.
Reality currently looks like our future computers will be weaker than our old ones while costing significantly more. And I can't see VR handling that well. It needed to go forward not backwards. Never thought we'd see an era of tech regression but here we are. While the actual tech goes into data centers which I guess makes sense because in the future we don't need computers anymore. Just input devices to tell the AI to do everything for us. In between working in the mines to provide raw materials to keep building the AIs.
@NeonPizza FWIW, all of the mOLED options, including the super expensive Sony panel version, have REALLY small FOVs. Smaller than Quest 3 and PSVR2. Q3 is 110, the mOLEDs are like 104-108, PSVR2 is a little wider I think. Same small FOV as Apple Vision Pro. It's the nature of the tiny panels which is the largest they're made right now. Right now the benefits of mOLED seem to be blackest blacks, no mura, super lightweight and potentially super compact size, and potentially more "solid" looking image because of it's very dense pixel arrangement (even at a lower PPD than a QLED) and a more "jaggy-free" diagonal pixel arrangement. The tradeoffs are horrendous FOV, meh bino overlap, low brightness, glare/godrays from pancake lenses, worse color range (maybe not on the $2200 Sony paneled version/$1200 Super module) worse refresh rate.
Quest 3 is 110 with 80 overlap. Can't remember PSVR2 spec but it's better on both I think. Dream Air SE (and all other mOLED units) are like 104-108 fov) Super ultrawide is 140 (!!) fov 90 overlap. Super 50 ppd is 130fov 110 overlap Super 57 ppd is 120fov 100 overlap I think.
Right now I'm just using the Quest 3 for PCVR, I never got the PSVR2 adapter so it's gathering a bit of dust right now, although that's because I thought I was going to have the Pimax back in November lol. So I haven't seen how PSVR2 looks for PC at all, I think I was mostly comparing the hardware itself (quest on PC vs PSVR2 on PS5) Very few games seem to support DFR on PC though for now. Mostly the big simulators (DCS, MSFS, etc.) DFR is a big deal but it does seem like few things actually support it. UEVR does have an implementation but I havent' heard of many using it. I'll probably have to find out soon enough.
I think the biggest problem for VR (and everything else) is going to be nVidia. They've basically declared war on gaming, stopped innovating any progress at all and instead turned to "fake frames" as the only improvement. REAL performance gains seem to be at a standstill on GPUs, with every 50* actually going BACKWARD in performance from 40* except 5090. I think the industry is about to hard shift to AMD, but they've been sketchy for VR as most of the functionality is built for nVidia (who verbally considers VR dead.)
On thing that just bugs me with Quest is the colors. The colors look so washed out, like I'm looking at an old LCD screen (because I am...) It's the panels, it's the black level, it's also the lenses, just sucks the color depth out of everything. I haven't done theBlu yet!
And yeah they're saying Dream Air ships in August. They're saying my 57ppd ships in June, and Ultrawide ships in July. So mark your calendar for June '26! Pimax is a company that you're always mad at but can't hate. They keep doing all these idiotic things and announcing 200 products before shipping one (Sebastien from MRTV, himself was one of the first comments on the announcement video with "Finally a new Pimax headset! It's been at least a few weeks!") But they keep trying to be actually good that you can't be mad. They sold me at their new chat feature in the app and saying you get a real person not an AI bot. It says everything about the world today when the only place promising direct access to real people and not AI is the Virtual Reality manufacturer lol.
@NeonPizza Pimax history on releases is.....unique. Every single video they post still is filled with comments from OG Crystal owners asking "so where are the wide FOV lenses you promised?" And Wireless link for OG Crystal has been "real soon now" for years lol.
They're definitely improving a lot, but they've had nasty growing pains, and their defect rate with exchanges remains high it seems, despite their commitments to QA improvements. (They're hand-testing every Super that ships, both in China before they leave in the US again before they ship, and there's still lots of defect complaints.) BUT, the alternatives aren't necessarily better. Meganex and BSB have their issues too. Pimax actually tries...they fail a lot but they try lol.
So the history on the Super is now, preordered last August for bundle of QLED 57ppd + mOLED at $600 to ship Q4 2024. Then in Q4 2024 they announced they'll ship Q1 2025 and are prioritizing the 57ppd module to ship first which is most of their orders. Then later they demo them at CES in January and announce they're having problems withe the 57ppd lens and will ship 50ppd first which is most of their orders. Then they announced they're changing Super from a halo to a goggle strap. Then they announce Dream Air and it will ship in May 2025......... Then they announce Dream Air will cost double what they said but uses much nicer Sony panels. Then they announce Dream Air SE which will be the original Dream Air and neither will ship in May or any time close. Then they announce the mOLED module for Super is going to be the Sony upgraded one and cost $1200 instead of $600. Then they (finally) ship 50ppd Super. Then just today they announced a new module for Super, an ultra-wide version (140HFOV) of the 50ppd available, sacrificing binocular overlap to 90deg vs 100deg for super wideness), and THEN announce that my 57ppd should ship in June (meaning I'll get it in July nearly 1 year after I ordered it, and leave it nicely untested in the box until like October lol...)
BUT they're also taking care of their preorder customers. They keep adding stuff. Preorder super customers get the upgraded ear speakers free, now they're adding the new "ice silk" face foam (I have that on on of my 3rd party Quest 3 masks, it's nice stuff), and shipping a free larger forehead strap, they're offering the new ultra-wide module for $400 instead of $700 (which is what they told us modules would cost last year before quietly upping it), they'll also offer a paid "trial" for all the modules where you can borrow a module to try before buying, only for preorder customers, so I could try that fancy Sony panel mOLED module for like $75 to see what I'm missing lol.
Yeah, they do everything on the fly....
Having said all that, I'll definitely buy the new ultra-wide module. I was going to buy the 50ppd to get a wide FOV and a high clarity 57ppd option. So now it makes more sense to keep the 57 and add the ultrawide. It DOES sacrifice binocular overlap but it's still 10 degrees more than Quest 3 so I'm sure it's fine.
@NeonPizza Pimax. "If it releases on time" 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Which part of "ordered the 57ppd Super in August, still waiting for it" misled you? 😛
It'll be real soon now 😛
Originally I ordered my super as a bundle with the micro OLED module plus 57ppd, but they delayed the moled and removed the bundle, can just buy the module later. Is the same module as dream air phat with the Sony panels. But I don't think I'll get the moled module. They're pretty emphatic that qled is better for everything but blacks IF you have the large visor like the super because the screens are enormous. But yeah I know Dream would be a much better fit for you because if the ergonomics being at important. It looks awesome, better than baby. Though the self adjusting strap seems so dumb. I WOULD like to add the 50ppd wide fov module to my super eventually. If I ever receive it. Whenever they start taking orders for individual modules.
Avd yeah pcvr is just awesome if you're a vr enthusiast. Needs really beefy hardware and unfortunately nvidia has wet the bed, but man flat2vr is awesome. $10 a month for Luke Ross mods is worth it if you like the games he sports
Supports. Looks like death stranding is next. I won't touch that in vr with a hundred foot pole, but you would lol 😂
At this point for pc I think AMD is the only way to go EXCEPT if you're into flat2vr with Luke Ross mods, you need dlss. At least until Leatherman decides the world doesn't need VR anymore. Assuming his driver's ever work for 2d either 😆
@NeonPizza I don't see current Nintendo transitioning to VR ever. If miyamoto were still running the show? Yes, they would have. He was the one that pushed for Virtual Boy and he was the one that obsessed over stereoscopinc 3d for Game Cube, and pushed for 3DS. He'd have done it. But current Nintendo is run by bankers and businessmen. They follow safe money, look at trends. The trend is not VR. Nintendo won't try to break into new territory under that leadership. They'll try to maximize profits on the safest bests. Miyamoto was their disruptor since the SNES. He's playing with billion dollar Real Reality attractions now.
I'd say Gen Z - even before that. Mid Gen Y through Gen Z and beyond were conditioned to worse than blandness alone. They were conditioned by a corporate/social media world into CONFORMITY above all else. Everyone must appear to be identical to all else. Like the same things, and the same times, follow the same trends, globally, in unison, as prompted, and all laugh at the same jokes. To always check the internet to make sure their opinion is the right one.
And it's going to get worse, where now even internet search and social and youtube trend will be consolidated into an AI prompted single One Truth (even if it's made up from out of context snips from Reddit.) "What should my opinion be" And the AI will tell you. The same answer for the whole world.
The meaning of life is 47. Funny how that started out as a sardonic irony and is now reality. We're living the Soviet dream, run as a capitalist business venture.
Modern gaming and media and everything is so bad I've found myself spending a lot of my gaming time reading books instead more and more. And it's more exciting. I lose sleep unable to stop, like I used to do with gaming. Gaming I end up bored and switch it off easily. (Some exceptions with some games of course.) Who'd have thought in 1995 that the future would involve trying to convince kids to play video games because all that reading of books will rot their brains?
Also....I am STILL waiting for my Pimax 57PPD....but their marketing as moved on to Dream Air before even shipping the 57PPD Crystal I ordered in August lol......that's sooooo Pimax....
@NeonPizza 3DS will probably be my favorite console of all time. I don't see how anything can replace the magic of the machine and the library it had. But I can't say that I even mind the Switch being a traditional handheld. Nintendo needed that, people were asking for that, and even with the questionable ergonomics, it's a very important piece of hardware, I think Switch is the only reason we have Deck/Ally/Legion, it kind of jumpstarted the entire model. The start of Switch was great, and remember, Switch was still an Iwata console. The last Iwata console. Launch games, from the Iwata era still were great. But as soon as Iwata's last touches were used up and Miyamoto left the day to day, the internet raves about how Switch had "The best iterations of every series" and I just don't get it. Nintendo games went down the dumper after that initial wave of Switch games. I kept buying them, I wanted them to still feel like the Nintendo I knew, and they just didn't anymore. I stopped buying them. I hate it, but Nintendo games just started feeling like generic design by committee mobile games, and a lot of it makes sense that the majority of their development is outsourced, and their designs must be based on making the work easy to outsource to different uninvolved parties. It's the definition of a generic product featuring famous characters. Though, I must say Sony games largely became that as well. People laugh at Ubisoft, but I have to hand it to them they make their own games, in house, pretty much 100%, and they have their own design langauge and feel. They copy themselves a lot, but at least they have their own internal design.
Switch 2 is exactly what I feared it would be under banker Furukawa and Bowser, the EA guy. It's Switch (2025 version.) It's the same console. Yes, I know it's much more powerful. But it's just that. It's a more powerful beige box to replace the old beige box with. And formulaic/Apple-like is the perfect description of current Nintendo. When Bowser started talking about having the brand strength to charge a lot, I basically gave up on Nintendo.
That said it's not just Nintendo. Nintendo is generic/formula/Apple/iterative and overpriced. Sony has become "PC lite and overpriced with safe/trend chasing games", Jensen/Nvidia declared "DIY gaming is dead." (Aka PC gaming, buying PC parts.) What have we got left? Somehow Xbox is winning by default without being able to sell a single console just because they bought out a handful of old guys that still remember how to make real games from the PC golden age. I feel like gaming is just kind of in a dead place. Even I with my flat2VR/VR fix find myself moving into evergreen "play the same game all the time" models (simulators and such) because it's not like the campaign games are really interesting these days and there's something to be said living in a continuous other world.
@NeonPizza The problem with Miyamoto is, he's "retired" but not. And it was by design because very time he said "retire" their shares plummeted. By removing himself from gaming and letting it remain successful, it stablizes their investment, they know they don't need him to survive. But.... I do think he was their real creative foundation and without his involvement, the product sucks. Unfortunately the young market as we said is conditioned to consume-dispose-consume media no matter how insipid so it works out fine.
3DS remains my absolute favorite console of all time, full stop. Even over SNES. IDK, it just had the magic in it that has never been duplicated. Switch, to me, never measured up. People boast about its great games, I never saw it. I feel the games were all generalized and lost most of the heart of the 3DS games, except for the odd gem here or there.
Switch 2 is just "Nintendo Switch (2025ver Latest gen)" That's whats wrong with it. It's not a new Nintendo console. It's just an upgraded spec of the same console. Yes I know internally there's enough leather jacket Jensen in there to buy at least half the missing ROPS on a 5080 on eBay, but fundamentally, it's just this year's Switch model but overhyped.
I was excited for WiiU. I'm not even paying attention to Switch 2. I ignore it as much as I ignore new iPads. I'm sure I'll want a Mario game or Zelda game eventually. But IDK because i haven't been happy with their games of late. I love the franchises but the games just....feel off to me. Very "safe", very bland. Very much like the way I felt about N64 era games when I switched to the huge world of (golden age) PC in the 90s. I don't want to move away from those classic Nintendo franchises, but I can't say I've loved my time with them over the past 4-5 years either. ACNH was the beginning of the end to me. Such a travesty. And everything since then feels like it. Because commercially it dominated. IDK if people are really prepared to pay these new prices though. THere's always the argument "inflation and tariffs and etc" but there's just a limit to what people will spend on entertainment, and these industries seem to feel like they'd rather cut their workforce in half, make half the product and charge 4x as much to a limited wealthy target market, and on the balance sheets that looks like a win. Until every company does it and they all realiize they no longer have a market.
S2 makes me sad in general. It feels like that great sort of second golden age of gaming from the PS3/X360/Wii days that lasted through 3DS/WiiU/mid-cycle PS4/X1 is fully truly over and replaced with a "premium for $10k home theater enthusiasts" version of iPad games.
@NEStalgia Yeah, I could fill more text walls than could possibly be read on the disaster that is the complete change in culture between generations. It's something different from the old tradition of generational gaps, it's more fundamental. It's more like a completely foreign culture entirely, based on completely different values, norms, expectations, and perceptions such that it's like being dropped into the middle of an exotic country in a different era and being expected to blend in. The baseline of how brains are developed from birth changed into something completely different, and the "young" and "old" are thus completely incompatible in a way that has never happened before. It's not just different trends of the time, it's a completely fundamentally different value system and baseline. It's a generation raised as a manufactured product by corporations for the sole purpose of engineering a society that maximizes investor value.
