We will see when Playstation 6 releases, its unlikely to sell as much as PS5 did, let alone PS4. Microsoft already realised the decline and are jumping into games as a service for the Xbox brand, ideally they would want you to just stream their games, as shitty as that is. With Xbox gone, there's no competition and with Sony being Sony, they are going to abuse that to squeeze any extra money they can from people still willing.

PC became a lot more affordable and accessible in the last decade and it doesn't lock you into a closed ecosystem, you can upgrade when you want, you don't have to pay subscriptions to play online games.

Kids are more exposed to PC gaming than ever before, with all the popular 'content creators' primarily playing on PC, so they are naturally swayed to it more than consoles.

I hear so many stories of people switching to PC, friends asking me for advice for what to buy for themselves or their children.

Circana's May 2024 U.S. video game market highlights, the analytics company reported that video game hardware spending is down 40% compared to 2023. Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony have all shown "double-digit percentage declines," with the Nintendo Switch seeing the "most significant drop."

The writing is on the wall, it would take a big change to swing back the other way. There's a reason they are dying for GTA 6 to release.

[–] Frypant@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

Most of the replies about ps5 pro is complaining about the price. Your point is, PC is somehow a better choice while the video card alone cost this much or more.

So no, I don't think consoles will disappear, more likely streaming will improve to the point of being a real alternative and that will take over the people buying consoles. In fact it could be an alternative to PC as well, for non-competitive gaming.

The sales decline is because console companies don't provide good enough reason to upgrade, and the market is saturated, not because people moving to Pc. Here I am rocking my xbox one pro still with no desire to upgrade.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 3 points 6 days ago (3 children)

That's just not true. You can make an entire PC for the price of the PS5 Pro. You can get a GPU that is a bit more powerful than a PS5 Pro GPU for ~$300. People normally spend more on PCs though because of the longevity it provides and you can use it for a lot more than just games. Just looking at Steam data, there's a yearly increase of MAUs (their concurrent count just peaked 3 days ago at 37.6M) where Playstation has plateaued.

Time will tell, but I think consoles will fade away, either through lack of appeal or turning into stream boxes as you say. Thanks for the conversation!

[–] xan1242@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago

To top it off, what matters at the end of the day js this - people generally don't care about graphics anymore!

Even if you end up with graphics that are worse than a console, you still have:

an option to upgrade later
options to configure graphics (generally games actually optimize themselves pretty well nowadays)
an open platform to do things the way you want

PS5 Pro makes absolutely no sense to me.

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