Disagree about kids not understanding the 2D action platformers etc though. The meteoric rise of Souls and Soulslikes which follow the same principal as the most masochistic of those in the day and the prolific presence of indies on Switch tells me that's pretty much alive and well. Not for the iPad kids, but the iPad kids would have been "not gamers" in the nerdy 90's & 80's. of gaming anyway. Honestly, I was never that group, couldn't be bothered with Mega Man back in the day And I still do and always did demand checkpoints It's why I dislike soulsbornes and such. It feels like an intentional waste of time to pad the experience to make you constantly repeat things you've already cleared. I prefer when you respawn right into the thing you DIDN'T get right so you can rapidly keep re-trying. Rayman games are awesome about that.
I liken it to, if when learning to play an instrument, every time you missed a passage, instead of retrying the tricky passage until you master it you have to start the entire song from the beginning. It's just artificial and forced designed to punish and frustrate rather than improve! I've never valued that game design approach. Game Overs were a relic of coin op design, if you keep pumping quarters in you get more continues! Seems we've gone full circle, actually
Nintendo....I think they're worse than PS and Xbox actually. I mean Xbox has enough studios, yes through conquest, that they have tons of creative endeavors still, yes, all of them based in the PC golden age, but it's at least there. Now, lots of those guys, Feargus, and Todd and the like, when they retire, it will be a vacuum again. Sony....ok, yeah maybe they're as bad as Nintendo. But Nintendo feels like a glorified iOS games developer that just leans on brand recognition and some gimmicks. It's not Iwata's Nintendo. It's an IP holding company. They even updated their mission to reflect it. Most of their development is outsourced. The games are sterile and without heart. They're cute. They have some quirk. But it's all surface deep. I've been really jaded with their output for years and Switch 2 looks even worse. When their Switch 2 launch contained mostly remasters at higher prices I felt like I was watching the X1 reveal again, but actually X1 reveal had some brilliance hidden behind the disaster. It was worse.
IDK, I'm glad I went over to PC but thanks to nVidia even that's lost most of its lustre in the past year. And thanks to tariffs gaming might just vanish in the US anyway.
@NeonPizza aww man, I wrote half a response, got distracted, forgot to finish, and then it ate the whole thing! Lol
Right now, because I'm into the whole flat2vr scene I don't think I actually need to buy any new games for the next 8 years 😂. I have so many games I haven't started yet, or Indiana Jones that I want to play through again because I played only the end in VR and it's a whole other experience, and that doesn't even cover The evergreen sims, Elite, etc. And Oblivion remastered, one of my favorite games ever (better than Skyrim) works in uevr. (unfortunately I've been so busy I've been barely playing them! And a realized the absurdity of standing on an algae clad patio playing virtual power washer simulator so I bought an actual power washer instead so I get actuall work done with the same hand motions 😂. Sadly there's glare and mura and I demand better graphics lol 😂
I fear for vr though. Luke Ross, the main flat 2 VR mod guy, $10 mo subs, it's his full time job, sends out monthly newsletter emails and his previous one had an ominous note about enjoying it while it lasts and who knows how long before it won't be possible anymore, noting that even Nvidia hasn't mentioned vr. Once the keeps removing driver features it ignoring it. Otoh Pimax is going strong and there's definitely rumors of a valve index 2, but it would be basically a steam deck and not pcvr truly.
Speaking of pimax I am still waiting for my Super lol 😂. They changed from the 57 ppd lens model being first production to the 50ppd (less center res, wider 135deg fov) and are shipping those now but I ordered 57ppd. Not sure if I should have changed or not. Wide fov sounds really nice so far. And resolution is going to be way below the panel anyway until Jensen GAFs. You can buy the opposite module later but they're not available to order yet. Was gonna be $400 but probably more with the tariffs now. There's also going to be moled module for 600. But dang it some of that money has to go into a 5090 trust. As if it'll ever be available ever anyway!
You'd maybe hate the super because they are known to have some mura even with QLED and you're very sensitive to that. Plus theyre not tiny. Tiny is a compromise if course..
Switch 2. Gag. 6 years later and Switch Pro finally exists. I agree with Shu Yoshida. Nintendo lost it's identity. Years ago. They're really Japanese Apple now in every way. It's gross. I never thought I'd hate Nintendo but right now I do. Heck it doesn't even have interesting games. A bunch of $80 remasters of $60 switch games which were remasters of $50 wii/gcn games and open world group of kids hanging out social space Kart. Trend chasing with a Nintendo skin. It's depressing. Iwata made Nintendo likable and fun. Now it's back to how it was with yamauchi when we all switched to PS and PC because Nintendo was awful after SNES.
Yeah IMO NL was too young an age group for me even years ago. Mid switch was the turning point. What's worse is that the world you and I come from has more in common with people of the 1940s and 50s than it does with the kids just 10-20 years behind us. The world didn't change THAT much between WW2 and our time and right after our time everything changed so radically the kids are a completely different culture. I feel more commonality with 82 year olds than 28 year olds. They're aliens from a different civilization and whole different mindset, having been raised by social media and screens alone .
@NeonPizza You won't see many NATIVE flat2VR as there's simply no profit in the effort for the companies, and most of those efforts stalled completely. So that whole segment is limited to mods which of course requires flame throwing PCs. I would never have bought that monster PC if not for flat2vr, it's the only reason I paid that much. But with the GPU prices skyrocketing, maintaining that level of performance might not be something I want to continue. But that means rolling backwards next time, not even treading in place. It makes it really hard to be a VR fan and yet it's amazing when it works.
One thing to remember with mOLED is that it's MAIN advantage is not being a superior display. It's MAIN advantage is that it's small, lightweight, and low power usage for small stand-alone battery powered devices. It's actually a compromise. The panels are very small, expensive, low yield. The pancake requirement means expensive lenses with glare issues that reduce the light by more than half, but it's's limited max size means limited max resolution, it has a limited fps, it has a limited FOV and overlap, limited color range, it's not an end-all solution, it's a compromise solution for a particular application, namely, small and light weight with low power consumption. I'm going to be very curious trying the Super whenever I may get it. Single element lenses, bright, 1k dimming zones for "near-OLED" blacks (not as good, but not too far away without the other compromises.) wider FOV than Q3, some have said simlar to PSVR2, some said better. Depending on if that goes well or not I"d consider ordering the wide FOV version, 132 degrees - same screen different lens, less center resolution but still much higher than q3 or even bsb2. I think the other module is $400 (whenever they sell it) but, will have the new tarriffs added so $450 ish I guess. The Super has interchangeable modules, the "retina", the "wide", maybe another in the future, but it'll be long-term limited by the displayport version capping bandwidth in the future.
@NeonPizza The biggest improvement, IMO of the BSB2 is that it finally has a universal cushion and isn't custom molded to your face so as the shape of your face changes, it becomes useless. I think if looking for a small compact set, at that price, it's much more appealing than the Pimax Dream Air. And even ships sooner. The only catch is, it does require lighthouses, while the Dream does not. NOT an issue for, say, simmers, flat2vr players, etc though that aren't using the motion tracking. I'm finding I'm spending most of my VR time on flat2vr currently, although I may jump back into some sims or skyrim when I get the Pimax because it should impress with native VR, aand honestly I have a hard enough time getting stable fps with flat2v4 with a 4090 and quest 3, the Crystal Super resolutiosn would crush the GPU unless I can get a 5090 for one. million. dollars. (and it doesn't explode, crash, or is missing ROPs........ free leather (straight) jacket included!)
I like Pimax presentations. They come in 2 flavors: The PR guy speaking in monotone for 20 minutes but in a lovably "camera in the garage" sort of way, or their biannual shows. They're cheesy, cheap, overdramatic, always feature the same 2 people, they're lying through their teeth the entire time, selling things like they've got Peter Molyneaux at the helm, but somehow I can't help but love the lie.
I haven't tried Behemoth! I probably won't even get to it this y ear. I'm still dining at the flat2vr buffet. Jedi Fallen Order felt VR native. It was delightful. Had to do some hacking to get Jedi Survivor going. It's beautiful . It punishes the GPU. It crashes constantly and needs to be reloaded, though I hear it does that in pancake mode too. Indiana Jones only got a VR mod when I was part way through. I did a little Avowed but waiting for improved performance. Thought Luke may do that one next but he did Kingdom Come Deliverance and FF7Rebirth first (can't say no to that, Remake I played a little bit in VR and it's awesome.)
In May I'll probably finally get my Pimax and barely use it at all until Oct/Nov, I don't really do much VR in the hot months though my Q3 can go outside a bit for some native games.
I think GPUs basically stalling now (and will be stalled until the AI boom crashes to zero demand), will really hold back PCVR (and gaming) heavily. But yeah the VR fans are part of the problem. The flat2vr people are very happy with motion-free VR gaming but the bulk of the VR faithful seem OBSESSED with "if you're not standing and walking around in full roomscale, it's not really VR and isn't worth the time." Which basically limits VR to not only those interested but those with enough empty space to use it without getting killed tripping over an ottoman. Then a large population sees it only as a fitness device. There's a LOT of VR users particularly in north america, where surprisingly it's the most popular, more than even asia. But I think a lot of those are fitness gimmick users, and bolstered by a lot of "gorilla tag kids" and a lot of sim racers/pilots.
@NeonPizza BSB/BSB2 are really cool for what they do with form factor, but I haven't seen any real indication that BSB2 fixes the biggest issues with BSB1. As with everything VR, it's not about avoiding flaws, it's about picking which flaws you'd rather have than others. In the case of BSB the problems are their lenses. Pancake as a big weakness with ghosting/glare/reflection and even Meta hasn't fully resolved that (I see ghosting all the time on my Q3. They also have a narrow binocular overlap due to their flat profile, and that's a big problem where VR splits between the tradeoff of big and bulky vs slim and comfortable. The get a proper binocular overlap, wide FOV, large sweet spots on single element lenses, etc, you simply need SPACE - the lens needs to be far from the eye and wide enough to curve around, and that simply means a bulky visor, mandated by the laws of physics. Any small and light headset naturally needs small, light lenses, close to the eye, and that means pancake tricks, capped FOV, capped binocular overlap.
I know Pimax is (ticking people off again by announcing a new product before releasing the delayed old product) but they have a similar small headset coming up, the Dream Air. But it has the same tradeoffs.
I still have my Pimax Crystal Super on order. Originally I'd ordered it with the QLED + mOLED modules (the mOLED is the same as the Dream Air one), but they changed things (as they do) and I'm not re-ordering the mOLED. It's expensive, and literally every time they talk about them they pretty much say "it's worse in every single way except black level which is a little better, and it costs 50% more" I MAY be persuaded to buy the wide FOV version of the QLED. It's cheaper, same screen as the normal one, it just uses the optics to stretch wider at the cost of some resolution (which is already very high). BUT....Pimax is Pimax and there's always a dice roll with them. And it ain't tiny.
Only stand-alone headsets can offer wireless for (compromised) PC, and that means batteries, processors, weight, and cost, so that's standard. It should be pancake because AFAIK mOLED REQUIRES pancake (which in turn saps 70% of the already dim light.) AFAIK it also doesn't have internal cameras and relies on lighthouses (IIRC it was designed for existing Index owners to use theirs but they sell their own expensive ones otherwise.) I won't touch lighthouses even if it's superior if you get it set up right. That kills BSB for me. I'd love to own one, even if just for watching virtual big screen 2d movies and things which I can't seem to want to tolerate Quest 3 for let alone a big Pimax.
I'm sort of caught between. I do experience the discomfort on my face with the big bulky headsets, but given a choice of "best quality VR I can get" or "more comfortable VR with more compromises" I opted for the bulky set for the best VR quality and I'll put up with the discomfort. I may regret that once I get it (Shipping September 2024! LOLOLOL)
@NeonPizza I'm not sure what happens. It's not going to disappear but I fear it'll remain ultra niche and continue getting increasingly expensive rather than the other way around, following gpus that is all for the rich boys with the Ferraris. At least you can play a VR sim forever and never tire of it. Which is the same direction as pancake gaas anyway.
What WOULD push it mainstream would be apple making it a trend item, but instead they went weird and expensive. Or Nintendo making it a flash craze. But I didn't see Nintendo going there, without iwata they're just another status quo company, and the original vr push at Nintendo was Miyamoto, but he's busy with Real Reality theme parks.
The other problem is market expectations "gamers" aren't interested unless it's Spiderman in VR (which actually IS in VR..... On PC... 😛) Ave the masses are too casual to want immersion in a headset. Where vr is catching on unfortunately is the social games space like gorilla tag among kids. Heck even in PC the #1 game and obsession is VR Chat.
I just don't have a sense vr isn't stuck in an enthusiast rut. To many fractions of an already small market, lack of interest in immersion or wearables from the majority. The games are either too generic and simple to be good, or too demanding to work well. Flat2vr works great on PC but basically requires flagship gpus that cost thousands and rise 50% from a monopoly every 2 years. And it's still dodgy performance. The business numbers aren't working and there's no big growth projection so investment isn't interested. It's too big to vanish. The US is the top market by far and supposedly has 70 million users. That's 20% of the population, not too bad, but what perxent is active is probably much less. I'm the modern world it needs to be trendy. That means celebrity and influencer bombardment. Which means massive advertising spend. That's the only way anything catches on now. And the lack of known growth potential means investments aren't interested. Especially in this economy... It's not going to disappear, is just not going to be more than it is and will be less than it was 7 years ago for a long while I think.
Meta remains the main weather balloon as the primary driver. They really have tried. Batman was a big push. A cheap headset. But much more they can do, plus their huge social influence. But the needle isn't moving. The success of PlayStation and Nintendo in some ways keep hurting vr by maintaining the status quo well enough
@NeonPizza oh yes no question, for people like us who bleed VR, PC VR is almost a paradise ahead of its time, almost, if only video cards that supported it 1) existed 2) were possible to find 3) weren't $2500 for a video card and 3) werent likely to set your headset on fire if you navigate the above.
My current thrill is Jedi Fallen Order in UEVR. It's played with normal controller, not motion, but darned if that doesn't feel like a game actually designed for VR. The world and level design just feels to meant for VR I forget I'm using an injector and think of it as a real VR game. I think it's the amount of verticality in the level design. Once you see it in VR you can never play it flat again. Ue4 does great. Ur5 is garbage in 2d, it's garbage in 3d. Why is that engine popular? It's horrible! It doesn't run well on anything but a 5090, and that it pushes to ignite.
I still feel like VR will NEVER go mainstream, not because of the technical or even financial friction but just because the public already decided they're not interested without actually trying it. The idea of a wearable is simply rejected instantly by the majority and will be until something makes it trendy. And the population seems divided heavily between "I like the idea of immersion (whether or not I'd ever try a wearable) and "I hate the idea of immersion and would never ever want to not be in a crowded space seeing everyone and everything around me at all times".
That's the real idea of VR I think it's the entire concept and purpose is either love or or hate it. The people that love it love it and the rest are revolted by it. With an overlap that's nauseous by it!)
@NeonPizza I think VR is between a rock and a hard place. It's looking for a subset of a subset of the market. On one hand, to do "AAA games" in VR which is what hardcore gamers expect, even if the budget existed the compute power doesn't and what does is unaffordable. On the other hand that market was conditioned to value image realism above all else, and VR necessitating double the power or half the quality automatically turns those people off.
But it's caught in a bigger problem that will hit all of gaming. With the GPU makers basically out of gas, we're not going to get performance increase any time soon, the tech we have today is basically all we're going to ever have unless a breakthrough like quantum computing happens. Hardware being stuck in place with double the cost, while developers keep pushing flat game graphics that choke all the hardware, something has to give. It's not only VR, the whole model of gaming is broken. Devs want to make games with Hollywood CGI level visuals rendered in real time, while hardware that can do that is ever me exotic and expensive and more importantly mfrs don't even want to make it. Why sell the die as a 5090 for $2k when you can sell the same wafer to a data center for $20k? Data centers have skewed hardware availability because there's only one chip maker used by everything so every gaming card that's made takes capacity from way more profitable server boards.
Unless this changes, consoles either have to start getting into the thousands of dollars too, or they basically stop evolving here. Heck the 5080 is WORSE than 4080 super. And more expensive. Tech is now going backwards. Consoles are on a delay but won't escape this storm
VR then gets caught in that where the compute power it needs probably won't exist this decade. Meanwhile stand alone is the obvious direction, but, that necessitates the visuals are so limited is never going to impress the masses that associate realistic photo fidelity with game quality.
It's so sad because it's the most exciting entertainment medium since the 90s but the numbers and the timing just aren't aligning. And if the intentional undersupply does ultimately start killing the idea of local hardware and into cloud, which I think it will, vr takes a massive blow..
On PC forums I'm seeing a lot of "that's it I'm done with PC, it's for the rich now, I'm back to console forever even PS5 pro is a bargain.". These people are missing the cycle. If the pic hardware prices doubled, so will consoles next time (or they'll be not much better than current ones). If they hit a limit on even multi thousand dollar cards performance gain, consoles won't up their limits to be even close. So the next ps will either be super expense or be very weak an upgrade. And either way they'll make up the difference jacking up software and service prices.
For now I'm enjoying 4090 (who knows when a real good upgrade will exist and how many hostages you need to take to get one) and the huge games like Ross modded and euvr where it works. Getting a super high res headset whenever it ships knowing that hardware to power it to spec doesn't actually exist ....
Realistically, one can live on flight Sim, dcs, ams2, Skyrim, elite dangerous, fallout 4, alone for the rest of their lives and still be happy in VR 😂.
I think in a lot of ways this audience is the wrong audience for VR. This is the home of single player narrative driven playable movie fans, which in the market is a dying market. VR DOES do that well too, but you won't find much of that because it can't even make money in the larger flat market let alone the smaller VR market. So what the crowd here tends to think is what would get them to want vr is the one thing it'll rarely ever have for the foreseeable. But imagine if gta6 online had vr how popular that might be since most players just want to hang out in the space. The narratives exist on PC via flat 2 VR mods and are great, but it comes as quite a cost to brute force and is still imperfect. Right now the biggest problem with VR is to do the kind of things people want and do it smoothly, consoles aren't close to the power needed and even PC is scarcely there still.
@NeonPizza Still have my pimax super on order... Releasing Q4 23.... No q1 25....no q2 25..... 😛
Is considered an upgrade to a 5090 when launched to better keep up with vr brute forcing. Then the 5090 arrived. $2500 Street when you can find it and even if you do it's a 600w space heater that may be missing parts, may have black screens of death, and has a high chance of bursting into flames....... And with all that is only 28% better than 4090, has almost no uplift for quest 2/psvr2 resolution, does have ok uplift for high res sets like the super, but it's main gimmick is multi frame Gen that doesn't even work for VR.
What a disappointment. Even a $3k oc GPU is underperforming for vr. Looks like we're waiting 2 more years minimum due suitable hardware. I feel like we've hit trouble. Both Nvidia and AMD are basically saying we've hit a brick wall, we can't increase performance anymore, and any increase comes with a proportionate logarithmic price increase. That'll kill console too. It means the next consoles will either have to cost a fortune that'll kill console or the next consoles won't actually be much more performance than current ones if affordable.
I feel like that's going to push streaming into the mainstream much more quickly because now even a $3k GPU is delivering MOSTLY AI generated approximations with artifacts and input lag, so why not just stream to get the same problems at a fraction of the cost. And if streaming takes over for real, VR is in trouble.
The biggest problem with deck sales is not only is it only sold direct, but Steam is actually hostile to anyone that tries to buy one, especially if they're a new customer. I have an Ally and Legion Go, not a deck, but tried to buy someone a deck as a Christmas gift, and because it's matched to accounts, I gifted the funds and instructed them how to create a Steam account and order one. It worked. And then right after they cancelled the order and locked the account for 30 days. After googling it turns out this is a thing they do especially for new accounts without purchases and play time, but can also do it for unknown reasons on established accounts. They're obsessed with thwarting scalpers which is good but their method means that basically nobody that's not already a desktop PC gamer with established history can buy one. I ended up buying a legion as the gift instead. At higher price...
Cost is the main issue with the handled PCs, they'll only appeal to existing hardcore gamers at those prices. However I don't see consoles not heading in the same doomed direction. Looking at the NV50 disaster, combined with where PS5 Pro went things seem bleak for gaming hardware. Feels Nvidia and AMD are both announcing they've really got nothing left in terms of performance improvements until some breakthrough in computing happens. All they've got to offer is ai generated fill in frames, not real performance (which is also useless for VR plus competitive gaming.). All at 50% price increases with increased power draw proportionate to the performance uplift. If we're at a stand still in hardware at ever higher costs were looking at either $1k+ consoles next time around, which will kill off consoles and gaming with it, or, as Xbox said they're staying price aware and they're not going to go that way, and that keeps PS on target, it implies next Gen consoles are going to not actually be much better than current Gen, but more money. Seems like even for sky's the limit pricing right now, we're just jogging in place, we've reached the technological performance limit for hardware people can afford. The model of always getting better has more or less stalled. Maybe forever. Maybe until quantum computing happens. More likely Skynet will wear leather jackets in Nvidia green and kill us all before then.
Sony has stopped making games and charges PC prices for constant hardware upgrades, Nintendo announces the upgrade for Nintendo Switch One is Nintendo Series Switch, same as the old switch but faster and with some shifted curves on the chassis, and Xbox is now PlayStations first party and PC somehow ends up being the most exciting thing with different experiences happening.
We're not heading for an industry crash, we're already neck deep in it.
Dear Internet, we at square enix would like to remind you, with sufficient plausible deniability, that the upcoming pc release of this game is a a deviant art showcase.
@Ralizah I think the problem is that's a Western view. In Japan, students are their true selves and adults are stuffed into their conformist shell, never to leave again. And the light hearted vibe depends on youth. I think adult themes fit better with smt, devil summoner, and now metaphor. Where I cringe is sticking smtv with high school kids too.
Leave persona as persona, a throwback to reliving youth.
@Rich33 I think it's more complicated than that. I think the knock-on effect is the main factor. How important that remains in the face of no serious competition, though, I'm not sure. It ONCE was important as part of the promotional strategy. I'm not convinced it remains significantly so. Again, just looking at real sales of exclusives vs install base, and considering the majority of the exclusives market are the same people across multiple exclusives (I.E. the market interested in exclusives is likely a repeat market for exclusives, thus a lot of overlap in game to game sales in exclusives) it a REALLY small part of their market. 10% or below, generally, with a 20% spike on one or two major titles. Meaning 80% of their install base DGAF about exclusives at all.
MS, on that token realized the same, and with their overall install base being too small to sustain exclusive titles anyway, decided to forget about that. That, though created the media problem, as you say "Xbox has no games, no point buying an Xbox" etc. Most of that really has little to do with "PS's customers are so invested in exclusives that a competitor without an array of compelling counter exclusives lacks appeal" and most of it has more to do with people validating their PS purchase by finding a negative to keep repeating about the competitor, and then the endless people parroting them to sound in the know because the internet is the internet and we haven't really left the Sonic v Mario wars of the 16 bit era in new packaging Problem is Xbox hasn't done a good job justifying why you SHOULD buy their platform. They don't have a USP beyond GP, and that's clearly not it. I don't think exclusives are the answer, but I don't think they have a better one either, so it makes the hyena's cackles ring true.
Where Sony runs into potential trouble, though, is, like you mentioned, the sales show their exclusives isn't really their main draw anymore to most of their market. Inertia is. So if someone else ever decides to compete head on (Apple, Meta, Nvidia itself for that matter, PC adoption and simplification in general) that has some major selling point, Sony could land themselves where Xbox is now, albeit more slowly.
Heck if exclusives were such a huge deal, Game Pass numbers would be a lot higher than they are. The market shifted. Most of the market just cares about the 5 GaaS standards. It worked last gen but I think Sony leaned too hard on their hollywood studio model and it's come back to bite them somewhat as the market changed. The only reason they're still on top and not in trouble is, well, their competitor is Xbox...
@Rich33 Of course someone on Push would have Sony 1st party games as the big incentive, that's kind of a given within the niche community. But it's a bit of a small niche these days and is largely outmoded. When you look at the overall sales figures on those 1st party games, "buying a sony first party every 2 years" just isn't the norm for the overwhelming majority of their install base to the point that if they just shut down all their first party studios today and stopped making games.....the PS install base wouldn't actually change significantly.
Obviously there's SOME amount of the player base that is, but just by the numbers it's a pretty small part of the actual install base these days. There's far more PS players that don't play any PS Studios games than those that do.
But you did highlight the reason they still make them at all. That influencer factor. That 2nd relative that bought because the first did, and that first did because of an exclusive. Overall the exclusives don't actually affect much of their install base, however, for each one that does, there's 5 others that buy it, not for the exclusive, but because someone else bought it, who happened to buy for an exclusive. So in that sense the exclusives matter, but only up to a point, once it's become so big and established that "everyone else plays on PS" they stop really needing those exclusives because "everyone else already plays on PS." That is without a serious competitor anyway, and MS's exit from the exclusives game, ironically, means Sony will need them less over time too.
@Pandalulz LOL I went into the jaded phase in the 2008-2010 time period where if you weren't running custom loop liquid, your system would burn up constantly lol. It was this generation that brought me back to it now that PC has sort of become a lot more predictable, and console has inherited half of PCs problems. I only switched back this past year, but I've been impressed with just how solid the experience has been. My big rig overpowers any of the poor ports, but I spend a lot of time on my Legion and Ally (non-extreme) and am amazed how well things run on something that's a lot weaker than a PS/XB even with windows bloat these days. I think things should run a lot better on weak hardware on console, but my feeling being on both sides of is this past year, is they don't optimize console ports any more than they do PC ports and the consoles have less workarounds to try to "fix" it by stripping it down. I switched from PC to console when it was clear console ports always got more polish. This gen? Most of the devs abandoned that and seem to spend more time polishing PC because it's a larger market.
@Pandalulz Yeah, exactly the same for me. Heck, I was all PC at one point, and between a whole lot of things and the fact that what I really wanted was the nerdy JRPG stuff and almost none of it was on PC and all of it was PS/Nintendo. There's only a few of the other true first parties that matter much to me. Most of the cool first party was Japan studio and they killed it. But flash forward to 2024 and all the nerdy JRPG stuff is on PC first and foremost, which really changed the complexion of PS to me.
@ChrisDeku Who's choice, the old bosses or the new bosses? Old bosses liked closed ecosystems. Balmer tried. Nadella's never been into the closed ecosystem thing, borrowing from Googazonbooks' playbooks on everything.
The character herself seems interesting enough in a cliche hollywood way. I'm more worried about them doing the hollywood big studio thing and shuffling the same actor into every project (reminds me of the period where every major film starred "Tom Hanks as: Tom Hanks Playing a Character") and the general vibe of "cyberpunk space vibe missing the trend by years, leading into planetary gameplay that looks like recycled old gameplay."
In a way it feels like Sony's entering their "WiiU moment" (I don't mean a failure in console sales), where Nintendo didn't catch onto HD development and made all the wrong moves, and it feels like Sony didn't catch onto "modern development" and all their games come out chasing a trend that they've missed by years because the game took so long to make.
But, while some people hold ND in high regard, I've never held them in high regard beyond their gfx engines, so none of that really surprises me. Still, Uncharted is fun popcorn entertainment and this might be too. I like the retro cyberpunk theme, but I'm not convinced from the trailer it'll pull it off well.
@OldGamer999 Their idea of their platform no longer revolves around "exclusive content" - simple as that. They don't have an interest in an Apple/Sony/Nintendo walled garden closed platform. Their interest is in open platforms on any and all hardware more like Googazonbook. They'll make a new machine to play games on and it'll have it's perks like GP, etc, things that make engaging with their platforms more direct. It's just not likely to be built around "here's all the exclusive games you can play on it."
Heck even Sony's backing away from that. Even ignoring the PC ports, they just don't have a huge amount of content anymore. While it's "exclusive", realistically, almost none of their install base buys their machine for their exclusive games anymore going by the sales numbers. They make big noise about their exclusives, etc, but behind closed doors, knowing their numbers, I'm sure even Sony would laugh in the face of anyone that thinks exclusives are the business today and remind them it's not 1995.
@LavenderShroud I'm with you. Don't get me wrong, I like elden ring and armored core, up to a point, but I REALLY don't get the obsession among the Fromsoft fans. It's a bizarre fixation.
I'm loving the cyberpunk space runner synthwave theme. The intro makes me think elite dangerous though, while the second of gameplay looks like another standard over the shoulder melee and guns game. Not sure what to make of it. I've never been an ND fan so I'm not hyped like many are. Their last open freedom game was jak1 and jak 3. I'm hoping this one isn't just another movie on rails with mashy combat which ND is wont to make because it could be so cool if it offers more freedom.
I'm pretty sure the gains in the US are due to the fact that Xbox One sold decently in the US but Series has simply collapsed everywhere, and PS benefits from the conversion. After all, This Is An Xbox.
@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare It's true, but I think that's more a commentary on Internet/games media and influencers than the actual state of PC gaming. Just like push doesn't actually come close to representative of the reality of the ps community at large and all our expectations are always wrong. The online presence is this weird little bubble.
Similarly Nvidia would be the first to point out that those 4090s aren't where they're actually making money, and it's why AMD excited that race entirely. The real money is is midrange despite the Internet bubble.. But you're right I think the definitely affects the perception of PC for those that don't already know that.
But I totally agree on the rest. Especially that last bit. As long as PlayStation just tries to be a PC, and now not even a budget PC, just a Sony alternative walled garden PC at the same or similar price to a real PC, it's really killing its purpose to exist. The uniqueness of consoles and their games beyond being just alternative PC hardware, is what made consoles great and forever viable. I had laugh when Cerny said they aren't just building a budget PC... Really? Because that's what it looks like except the forgot the budget part. With what it is it's defeating the main highlight of consoles, that is one size fits all, with unique traits.
What amazes me is how far pc has come. I have a legion and Ally. Other than windows login, is as seamless as using a switch or Vita. Turn it on, have big picture mode (if you're not techy enough for Playnite) and boom, feels like a Switch. (My big rig, different story but only because I have 2 vr platforms, half a dozen vr injection suites, 3 heavy modding platforms for specific games and 8 different peripherals for flight and racing controllers all going nuts but that's on my for doing farm animal things with my rig 😂
I've always held that "PC isn't for everyone" and console is a necessity for many. Yet I'm Christmas shopping for a gaming machine for someone very not techy, and I'm still tempted to get a legion or light duty rig for them instead of ps or xb. I don't think it's too complicated for "normies" anymore, pre built, and long term it's just such a flexible ecosystem I find it hard to justify to anyone not already in a console ecosystem to start into one now.
@Ralizah My hatred of AnimalCraft is extreme. They literally destroyed the game's genre and made it a generic mobile-esque resource grinding game with daily cooldowns to support a hideous, pointless crafting game. Easily my biggest disappointment of the generation. I have more fondness for launch day CP2077 than for the complete nuclear obliteration of Animal Crossing.
I'll be shocked if the next AC isn't steeped in MTX. NH felt like the test run for mobile-ifying the series to milk it's massive casual player base.
@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare In some ways, I agree, in some ways I disagree, and in other ways you're kind of agreeing about console eliminating it's point in comparison by going this route.
I think both in PC and console you have to filter out internet chatter. Because somehow even in PC that doesn't represent most of the actual market. There's the appearance PC is focused on that top 5%. But obviously it's not actually the reality, otherwise it wouldn't be the top 5%. In fact the majority of the PC gaming space is still perfectly fine with 1080p and 1400p and not gunning for 4k at all. Appearance vs. reality.
Now where I agree is devs seem to focus on that top 5% and screw everything else. That's actually changing due to the rise of Deck and the handhelds and more overall potato PCs running games, but it's also identical to this mid-gen console nonsense, and how it's being handled - the devs are focusing on those 4090s even to the detriment of console ports sucking, and now you need to join that top 5% in console, too! Defeating the point of consoles.
One thing everone talks about on PCs is "all the sliders", which I can understand, but now we're really blurring that line here. Now we're back to comparing the consoles, benchmarking performance between the hardware, comparing fps, zooming into resolutions, comparing performance, quality, quality with RT, performance with RT, across the two hardware models. Haven't we turned the "it just works" console into exactly what everyone complains about with PC? Just with less options and a higher overall cost? I think PC players tend to be the OCD type. You don't have to mess with all the sliders. It "just works", too, most of the time. We tend to mess with sliders because they're there, because we can, and because OCD prevents us from ignoring them lol. It's not a functional requirement of the system in modern games.
I'm also not sure it's any cheaper. A base PS5 is cheaper than PC, sure. A Pro? Not so much. You can get an $800 PC (same price as Pro with disc) that has a somewhat weaker (4060) but not by a ton GPU, but with a better scaler (DLSS) which is the main show of the Pro, and a much stronger CPU. I'd rank the price pretty much equivalent just with different resulting tradeoffs. Ultimately, your view kind of matches mine that there's a market for it' and it's mostly a convenience no matter the price market.
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Re: Overlooked Action RPG Granblue Fantasy: Relink Just Topped a Solid 2 Million Sales
Recently just started this. Liking a lot about it so far but I'll second all the comments on the voices. They're unbelievably cliche amine bad and insufferable. Might switch to Japanese of possible. Beautiful world and a great Ys-like gameplay though.
Re: 'This Is About Moving the Industry Forward': PlayStation and AMD's Partnership Will Benefit All Gamers
It's kinda pathetic that AMD needs Sony to tell them how to be competitive with Nvidia but I'll take it.
What does PS5 pro need FSR 4 for if it has pssr? Usually it's one upscaler or the other.
@OldGamer999 Yes, because a 90% market share of pc isn't enough, Nvidia should control all of console gaming too. PS6 can cost $1100 and only be 4% slower than PS5 with the same VRAM. PS6050 FTW! 😛
Leave Nvidia to Nintendo. Those two deserve each other.
Re: Stellar Blade's PC Mods Do More Than Remove Eve's Nanosuit
Dang, that alpha doesn't mess around...
Re: Switch 2 Absolutely Destroys PS2's Launch Record in Japan
@Sarxion I think switch 2 has a lot of legitimate demand simply because it's been sooo long in the waiting. Everyone that was hyped by the Real Soon Now Switch Pro in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 finally got it. And there's just so many Switch owners and it's the first upgrade in ages, with a much Michigan upgraded docked experience particularly.
However. I'm also somewhat baffled. Switch is is the first Nintendo I haven't eagerly followed and pre-ordered like a kid on Christmas since the Wii. Switchmas, switch 1 launch was the most exciting thing in ages. This time I didn't even bother watching the whole reveal, didn't pre-order, didn't know when it was launching and simply didn't care at all. Nothing about it is especially compelling to me and what would have been compelling they ruined with their software business practices. I've barely paid attention to switch the second half of it's life because Nintendos software just seems formulaic to me starting around mid way. And the hardware is just a faster switch. To an extent I think a good chunk of demand right now is simply FOMO based on past Nintendo launches, the PS5 XSX launch nightmare, and the NV50 launch people are used to if they don't buy it now it'll either be impossible or go up in price. Plus the bragging rights of simply having the hot new thing which seems to be a more important thing then ever to more people.
People are losing their minds at being able to play a 2017 open world game at 60fps for the low low price of $530. I was going to say this is worthy on Nvidia. Then I remembered it is Nvidia.
It will be interesting to see if the momentum continues and it's legit big demand or if you'll start seeing a ton up for sale from people that bought them with the intent to scalp without realizing there was sufficient supply unlike any hardware launch in the past 5 years. Even PSVR2 had a sellout preorder.
Re: Switch 2 Absolutely Destroys PS2's Launch Record in Japan
@Porco "furthermore, social media and influencers did not exist back in 2000. easily, 50% of all switch 2 sales were purchased by influencers for work purposes if anything."
Everything in this paragraph makes me want to buy large amounts of napalm and a DeLorean, not necessarily in that order.
Re: 'We Won't Make the Same Mistakes Again': Sony Reflects on PS5's Catastrophic Concord
Does anyone else remember when publishers were interested in producing the next hit game everyone wanted to sell like hotcakes and make them money rather than looking to produce "money spinners" to secure net margin targets? This is what's wrong with the whole industry.
Here's the only one sentence question he needs for his green light process:
Is this game simply chasing trends that others already did before us and therefore they're isn't a market for it?
X: No this is a unique title that stands out in the market without reinventing the wheel but Sony. We should make this game.
->O: Yes this game recycles trends and has no place in the market.
Shepard: Eff off Herman, you money grubbing lying Sackboy!
Re: Sony Taking 'Very Measured' Approach to Picking Which PS5 Games Get PC Ports
As someone done with console at the moment and totally switched to PC who's latest and only launch date purchase in years is a PlayStation Studios game (Stellar Blade) I say keep the PC ports coming.
From a cash perspective, the only major blunder Sony is making with PC is the region restrictions to the same markets they have consoles in. No idea why they're knee capping revenue in one of the biggest reasons for them to do PC.
For console I really don't think there's much overlap. I have no desire to play on console hardware at all so long as I have a much better PC.. the only thing that would make me play on console now isn't exclusives. It's if Nvidia prices just make it impossible to continue and ps prices don't feel similarly extortionate except more spread out over time. For console customers, they're not going to splash or the high upfront cost of PC without being wholly dedicated. PS5 is a "cheap" (up front but over time arguably more expensive) zero effort PC. The two don't really overlap much in market. Right now Nvidia sells PlayStation better than any marketing campaign Sony can buy.
I get why they and some fans like to stick to the exclusive software model but I still think that era ended long ago. It works for Nintendo because Nintendo has a captive audience Sony doesn't really. They did in the PS2 era but that ship sailed as they moved to become cheap packaged PCs. With PS2 they were competing with Nintendo. The exclusives just aren't why someone chooses between ps and pc anymore. It worked when consoles were really cheap and PC was really expensive and consoles completed directly. An exclusive isn't the consoles selling point anymore. Its size, ease of use, and, (seemingly) lower cost of entry are.
If pc hardware becomes cheap and much easier to use, PlayStation is in trouble no matter what exclusives it has.. But thankfully Nvidia is here to prevent such things 😂
Re: 'People Are Less Willing to Pay': Dev Speaks Out Against Day One Releases on PS Plus, Xbox Game Pass
This argument is completely broken every time it comes up.
The size of the gaming market is more or less finite. There are only so many customers (excluding mobile.).
Most of those customers have a finite amount of money they are going to spend on the gaming industry, including hardware.
The cost per game and the cost of hardware have risen significantly, reducing the quantity of games consumed per individual.
The discretionary income available to spend on gaming has been reduced for most of the market.
Even with "no games" each notE3, there's a huge glut of A and B list "must have" hype games far outnumbering what most of the market can afford or have time to consume. That leaves very little market opportunity for these C and D listers
This has nothing to do with subscriptions and value. There's only so much money in this pool, and "devaluing" content doesn't change that. Someone's going out of business and the argument is simply about who, not if. If content is "devalued" at least more people try it. The only one "devaluing" hurts is the mega publishers with a massively marketed hyped game that will sell millions of FOMO copies at full price forever. They have all the markets money on their table and devaluation robs them if default revenue. For everyone else, those mega publishers will still consume the markets revenue either way. The smaller games are practically charity if they're pulling in money by sales with or without subs. There's just not enough market with enough income and time to consume everyone's full price content. Someone goes down either way and they're arrogant enough to believe they have the market to not be the one.
If you're Activision or 2k or Nintendo or Sony, yes this devalues your guaranteed default sales. Honestly even Sony is becoming less a part of that group these days but they're sales model depends on a loyal core at launch price for now.
Re: Stellar Blade Goes Nuclear on PC, Obliterates All Sony Single Player Records on Steam
As somebody who refuses to buy day one games at this point I actually broke my own ethos and bought this on launch on PC. It's a good price full price and was on launch sale, why not?
Idk if it's just pc smoothness or a year of patches but I'm finding the game far more enjoyable than when I tried it on PS5 launch. It's quite good. AND works beautifully in VR making it amazing for me. And Sony stopped requiring linking to PSN, also great! Ok really surprised how it's hooking me in a way it just didn't last time.
Maybe this will remind publishers that you can get more sales with lower prices than just charging a million dollars at launch. Or just that models in catsuits sell. Either way.
Re: Poll: How Would You Rate State of Play for June 2025?
They're turning Japanese. I really think so.
Refreshingly shocking to see a PS show feature mostly Japanese content and devs, and surely not a coincidence they did so as switch 2 launches and is the most generic corporate thing possible.
The presentation was a step up too which was nice to see, though personally I'll never love the presentation of these modern directs. They still lack hype to the point they didn't excite me at all then when showing games I know I'm hyped for. But anything is better than the switch 2 presentation. I'll forever yearn for the rock concert bombast of the old stage shows. Now to get that we have to watch Nvidia shows with Letherman making jokes that would make a UbiE3 groan.
It's the state of the industry when Nintendo its launching a new console and I neither know many details nor much care. Sony wins #notE3 by opening with Tetris. And most of the best parts of the PS5 show were games that would have been at home on Vita. Who says you can't go back?
They opened with a VR game. I'll take that win!
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NeonPizza Nintendo, yeah, their top leadership is a finance guy, their US leadership is an EA guy and former proctor and Gamble marketing guy. They're joined at the hip to Nvidia that's the epicenter of everything wrong in gaming. They're but interested in innovation. Iwatas question was always "is it fun?". I'm certain their new question is "is it further monetizable?". They're investor controlled by activist investors that iwata made a career of flipping off when they pushed. They get THEIR people in now. It's a bank. Nothing more. Nintendo is a product made by bankers for bankers now.
Oh I love a portable system I can play the same games I can play on a big screen. It's why deck and legion and ally exist. I do have a problem with a system that wants me to pay $80 for a self contained version of those $20 games with no cross save though 😂
Idk where Nintendo goes next. I don't think switch 2 will be the hit they wanted. The price breaks it for the bulk of the switch market and people will go back to their tablets. Especially in this economy. And they seem bent on chasing trends. We'll see what the trend is years from now. I was all Nintendo back in the day, lost faith in them with N64, they pulled me in big time with wii and 3ds even wiiu. And switch and now switch 2 have totally lost me. The $100 alarm clock is their only worthwhile product right now. It feels more iwata than switch 2. And that's probably because it IS iwata. It's his QoL device he kept talking about in the wiiu era. One last "real" Nintendo product before the Deck lite.
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NeonPizza with all the high end headsets, dream, super, meganex, simnoum etc, 4090s barely can handle great fps and res at quest 3 resolution on demanding games, and especially flat2vr. Even 5090 chokes on most of that. For native vr games that aren't super demanding like flight sims you can get away with native res but otherwise, yes, no GPU exists that drives these things at native res. It's going to really heavily on software upscaling. The plus is you can turn AA off at these resolutions. It's be soft but screen door less images in most cases. It's a good question how ultra wide will look being upscaled. Though I'll get 2 modules. One ultra wide and one high fidelity (the boon of super you can swap your optical kit). Elden ring low fov, Skyrim wiiiiiide. Minecraft.... Lol.
You know they're offering Super bundle for $2400 with the OLED module and one qled. Meanwhile they're offering the OLED module (same engine as dream but in a cartridge for super) for $1100 for people that already ordered qled for 1800...?? I'm going to see if they can upgrade me to the bundle of ultra wide plus OLED for that price but it'll delay me to Christmas 😂. Otoh I'm not sure. OLED blacks sound great but it's its still less fov than quest 3. Is that really an upgrade? Maybe I'd better stick with 57ppd despite the black.
They haven't announced the ppd for dream air/super OLED kit. It's supposed to be 104fov to preserve stero overlap, but they had ours Dennis demo units with wide 120fov and even Sebastian from mrtv the overlap obsessive tought it looked great so they're considering widening the fov and shrinking the overlap I think. So they don't actually know the PPD. Less then 50 that's definite.
Oh fresnel is garbage. But pancake isn't the only lens. Super qled uses large single element aspherical lenses. Pancake is only necessary when the screen is super tiny like moled and small headsets. The plus with pancake is there's no sweet spot at all. The negatives with pancake are the glare and bloom and godrays and the fact it eats 80% of your brightness. Super OLED is pancake, it's identical to dream. I don't think the brightness is a motion clarity issue. That was an issue on psvr2 precisely because it was OLED and because it was processing 10bit HDR. The back lit qled won't struggle with that but it may have artifacts from the dimming changing, and some headsets do have enough mura that people keep complaining however mrtv said at its worst is better than q3 mura which I don't see any mura on so I think it's nitpicking. (Nits ..... Pun not intended 😂)
Pfft modern Nintendo kids=fornite kids I think. REAL Nintendo fans still have our Virtual Boy, the first consumer VR kit...... 😂 For the 3 months you could buy it. I'm some countries. Nintendid what Nvidia does 😆 iwatas Nintendo was so fun and inviting. The modern Nintendo kids, Nintendo itself with its EA based management, it's partnership with freaking Nvidia..... It may be the worst of gaming now. Makes me sad.
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NeonPizza Of course OC would never be main stream but if PC isn't advancing tech nothing else is either. We've hit a brick wall and tech has stopped. We're officially in the post technology society where tech is just having AI advance to do everything for you. Hey Alexa, describe what playing video games was like.
I was going to say $2200 for that dream air is insane and then I realized that's what I'm paying for super with the 57ppd and ultra wide modules too 😂 could add the mold module, same as the one in dream air for $1100 but meh.
Right now moled has to be tiny fov. The screens only come too small to do wide. Plus it's a catch 22. Everyone wants small physical headsets but the catch is that means needing small screens and not having the depth and wrap around for lenses that make a wide screen. So tiny headsets will always be like looking through binoculars, and wide view sets must be bulky. I'm very curious about the new ultra wide module. Also curious how the $400 modules are now $700, but I still get it for 400 as a preorderer 😊
Problem is good VR needed graphics to keep advancing and it's clear graphics has
Halted AND becoming niche and boutique. I think people are going to reel with the price of next Gen consoles and sales will be awful.
Stand alone will obviously be the bulk of VR but it's stuck being glorified phone games. Gorilla tag, social games blah blah. That, too, will keep it a novelty.
After you see proper games in VR you're going to rethink your GameCube target lol. Indiana Jones in vr is absolutely mesmerizing visually.
I'm still not sold on moled as the end all. Yes the pixel density and low mura and blacks is magical. But it comes at the cost of tiny fov and an extreme price tag. And pancake is painfully overrated. We'll see how the dream air goes but every other pancake devours all brightness and has god rays and glare for days. Even quest 3 which, to my, honestly defeats the point of the great OLED blacks of you're just casting glare across it.
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NeonPizza fwiw, I still see VR kind of dying but not for the reasons we all used to worry about. It's Nvidia and the state of computing and gpus. Take a look at how they're openly ignoring rtx50. Then look at pricing. The $2000 5090. Has jumped to $3000 actual MSRP from most vendors. And apparently that's gonna jump another 15% because Nvidia lost 5 billion from their AI chips being banded in China and moving the new chips to tsmc USA. So they're jacking up prices. $3500 to buy a card with 30% more performance of a $1400 card a year ago. That's not a vr card. That's an enterprise computing card. Meanwhile all the other cards are less performance than before while being significantly more expensive.
Vr depends on the idea of graphics performance increasing over time to get where it needs to be, but it seems we're done with that. Graphics performance is not only not getting better it's actually reversing. She tier chips are worse performance than the predecessor. All while becoming less affordable. I don't see VR really moving ahead much of we are in an era of processing regression where we're going backwards toward 2010 computing. 2d gaming SD affected too, including switch 2, PS5 pro etc. The improvements are all from ai image generation, not from actual performance increase. And the introduction of artifacts and terrible input lag.
Reality currently looks like our future computers will be weaker than our old ones while costing significantly more. And I can't see VR handling that well. It needed to go forward not backwards. Never thought we'd see an era of tech regression but here we are. While the actual tech goes into data centers which I guess makes sense because in the future we don't need computers anymore. Just input devices to tell the AI to do everything for us. In between working in the mines to provide raw materials to keep building the AIs.
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NeonPizza
FWIW, all of the mOLED options, including the super expensive Sony panel version, have REALLY small FOVs. Smaller than Quest 3 and PSVR2. Q3 is 110, the mOLEDs are like 104-108, PSVR2 is a little wider I think. Same small FOV as Apple Vision Pro. It's the nature of the tiny panels which is the largest they're made right now. Right now the benefits of mOLED seem to be blackest blacks, no mura, super lightweight and potentially super compact size, and potentially more "solid" looking image because of it's very dense pixel arrangement (even at a lower PPD than a QLED) and a more "jaggy-free" diagonal pixel arrangement. The tradeoffs are horrendous FOV, meh bino overlap, low brightness, glare/godrays from pancake lenses, worse color range (maybe not on the $2200 Sony paneled version/$1200 Super module) worse refresh rate.
Quest 3 is 110 with 80 overlap.
Can't remember PSVR2 spec but it's better on both I think.
Dream Air SE (and all other mOLED units) are like 104-108 fov)
Super ultrawide is 140 (!!) fov 90 overlap.
Super 50 ppd is 130fov 110 overlap
Super 57 ppd is 120fov 100 overlap I think.
Right now I'm just using the Quest 3 for PCVR, I never got the PSVR2 adapter so it's gathering a bit of dust right now, although that's because I thought I was going to have the Pimax back in November lol. So I haven't seen how PSVR2 looks for PC at all, I think I was mostly comparing the hardware itself (quest on PC vs PSVR2 on PS5) Very few games seem to support DFR on PC though for now. Mostly the big simulators (DCS, MSFS, etc.) DFR is a big deal but it does seem like few things actually support it. UEVR does have an implementation but I havent' heard of many using it. I'll probably have to find out soon enough.
I think the biggest problem for VR (and everything else) is going to be nVidia. They've basically declared war on gaming, stopped innovating any progress at all and instead turned to "fake frames" as the only improvement. REAL performance gains seem to be at a standstill on GPUs, with every 50* actually going BACKWARD in performance from 40* except 5090. I think the industry is about to hard shift to AMD, but they've been sketchy for VR as most of the functionality is built for nVidia (who verbally considers VR dead.)
On thing that just bugs me with Quest is the colors. The colors look so washed out, like I'm looking at an old LCD screen (because I am...) It's the panels, it's the black level, it's also the lenses, just sucks the color depth out of everything. I haven't done theBlu yet!
And yeah they're saying Dream Air ships in August. They're saying my 57ppd ships in June, and Ultrawide ships in July. So mark your calendar for June '26! Pimax is a company that you're always mad at but can't hate. They keep doing all these idiotic things and announcing 200 products before shipping one (Sebastien from MRTV, himself was one of the first comments on the announcement video with "Finally a new Pimax headset! It's been at least a few weeks!") But they keep trying to be actually good that you can't be mad. They sold me at their new chat feature in the app and saying you get a real person not an AI bot. It says everything about the world today when the only place promising direct access to real people and not AI is the Virtual Reality manufacturer lol.
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NeonPizza Pimax history on releases is.....unique. Every single video they post still is filled with comments from OG Crystal owners asking "so where are the wide FOV lenses you promised?" And Wireless link for OG Crystal has been "real soon now" for years lol.
They're definitely improving a lot, but they've had nasty growing pains, and their defect rate with exchanges remains high it seems, despite their commitments to QA improvements. (They're hand-testing every Super that ships, both in China before they leave in the US again before they ship, and there's still lots of defect complaints.) BUT, the alternatives aren't necessarily better. Meganex and BSB have their issues too. Pimax actually tries...they fail a lot but they try lol.
So the history on the Super is now, preordered last August for bundle of QLED 57ppd + mOLED at $600 to ship Q4 2024. Then in Q4 2024 they announced they'll ship Q1 2025 and are prioritizing the 57ppd module to ship first which is most of their orders. Then later they demo them at CES in January and announce they're having problems withe the 57ppd lens and will ship 50ppd first which is most of their orders. Then they announced they're changing Super from a halo to a goggle strap. Then they announce Dream Air and it will ship in May 2025......... Then they announce Dream Air will cost double what they said but uses much nicer Sony panels. Then they announce Dream Air SE which will be the original Dream Air and neither will ship in May or any time close. Then they announce the mOLED module for Super is going to be the Sony upgraded one and cost $1200 instead of $600. Then they (finally) ship 50ppd Super. Then just today they announced a new module for Super, an ultra-wide version (140HFOV) of the 50ppd available, sacrificing binocular overlap to 90deg vs 100deg for super wideness), and THEN announce that my 57ppd should ship in June (meaning I'll get it in July nearly 1 year after I ordered it, and leave it nicely untested in the box until like October lol...)
BUT they're also taking care of their preorder customers. They keep adding stuff. Preorder super customers get the upgraded ear speakers free, now they're adding the new "ice silk" face foam (I have that on on of my 3rd party Quest 3 masks, it's nice stuff), and shipping a free larger forehead strap, they're offering the new ultra-wide module for $400 instead of $700 (which is what they told us modules would cost last year before quietly upping it), they'll also offer a paid "trial" for all the modules where you can borrow a module to try before buying, only for preorder customers, so I could try that fancy Sony panel mOLED module for like $75 to see what I'm missing lol.
Yeah, they do everything on the fly....
Having said all that, I'll definitely buy the new ultra-wide module. I was going to buy the 50ppd to get a wide FOV and a high clarity 57ppd option. So now it makes more sense to keep the 57 and add the ultrawide. It DOES sacrifice binocular overlap but it's still 10 degrees more than Quest 3 so I'm sure it's fine.
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NeonPizza Pimax. "If it releases on time" 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Which part of "ordered the 57ppd Super in August, still waiting for it" misled you? 😛
It'll be real soon now 😛
Originally I ordered my super as a bundle with the micro OLED module plus 57ppd, but they delayed the moled and removed the bundle, can just buy the module later. Is the same module as dream air phat with the Sony panels. But I don't think I'll get the moled module. They're pretty emphatic that qled is better for everything but blacks IF you have the large visor like the super because the screens are enormous. But yeah I know Dream would be a much better fit for you because if the ergonomics being at important. It looks awesome, better than baby. Though the self adjusting strap seems so dumb. I WOULD like to add the 50ppd wide fov module to my super eventually. If I ever receive it. Whenever they start taking orders for individual modules.
Avd yeah pcvr is just awesome if you're a vr enthusiast. Needs really beefy hardware and unfortunately nvidia has wet the bed, but man flat2vr is awesome. $10 a month for Luke Ross mods is worth it if you like the games he sports
Supports. Looks like death stranding is next. I won't touch that in vr with a hundred foot pole, but you would lol 😂
At this point for pc I think AMD is the only way to go EXCEPT if you're into flat2vr with Luke Ross mods, you need dlss. At least until Leatherman decides the world doesn't need VR anymore. Assuming his driver's ever work for 2d either 😆
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NeonPizza
I don't see current Nintendo transitioning to VR ever. If miyamoto were still running the show? Yes, they would have. He was the one that pushed for Virtual Boy and he was the one that obsessed over stereoscopinc 3d for Game Cube, and pushed for 3DS. He'd have done it. But current Nintendo is run by bankers and businessmen. They follow safe money, look at trends. The trend is not VR. Nintendo won't try to break into new territory under that leadership. They'll try to maximize profits on the safest bests. Miyamoto was their disruptor since the SNES. He's playing with billion dollar Real Reality attractions now.
I'd say Gen Z - even before that. Mid Gen Y through Gen Z and beyond were conditioned to worse than blandness alone. They were conditioned by a corporate/social media world into CONFORMITY above all else. Everyone must appear to be identical to all else. Like the same things, and the same times, follow the same trends, globally, in unison, as prompted, and all laugh at the same jokes. To always check the internet to make sure their opinion is the right one.
And it's going to get worse, where now even internet search and social and youtube trend will be consolidated into an AI prompted single One Truth (even if it's made up from out of context snips from Reddit.) "What should my opinion be" And the AI will tell you. The same answer for the whole world.
The meaning of life is 47. Funny how that started out as a sardonic irony and is now reality. We're living the Soviet dream, run as a capitalist business venture.
Modern gaming and media and everything is so bad I've found myself spending a lot of my gaming time reading books instead more and more. And it's more exciting. I lose sleep unable to stop, like I used to do with gaming. Gaming I end up bored and switch it off easily. (Some exceptions with some games of course.) Who'd have thought in 1995 that the future would involve trying to convince kids to play video games because all that reading of books will rot their brains?
Also....I am STILL waiting for my Pimax 57PPD....but their marketing as moved on to Dream Air before even shipping the 57PPD Crystal I ordered in August lol......that's sooooo Pimax....
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NeonPizza 3DS will probably be my favorite console of all time. I don't see how anything can replace the magic of the machine and the library it had. But I can't say that I even mind the Switch being a traditional handheld. Nintendo needed that, people were asking for that, and even with the questionable ergonomics, it's a very important piece of hardware, I think Switch is the only reason we have Deck/Ally/Legion, it kind of jumpstarted the entire model. The start of Switch was great, and remember, Switch was still an Iwata console. The last Iwata console. Launch games, from the Iwata era still were great. But as soon as Iwata's last touches were used up and Miyamoto left the day to day, the internet raves about how Switch had "The best iterations of every series" and I just don't get it. Nintendo games went down the dumper after that initial wave of Switch games. I kept buying them, I wanted them to still feel like the Nintendo I knew, and they just didn't anymore. I stopped buying them. I hate it, but Nintendo games just started feeling like generic design by committee mobile games, and a lot of it makes sense that the majority of their development is outsourced, and their designs must be based on making the work easy to outsource to different uninvolved parties. It's the definition of a generic product featuring famous characters. Though, I must say Sony games largely became that as well. People laugh at Ubisoft, but I have to hand it to them they make their own games, in house, pretty much 100%, and they have their own design langauge and feel. They copy themselves a lot, but at least they have their own internal design.
Switch 2 is exactly what I feared it would be under banker Furukawa and Bowser, the EA guy. It's Switch (2025 version.) It's the same console. Yes, I know it's much more powerful. But it's just that. It's a more powerful beige box to replace the old beige box with. And formulaic/Apple-like is the perfect description of current Nintendo. When Bowser started talking about having the brand strength to charge a lot, I basically gave up on Nintendo.
That said it's not just Nintendo. Nintendo is generic/formula/Apple/iterative and overpriced. Sony has become "PC lite and overpriced with safe/trend chasing games", Jensen/Nvidia declared "DIY gaming is dead." (Aka PC gaming, buying PC parts.) What have we got left? Somehow Xbox is winning by default without being able to sell a single console just because they bought out a handful of old guys that still remember how to make real games from the PC golden age. I feel like gaming is just kind of in a dead place. Even I with my flat2VR/VR fix find myself moving into evergreen "play the same game all the time" models (simulators and such) because it's not like the campaign games are really interesting these days and there's something to be said living in a continuous other world.
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NeonPizza
The problem with Miyamoto is, he's "retired" but not. And it was by design because very time he said "retire" their shares plummeted. By removing himself from gaming and letting it remain successful, it stablizes their investment, they know they don't need him to survive. But.... I do think he was their real creative foundation and without his involvement, the product sucks. Unfortunately the young market as we said is conditioned to consume-dispose-consume media no matter how insipid so it works out fine.
3DS remains my absolute favorite console of all time, full stop. Even over SNES. IDK, it just had the magic in it that has never been duplicated. Switch, to me, never measured up. People boast about its great games, I never saw it. I feel the games were all generalized and lost most of the heart of the 3DS games, except for the odd gem here or there.
Switch 2 is just "Nintendo Switch (2025ver Latest gen)" That's whats wrong with it. It's not a new Nintendo console. It's just an upgraded spec of the same console. Yes I know internally there's enough leather jacket Jensen in there to buy at least half the missing ROPS on a 5080 on eBay, but fundamentally, it's just this year's Switch model but overhyped.
I was excited for WiiU. I'm not even paying attention to Switch 2. I ignore it as much as I ignore new iPads. I'm sure I'll want a Mario game or Zelda game eventually. But IDK because i haven't been happy with their games of late. I love the franchises but the games just....feel off to me. Very "safe", very bland. Very much like the way I felt about N64 era games when I switched to the huge world of (golden age) PC in the 90s. I don't want to move away from those classic Nintendo franchises, but I can't say I've loved my time with them over the past 4-5 years either. ACNH was the beginning of the end to me. Such a travesty. And everything since then feels like it. Because commercially it dominated. IDK if people are really prepared to pay these new prices though. THere's always the argument "inflation and tariffs and etc" but there's just a limit to what people will spend on entertainment, and these industries seem to feel like they'd rather cut their workforce in half, make half the product and charge 4x as much to a limited wealthy target market, and on the balance sheets that looks like a win. Until every company does it and they all realiize they no longer have a market.
S2 makes me sad in general. It feels like that great sort of second golden age of gaming from the PS3/X360/Wii days that lasted through 3DS/WiiU/mid-cycle PS4/X1 is fully truly over and replaced with a "premium for $10k home theater enthusiasts" version of iPad games.
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NEStalgia Yeah, I could fill more text walls than could possibly be read on the disaster that is the complete change in culture between generations. It's something different from the old tradition of generational gaps, it's more fundamental. It's more like a completely foreign culture entirely, based on completely different values, norms, expectations, and perceptions such that it's like being dropped into the middle of an exotic country in a different era and being expected to blend in. The baseline of how brains are developed from birth changed into something completely different, and the "young" and "old" are thus completely incompatible in a way that has never happened before. It's not just different trends of the time, it's a completely fundamentally different value system and baseline. It's a generation raised as a manufactured product by corporations for the sole purpose of engineering a society that maximizes investor value.
Disagree about kids not understanding the 2D action platformers etc though. The meteoric rise of Souls and Soulslikes which follow the same principal as the most masochistic of those in the day and the prolific presence of indies on Switch tells me that's pretty much alive and well. Not for the iPad kids, but the iPad kids would have been "not gamers" in the nerdy 90's & 80's. of gaming anyway. Honestly, I was never that group, couldn't be bothered with Mega Man back in the day And I still do and always did demand checkpoints It's why I dislike soulsbornes and such. It feels like an intentional waste of time to pad the experience to make you constantly repeat things you've already cleared. I prefer when you respawn right into the thing you DIDN'T get right so you can rapidly keep re-trying. Rayman games are awesome about that.
I liken it to, if when learning to play an instrument, every time you missed a passage, instead of retrying the tricky passage until you master it you have to start the entire song from the beginning. It's just artificial and forced designed to punish and frustrate rather than improve! I've never valued that game design approach. Game Overs were a relic of coin op design, if you keep pumping quarters in you get more continues! Seems we've gone full circle, actually
Nintendo....I think they're worse than PS and Xbox actually. I mean Xbox has enough studios, yes through conquest, that they have tons of creative endeavors still, yes, all of them based in the PC golden age, but it's at least there. Now, lots of those guys, Feargus, and Todd and the like, when they retire, it will be a vacuum again. Sony....ok, yeah maybe they're as bad as Nintendo. But Nintendo feels like a glorified iOS games developer that just leans on brand recognition and some gimmicks. It's not Iwata's Nintendo. It's an IP holding company. They even updated their mission to reflect it. Most of their development is outsourced. The games are sterile and without heart. They're cute. They have some quirk. But it's all surface deep. I've been really jaded with their output for years and Switch 2 looks even worse. When their Switch 2 launch contained mostly remasters at higher prices I felt like I was watching the X1 reveal again, but actually X1 reveal had some brilliance hidden behind the disaster. It was worse.
IDK, I'm glad I went over to PC but thanks to nVidia even that's lost most of its lustre in the past year. And thanks to tariffs gaming might just vanish in the US anyway.
Re: New PSVR2 Games Release Dates in 2025
@NeonPizza aww man, I wrote half a response, got distracted, forgot to finish, and then it ate the whole thing! Lol
Right now, because I'm into the whole flat2vr scene I don't think I actually need to buy any new games for the next 8 years 😂. I have so many games I haven't started yet, or Indiana Jones that I want to play through again because I played only the end in VR and it's a whole other experience, and that doesn't even cover The evergreen sims, Elite, etc. And Oblivion remastered, one of my favorite games ever (better than Skyrim) works in uevr. (unfortunately I've been so busy I've been barely playing them! And a realized the absurdity of standing on an algae clad patio playing virtual power washer simulator so I bought an actual power washer instead so I get actuall work done with the same hand motions 😂. Sadly there's glare and mura and I demand better graphics lol 😂
I fear for vr though. Luke Ross, the main flat 2 VR mod guy, $10 mo subs, it's his full time job, sends out monthly newsletter emails and his previous one had an ominous note about enjoying it while it lasts and who knows how long before it won't be possible anymore, noting that even Nvidia hasn't mentioned vr. Once the keeps removing driver features it ignoring it. Otoh Pimax is going strong and there's definitely rumors of a valve index 2, but it would be basically a steam deck and not pcvr truly.
Speaking of pimax I am still waiting for my Super lol 😂. They changed from the 57 ppd lens model being first production to the 50ppd (less center res, wider 135deg fov) and are shipping those now but I ordered 57ppd. Not sure if I should have changed or not. Wide fov sounds really nice so far. And resolution is going to be way below the panel anyway until Jensen GAFs. You can buy the opposite module later but they're not available to order yet. Was gonna be $400 but probably more with the tariffs now. There's also going to be moled module for 600. But dang it some of that money has to go into a 5090 trust. As if it'll ever be available ever anyway!
You'd maybe hate the super because they are known to have some mura even with QLED and you're very sensitive to that. Plus theyre not tiny. Tiny is a compromise if course..
Switch 2. Gag. 6 years later and Switch Pro finally exists. I agree with Shu Yoshida. Nintendo lost it's identity. Years ago. They're really Japanese Apple now in every way. It's gross. I never thought I'd hate Nintendo but right now I do. Heck it doesn't even have interesting games. A bunch of $80 remasters of $60 switch games which were remasters of $50 wii/gcn games and open world group of kids hanging out social space Kart. Trend chasing with a Nintendo skin. It's depressing. Iwata made Nintendo likable and fun. Now it's back to how it was with yamauchi when we all switched to PS and PC because Nintendo was awful after SNES.
Yeah IMO NL was too young an age group for me even years ago. Mid switch was the turning point. What's worse is that the world you and I come from has more in common with people of the 1940s and 50s than it does with the kids just 10-20 years behind us. The world didn't change THAT much between WW2 and our time and right after our time everything changed so radically the kids are a completely different culture. I feel more commonality with 82 year olds than 28 year olds. They're aliens from a different civilization and whole different mindset, having been raised by social media and screens alone .
Re: PSVR2 Gets Enormous Price Reduction Starting March 2025
@NeonPizza You won't see many NATIVE flat2VR as there's simply no profit in the effort for the companies, and most of those efforts stalled completely. So that whole segment is limited to mods which of course requires flame throwing PCs. I would never have bought that monster PC if not for flat2vr, it's the only reason I paid that much. But with the GPU prices skyrocketing, maintaining that level of performance might not be something I want to continue. But that means rolling backwards next time, not even treading in place. It makes it really hard to be a VR fan and yet it's amazing when it works.
One thing to remember with mOLED is that it's MAIN advantage is not being a superior display. It's MAIN advantage is that it's small, lightweight, and low power usage for small stand-alone battery powered devices. It's actually a compromise. The panels are very small, expensive, low yield. The pancake requirement means expensive lenses with glare issues that reduce the light by more than half, but it's's limited max size means limited max resolution, it has a limited fps, it has a limited FOV and overlap, limited color range, it's not an end-all solution, it's a compromise solution for a particular application, namely, small and light weight with low power consumption. I'm going to be very curious trying the Super whenever I may get it. Single element lenses, bright, 1k dimming zones for "near-OLED" blacks (not as good, but not too far away without the other compromises.) wider FOV than Q3, some have said simlar to PSVR2, some said better. Depending on if that goes well or not I"d consider ordering the wide FOV version, 132 degrees - same screen different lens, less center resolution but still much higher than q3 or even bsb2. I think the other module is $400 (whenever they sell it) but, will have the new tarriffs added so $450 ish I guess. The Super has interchangeable modules, the "retina", the "wide", maybe another in the future, but it'll be long-term limited by the displayport version capping bandwidth in the future.
Re: PSVR2 Gets Enormous Price Reduction Starting March 2025
@NeonPizza
The biggest improvement, IMO of the BSB2 is that it finally has a universal cushion and isn't custom molded to your face so as the shape of your face changes, it becomes useless. I think if looking for a small compact set, at that price, it's much more appealing than the Pimax Dream Air. And even ships sooner. The only catch is, it does require lighthouses, while the Dream does not. NOT an issue for, say, simmers, flat2vr players, etc though that aren't using the motion tracking. I'm finding I'm spending most of my VR time on flat2vr currently, although I may jump back into some sims or skyrim when I get the Pimax because it should impress with native VR, aand honestly I have a hard enough time getting stable fps with flat2v4 with a 4090 and quest 3, the Crystal Super resolutiosn would crush the GPU unless I can get a 5090 for one. million. dollars. (and it doesn't explode, crash, or is missing ROPs........ free leather (straight) jacket included!)
I like Pimax presentations. They come in 2 flavors: The PR guy speaking in monotone for 20 minutes but in a lovably "camera in the garage" sort of way, or their biannual shows. They're cheesy, cheap, overdramatic, always feature the same 2 people, they're lying through their teeth the entire time, selling things like they've got Peter Molyneaux at the helm, but somehow I can't help but love the lie.
I haven't tried Behemoth! I probably won't even get to it this y ear. I'm still dining at the flat2vr buffet. Jedi Fallen Order felt VR native. It was delightful. Had to do some hacking to get Jedi Survivor going. It's beautiful . It punishes the GPU. It crashes constantly and needs to be reloaded, though I hear it does that in pancake mode too. Indiana Jones only got a VR mod when I was part way through. I did a little Avowed but waiting for improved performance. Thought Luke may do that one next but he did Kingdom Come Deliverance and FF7Rebirth first (can't say no to that, Remake I played a little bit in VR and it's awesome.)
In May I'll probably finally get my Pimax and barely use it at all until Oct/Nov, I don't really do much VR in the hot months though my Q3 can go outside a bit for some native games.
I think GPUs basically stalling now (and will be stalled until the AI boom crashes to zero demand), will really hold back PCVR (and gaming) heavily. But yeah the VR fans are part of the problem. The flat2vr people are very happy with motion-free VR gaming but the bulk of the VR faithful seem OBSESSED with "if you're not standing and walking around in full roomscale, it's not really VR and isn't worth the time." Which basically limits VR to not only those interested but those with enough empty space to use it without getting killed tripping over an ottoman. Then a large population sees it only as a fitness device. There's a LOT of VR users particularly in north america, where surprisingly it's the most popular, more than even asia. But I think a lot of those are fitness gimmick users, and bolstered by a lot of "gorilla tag kids" and a lot of sim racers/pilots.
Re: PSVR2 Gets Enormous Price Reduction Starting March 2025
@NeonPizza BSB/BSB2 are really cool for what they do with form factor, but I haven't seen any real indication that BSB2 fixes the biggest issues with BSB1. As with everything VR, it's not about avoiding flaws, it's about picking which flaws you'd rather have than others. In the case of BSB the problems are their lenses. Pancake as a big weakness with ghosting/glare/reflection and even Meta hasn't fully resolved that (I see ghosting all the time on my Q3. They also have a narrow binocular overlap due to their flat profile, and that's a big problem where VR splits between the tradeoff of big and bulky vs slim and comfortable. The get a proper binocular overlap, wide FOV, large sweet spots on single element lenses, etc, you simply need SPACE - the lens needs to be far from the eye and wide enough to curve around, and that simply means a bulky visor, mandated by the laws of physics. Any small and light headset naturally needs small, light lenses, close to the eye, and that means pancake tricks, capped FOV, capped binocular overlap.
I know Pimax is (ticking people off again by announcing a new product before releasing the delayed old product) but they have a similar small headset coming up, the Dream Air. But it has the same tradeoffs.
I still have my Pimax Crystal Super on order. Originally I'd ordered it with the QLED + mOLED modules (the mOLED is the same as the Dream Air one), but they changed things (as they do) and I'm not re-ordering the mOLED. It's expensive, and literally every time they talk about them they pretty much say "it's worse in every single way except black level which is a little better, and it costs 50% more" I MAY be persuaded to buy the wide FOV version of the QLED. It's cheaper, same screen as the normal one, it just uses the optics to stretch wider at the cost of some resolution (which is already very high). BUT....Pimax is Pimax and there's always a dice roll with them. And it ain't tiny.
Only stand-alone headsets can offer wireless for (compromised) PC, and that means batteries, processors, weight, and cost, so that's standard. It should be pancake because AFAIK mOLED REQUIRES pancake (which in turn saps 70% of the already dim light.) AFAIK it also doesn't have internal cameras and relies on lighthouses (IIRC it was designed for existing Index owners to use theirs but they sell their own expensive ones otherwise.) I won't touch lighthouses even if it's superior if you get it set up right. That kills BSB for me. I'd love to own one, even if just for watching virtual big screen 2d movies and things which I can't seem to want to tolerate Quest 3 for let alone a big Pimax.
I'm sort of caught between. I do experience the discomfort on my face with the big bulky headsets, but given a choice of "best quality VR I can get" or "more comfortable VR with more compromises" I opted for the bulky set for the best VR quality and I'll put up with the discomfort. I may regret that once I get it (Shipping September 2024! LOLOLOL)
Re: PSVR2 Gets Enormous Price Reduction Starting March 2025
@NeonPizza I'm not sure what happens. It's not going to disappear but I fear it'll remain ultra niche and continue getting increasingly expensive rather than the other way around, following gpus that is all for the rich boys with the Ferraris. At least you can play a VR sim forever and never tire of it. Which is the same direction as pancake gaas anyway.
What WOULD push it mainstream would be apple making it a trend item, but instead they went weird and expensive. Or Nintendo making it a flash craze. But I didn't see Nintendo going there, without iwata they're just another status quo company, and the original vr push at Nintendo was Miyamoto, but he's busy with Real Reality theme parks.
The other problem is market expectations "gamers" aren't interested unless it's Spiderman in VR (which actually IS in VR..... On PC... 😛) Ave the masses are too casual to want immersion in a headset. Where vr is catching on unfortunately is the social games space like gorilla tag among kids. Heck even in PC the #1 game and obsession is VR Chat.
I just don't have a sense vr isn't stuck in an enthusiast rut. To many fractions of an already small market, lack of interest in immersion or wearables from the majority. The games are either too generic and simple to be good, or too demanding to work well. Flat2vr works great on PC but basically requires flagship gpus that cost thousands and rise 50% from a monopoly every 2 years. And it's still dodgy performance. The business numbers aren't working and there's no big growth projection so investment isn't interested. It's too big to vanish. The US is the top market by far and supposedly has 70 million users. That's 20% of the population, not too bad, but what perxent is active is probably much less. I'm the modern world it needs to be trendy. That means celebrity and influencer bombardment. Which means massive advertising spend. That's the only way anything catches on now. And the lack of known growth potential means investments aren't interested. Especially in this economy... It's not going to disappear, is just not going to be more than it is and will be less than it was 7 years ago for a long while I think.
Meta remains the main weather balloon as the primary driver. They really have tried. Batman was a big push. A cheap headset. But much more they can do, plus their huge social influence. But the needle isn't moving. The success of PlayStation and Nintendo in some ways keep hurting vr by maintaining the status quo well enough
Re: PSVR2 Gets Enormous Price Reduction Starting March 2025
@NeonPizza oh yes no question, for people like us who bleed VR, PC VR is almost a paradise ahead of its time, almost, if only video cards that supported it 1) existed 2) were possible to find 3) weren't $2500 for a video card and 3) werent likely to set your headset on fire if you navigate the above.
My current thrill is Jedi Fallen Order in UEVR. It's played with normal controller, not motion, but darned if that doesn't feel like a game actually designed for VR. The world and level design just feels to meant for VR I forget I'm using an injector and think of it as a real VR game. I think it's the amount of verticality in the level design. Once you see it in VR you can never play it flat again. Ue4 does great. Ur5 is garbage in 2d, it's garbage in 3d. Why is that engine popular? It's horrible! It doesn't run well on anything but a 5090, and that it pushes to ignite.
I still feel like VR will NEVER go mainstream, not because of the technical or even financial friction but just because the public already decided they're not interested without actually trying it. The idea of a wearable is simply rejected instantly by the majority and will be until something makes it trendy. And the population seems divided heavily between "I like the idea of immersion (whether or not I'd ever try a wearable) and "I hate the idea of immersion and would never ever want to not be in a crowded space seeing everyone and everything around me at all times".
That's the real idea of VR I think it's the entire concept and purpose is either love or or hate it. The people that love it love it and the rest are revolted by it. With an overlap that's nauseous by it!)
Re: PSVR2 Gets Enormous Price Reduction Starting March 2025
@NeonPizza I think VR is between a rock and a hard place. It's looking for a subset of a subset of the market. On one hand, to do "AAA games" in VR which is what hardcore gamers expect, even if the budget existed the compute power doesn't and what does is unaffordable. On the other hand that market was conditioned to value image realism above all else, and VR necessitating double the power or half the quality automatically turns those people off.
But it's caught in a bigger problem that will hit all of gaming. With the GPU makers basically out of gas, we're not going to get performance increase any time soon, the tech we have today is basically all we're going to ever have unless a breakthrough like quantum computing happens. Hardware being stuck in place with double the cost, while developers keep pushing flat game graphics that choke all the hardware, something has to give. It's not only VR, the whole model of gaming is broken. Devs want to make games with Hollywood CGI level visuals rendered in real time, while hardware that can do that is ever me exotic and expensive and more importantly mfrs don't even want to make it. Why sell the die as a 5090 for $2k when you can sell the same wafer to a data center for $20k? Data centers have skewed hardware availability because there's only one chip maker used by everything so every gaming card that's made takes capacity from way more profitable server boards.
Unless this changes, consoles either have to start getting into the thousands of dollars too, or they basically stop evolving here. Heck the 5080 is WORSE than 4080 super. And more expensive. Tech is now going backwards. Consoles are on a delay but won't escape this storm
VR then gets caught in that where the compute power it needs probably won't exist this decade. Meanwhile stand alone is the obvious direction, but, that necessitates the visuals are so limited is never going to impress the masses that associate realistic photo fidelity with game quality.
It's so sad because it's the most exciting entertainment medium since the 90s but the numbers and the timing just aren't aligning. And if the intentional undersupply does ultimately start killing the idea of local hardware and into cloud, which I think it will, vr takes a massive blow..
On PC forums I'm seeing a lot of "that's it I'm done with PC, it's for the rich now, I'm back to console forever even PS5 pro is a bargain.". These people are missing the cycle. If the pic hardware prices doubled, so will consoles next time (or they'll be not much better than current ones). If they hit a limit on even multi thousand dollar cards performance gain, consoles won't up their limits to be even close. So the next ps will either be super expense or be very weak an upgrade. And either way they'll make up the difference jacking up software and service prices.
For now I'm enjoying 4090 (who knows when a real good upgrade will exist and how many hostages you need to take to get one) and the huge games like Ross modded and euvr where it works. Getting a super high res headset whenever it ships knowing that hardware to power it to spec doesn't actually exist ....
Realistically, one can live on flight Sim, dcs, ams2, Skyrim, elite dangerous, fallout 4, alone for the rest of their lives and still be happy in VR 😂.
Re: PSVR2 Gets Enormous Price Reduction Starting March 2025
I think in a lot of ways this audience is the wrong audience for VR. This is the home of single player narrative driven playable movie fans, which in the market is a dying market. VR DOES do that well too, but you won't find much of that because it can't even make money in the larger flat market let alone the smaller VR market. So what the crowd here tends to think is what would get them to want vr is the one thing it'll rarely ever have for the foreseeable. But imagine if gta6 online had vr how popular that might be since most players just want to hang out in the space. The narratives exist on PC via flat 2 VR mods and are great, but it comes as quite a cost to brute force and is still imperfect. Right now the biggest problem with VR is to do the kind of things people want and do it smoothly, consoles aren't close to the power needed and even PC is scarcely there still.
@NeonPizza Still have my pimax super on order... Releasing Q4 23.... No q1 25....no q2 25..... 😛
Is considered an upgrade to a 5090 when launched to better keep up with vr brute forcing. Then the 5090 arrived. $2500 Street when you can find it and even if you do it's a 600w space heater that may be missing parts, may have black screens of death, and has a high chance of bursting into flames....... And with all that is only 28% better than 4090, has almost no uplift for quest 2/psvr2 resolution, does have ok uplift for high res sets like the super, but it's main gimmick is multi frame Gen that doesn't even work for VR.
What a disappointment. Even a $3k oc GPU is underperforming for vr. Looks like we're waiting 2 more years minimum due suitable hardware. I feel like we've hit trouble. Both Nvidia and AMD are basically saying we've hit a brick wall, we can't increase performance anymore, and any increase comes with a proportionate logarithmic price increase. That'll kill console too. It means the next consoles will either have to cost a fortune that'll kill console or the next consoles won't actually be much more performance than current ones if affordable.
I feel like that's going to push streaming into the mainstream much more quickly because now even a $3k GPU is delivering MOSTLY AI generated approximations with artifacts and input lag, so why not just stream to get the same problems at a fraction of the cost. And if streaming takes over for real, VR is in trouble.
Re: Steam Deck's Install Base Estimated to Be About a Third of PS Vita
The biggest problem with deck sales is not only is it only sold direct, but Steam is actually hostile to anyone that tries to buy one, especially if they're a new customer. I have an Ally and Legion Go, not a deck, but tried to buy someone a deck as a Christmas gift, and because it's matched to accounts, I gifted the funds and instructed them how to create a Steam account and order one. It worked. And then right after they cancelled the order and locked the account for 30 days. After googling it turns out this is a thing they do especially for new accounts without purchases and play time, but can also do it for unknown reasons on established accounts. They're obsessed with thwarting scalpers which is good but their method means that basically nobody that's not already a desktop PC gamer with established history can buy one. I ended up buying a legion as the gift instead. At higher price...
Cost is the main issue with the handled PCs, they'll only appeal to existing hardcore gamers at those prices. However I don't see consoles not heading in the same doomed direction. Looking at the NV50 disaster, combined with where PS5 Pro went things seem bleak for gaming hardware. Feels Nvidia and AMD are both announcing they've really got nothing left in terms of performance improvements until some breakthrough in computing happens. All they've got to offer is ai generated fill in frames, not real performance (which is also useless for VR plus competitive gaming.). All at 50% price increases with increased power draw proportionate to the performance uplift. If we're at a stand still in hardware at ever higher costs were looking at either $1k+ consoles next time around, which will kill off consoles and gaming with it, or, as Xbox said they're staying price aware and they're not going to go that way, and that keeps PS on target, it implies next Gen consoles are going to not actually be much better than current Gen, but more money. Seems like even for sky's the limit pricing right now, we're just jogging in place, we've reached the technological performance limit for hardware people can afford. The model of always getting better has more or less stalled. Maybe forever. Maybe until quantum computing happens. More likely Skynet will wear leather jackets in Nvidia green and kill us all before then.
Re: Sony Cancels Bluepoint, Bend Studio PS5 Games, One Being a Live-Service God of War Title
Sony has stopped making games and charges PC prices for constant hardware upgrades, Nintendo announces the upgrade for Nintendo Switch One is Nintendo Series Switch, same as the old switch but faster and with some shifted curves on the chassis, and Xbox is now PlayStations first party and PC somehow ends up being the most exciting thing with different experiences happening.
We're not heading for an industry crash, we're already neck deep in it.
Re: Shuhei Yoshida Reels Off List of Reasons the PS Vita Bombed
@Geostone Thanks for tagging me, great video! I just love Shu. He's the remaining heart of the "real" PlayStation.
Re: Site News: The Push Square Mailbox Is Officially Open, Send Us Your Letters
"Your submission must not exceed 300 words"
Well, that's right out then....
Re: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Director Pleads for Modder Restraint on PC
Dear Internet, we at square enix would like to remind you, with sufficient plausible deniability, that the upcoming pc release of this game is a a deviant art showcase.
Please finally buy this game.
Thank you for watching!
Re: Persona Protagonists Are Invariably High School Boys Due to 'Mental Age'
@Ralizah I think the problem is that's a Western view. In Japan, students are their true selves and adults are stuffed into their conformist shell, never to leave again. And the light hearted vibe depends on youth. I think adult themes fit better with smt, devil summoner, and now metaphor. Where I cringe is sticking smtv with high school kids too.
Leave persona as persona, a throwback to reliving youth.
Re: Xbox Is Eager to Build the Best Games You Can Enjoy Everywhere
@Rich33 I think it's more complicated than that. I think the knock-on effect is the main factor. How important that remains in the face of no serious competition, though, I'm not sure. It ONCE was important as part of the promotional strategy. I'm not convinced it remains significantly so. Again, just looking at real sales of exclusives vs install base, and considering the majority of the exclusives market are the same people across multiple exclusives (I.E. the market interested in exclusives is likely a repeat market for exclusives, thus a lot of overlap in game to game sales in exclusives) it a REALLY small part of their market. 10% or below, generally, with a 20% spike on one or two major titles. Meaning 80% of their install base DGAF about exclusives at all.
MS, on that token realized the same, and with their overall install base being too small to sustain exclusive titles anyway, decided to forget about that. That, though created the media problem, as you say "Xbox has no games, no point buying an Xbox" etc. Most of that really has little to do with "PS's customers are so invested in exclusives that a competitor without an array of compelling counter exclusives lacks appeal" and most of it has more to do with people validating their PS purchase by finding a negative to keep repeating about the competitor, and then the endless people parroting them to sound in the know because the internet is the internet and we haven't really left the Sonic v Mario wars of the 16 bit era in new packaging Problem is Xbox hasn't done a good job justifying why you SHOULD buy their platform. They don't have a USP beyond GP, and that's clearly not it. I don't think exclusives are the answer, but I don't think they have a better one either, so it makes the hyena's cackles ring true.
Where Sony runs into potential trouble, though, is, like you mentioned, the sales show their exclusives isn't really their main draw anymore to most of their market. Inertia is. So if someone else ever decides to compete head on (Apple, Meta, Nvidia itself for that matter, PC adoption and simplification in general) that has some major selling point, Sony could land themselves where Xbox is now, albeit more slowly.
Heck if exclusives were such a huge deal, Game Pass numbers would be a lot higher than they are. The market shifted. Most of the market just cares about the 5 GaaS standards. It worked last gen but I think Sony leaned too hard on their hollywood studio model and it's come back to bite them somewhat as the market changed. The only reason they're still on top and not in trouble is, well, their competitor is Xbox...
Re: Xbox Is Eager to Build the Best Games You Can Enjoy Everywhere
@Rich33 Of course someone on Push would have Sony 1st party games as the big incentive, that's kind of a given within the niche community. But it's a bit of a small niche these days and is largely outmoded. When you look at the overall sales figures on those 1st party games, "buying a sony first party every 2 years" just isn't the norm for the overwhelming majority of their install base to the point that if they just shut down all their first party studios today and stopped making games.....the PS install base wouldn't actually change significantly.
Obviously there's SOME amount of the player base that is, but just by the numbers it's a pretty small part of the actual install base these days. There's far more PS players that don't play any PS Studios games than those that do.
But you did highlight the reason they still make them at all. That influencer factor. That 2nd relative that bought because the first did, and that first did because of an exclusive. Overall the exclusives don't actually affect much of their install base, however, for each one that does, there's 5 others that buy it, not for the exclusive, but because someone else bought it, who happened to buy for an exclusive. So in that sense the exclusives matter, but only up to a point, once it's become so big and established that "everyone else plays on PS" they stop really needing those exclusives because "everyone else already plays on PS." That is without a serious competitor anyway, and MS's exit from the exclusives game, ironically, means Sony will need them less over time too.
@Pandalulz LOL I went into the jaded phase in the 2008-2010 time period where if you weren't running custom loop liquid, your system would burn up constantly lol. It was this generation that brought me back to it now that PC has sort of become a lot more predictable, and console has inherited half of PCs problems. I only switched back this past year, but I've been impressed with just how solid the experience has been. My big rig overpowers any of the poor ports, but I spend a lot of time on my Legion and Ally (non-extreme) and am amazed how well things run on something that's a lot weaker than a PS/XB even with windows bloat these days. I think things should run a lot better on weak hardware on console, but my feeling being on both sides of is this past year, is they don't optimize console ports any more than they do PC ports and the consoles have less workarounds to try to "fix" it by stripping it down. I switched from PC to console when it was clear console ports always got more polish. This gen? Most of the devs abandoned that and seem to spend more time polishing PC because it's a larger market.
We just won't talk about MSFS 2024 lol
Re: Xbox Is Eager to Build the Best Games You Can Enjoy Everywhere
@Pandalulz Yeah, exactly the same for me. Heck, I was all PC at one point, and between a whole lot of things and the fact that what I really wanted was the nerdy JRPG stuff and almost none of it was on PC and all of it was PS/Nintendo. There's only a few of the other true first parties that matter much to me. Most of the cool first party was Japan studio and they killed it. But flash forward to 2024 and all the nerdy JRPG stuff is on PC first and foremost, which really changed the complexion of PS to me.
Re: Xbox Is Eager to Build the Best Games You Can Enjoy Everywhere
@ChrisDeku Who's choice, the old bosses or the new bosses? Old bosses liked closed ecosystems. Balmer tried. Nadella's never been into the closed ecosystem thing, borrowing from Googazonbooks' playbooks on everything.
Re: Naughty Dog Turns Off Intergalactic PS5 Trailer's Comments As Discourse Turns Nasty
The character herself seems interesting enough in a cliche hollywood way. I'm more worried about them doing the hollywood big studio thing and shuffling the same actor into every project (reminds me of the period where every major film starred "Tom Hanks as: Tom Hanks Playing a Character") and the general vibe of "cyberpunk space vibe missing the trend by years, leading into planetary gameplay that looks like recycled old gameplay."
In a way it feels like Sony's entering their "WiiU moment" (I don't mean a failure in console sales), where Nintendo didn't catch onto HD development and made all the wrong moves, and it feels like Sony didn't catch onto "modern development" and all their games come out chasing a trend that they've missed by years because the game took so long to make.
But, while some people hold ND in high regard, I've never held them in high regard beyond their gfx engines, so none of that really surprises me. Still, Uncharted is fun popcorn entertainment and this might be too. I like the retro cyberpunk theme, but I'm not convinced from the trailer it'll pull it off well.
Re: Xbox Is Eager to Build the Best Games You Can Enjoy Everywhere
@OldGamer999 Their idea of their platform no longer revolves around "exclusive content" - simple as that. They don't have an interest in an Apple/Sony/Nintendo walled garden closed platform. Their interest is in open platforms on any and all hardware more like Googazonbook. They'll make a new machine to play games on and it'll have it's perks like GP, etc, things that make engaging with their platforms more direct. It's just not likely to be built around "here's all the exclusive games you can play on it."
Heck even Sony's backing away from that. Even ignoring the PC ports, they just don't have a huge amount of content anymore. While it's "exclusive", realistically, almost none of their install base buys their machine for their exclusive games anymore going by the sales numbers. They make big noise about their exclusives, etc, but behind closed doors, knowing their numbers, I'm sure even Sony would laugh in the face of anyone that thinks exclusives are the business today and remind them it's not 1995.
Re: Elden Ring: Nightreign Announced, a Co-Op Game for PS5, PS4
@JohnnyShoulder I've always contended that soulsborne have ALWAYS been cleverly disguised rogue likes.
Re: Elden Ring: Nightreign Announced, a Co-Op Game for PS5, PS4
@LavenderShroud I'm with you. Don't get me wrong, I like elden ring and armored core, up to a point, but I REALLY don't get the obsession among the Fromsoft fans. It's a bizarre fixation.
Re: Naughty Dog's New PS5 Game Is Finally Announced, Sci-Fi Action Title Intergalactic
I'm loving the cyberpunk space runner synthwave theme. The intro makes me think elite dangerous though, while the second of gameplay looks like another standard over the shoulder melee and guns game. Not sure what to make of it. I've never been an ND fan so I'm not hyped like many are. Their last open freedom game was jak1 and jak 3. I'm hoping this one isn't just another movie on rails with mashy combat which ND is wont to make because it could be so cool if it offers more freedom.
Re: PS5 Sales Still Trending 8% Ahead of the PS4 in USA
I'm pretty sure the gains in the US are due to the fact that Xbox One sold decently in the US but Series has simply collapsed everywhere, and PS benefits from the conversion. After all, This Is An Xbox.
Re: PS5 Fans Willing to Pay a Pretty Penny for a Steam Deck-Like Portable PlayStation
@Boxmonkey is that their black Friday pricing?
Re: Talking Point: What Do You Think of the PS5 Pro, Three Weeks Later?
@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare It's true, but I think that's more a commentary on Internet/games media and influencers than the actual state of PC gaming. Just like push doesn't actually come close to representative of the reality of the ps community at large and all our expectations are always wrong. The online presence is this weird little bubble.
Similarly Nvidia would be the first to point out that those 4090s aren't where they're actually making money, and it's why AMD excited that race entirely. The real money is is midrange despite the Internet bubble.. But you're right I think the definitely affects the perception of PC for those that don't already know that.
But I totally agree on the rest. Especially that last bit. As long as PlayStation just tries to be a PC, and now not even a budget PC, just a Sony alternative walled garden PC at the same or similar price to a real PC, it's really killing its purpose to exist. The uniqueness of consoles and their games beyond being just alternative PC hardware, is what made consoles great and forever viable. I had laugh when Cerny said they aren't just building a budget PC... Really? Because that's what it looks like except the forgot the budget part. With what it is it's defeating the main highlight of consoles, that is one size fits all, with unique traits.
What amazes me is how far pc has come. I have a legion and Ally. Other than windows login, is as seamless as using a switch or Vita. Turn it on, have big picture mode (if you're not techy enough for Playnite) and boom, feels like a Switch. (My big rig, different story but only because I have 2 vr platforms, half a dozen vr injection suites, 3 heavy modding platforms for specific games and 8 different peripherals for flight and racing controllers all going nuts but that's on my for doing farm animal things with my rig 😂
I've always held that "PC isn't for everyone" and console is a necessity for many. Yet I'm Christmas shopping for a gaming machine for someone very not techy, and I'm still tempted to get a legion or light duty rig for them instead of ps or xb. I don't think it's too complicated for "normies" anymore, pre built, and long term it's just such a flexible ecosystem I find it hard to justify to anyone not already in a console ecosystem to start into one now.
Re: Ubisoft Reportedly Making a Minecraft Meets Animal Crossing Social Sim
@Ralizah My hatred of AnimalCraft is extreme. They literally destroyed the game's genre and made it a generic mobile-esque resource grinding game with daily cooldowns to support a hideous, pointless crafting game. Easily my biggest disappointment of the generation. I have more fondness for launch day CP2077 than for the complete nuclear obliteration of Animal Crossing.
I'll be shocked if the next AC isn't steeped in MTX. NH felt like the test run for mobile-ifying the series to milk it's massive casual player base.
Re: Hang Out with Geoff Keighley in Fortnite's Island for The Game Awards
@SuntannedDuck2 Sadly, it's a commentary on what makes up the gamer, or at least the gaming media consumer, that what he's doing is working....
Re: Talking Point: What Do You Think of the PS5 Pro, Three Weeks Later?
@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare In some ways, I agree, in some ways I disagree, and in other ways you're kind of agreeing about console eliminating it's point in comparison by going this route.
I think both in PC and console you have to filter out internet chatter. Because somehow even in PC that doesn't represent most of the actual market. There's the appearance PC is focused on that top 5%. But obviously it's not actually the reality, otherwise it wouldn't be the top 5%. In fact the majority of the PC gaming space is still perfectly fine with 1080p and 1400p and not gunning for 4k at all. Appearance vs. reality.
Now where I agree is devs seem to focus on that top 5% and screw everything else. That's actually changing due to the rise of Deck and the handhelds and more overall potato PCs running games, but it's also identical to this mid-gen console nonsense, and how it's being handled - the devs are focusing on those 4090s even to the detriment of console ports sucking, and now you need to join that top 5% in console, too! Defeating the point of consoles.
One thing everone talks about on PCs is "all the sliders", which I can understand, but now we're really blurring that line here. Now we're back to comparing the consoles, benchmarking performance between the hardware, comparing fps, zooming into resolutions, comparing performance, quality, quality with RT, performance with RT, across the two hardware models. Haven't we turned the "it just works" console into exactly what everyone complains about with PC? Just with less options and a higher overall cost? I think PC players tend to be the OCD type. You don't have to mess with all the sliders. It "just works", too, most of the time. We tend to mess with sliders because they're there, because we can, and because OCD prevents us from ignoring them lol. It's not a functional requirement of the system in modern games.
I'm also not sure it's any cheaper. A base PS5 is cheaper than PC, sure. A Pro? Not so much. You can get an $800 PC (same price as Pro with disc) that has a somewhat weaker (4060) but not by a ton GPU, but with a better scaler (DLSS) which is the main show of the Pro, and a much stronger CPU. I'd rank the price pretty much equivalent just with different resulting tradeoffs. Ultimately, your view kind of matches mine that there's a market for it' and it's mostly a convenience no matter the price market.