45% of Enthusiasts 'Seriously Considering' Leaving Sony for PC

Gaming is getting too expensive. This feels like sort of an accident of complex systems. Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing. But, some of the most fun games in the world were made 30 ago. From a pure "can we have good entertainment?" standpoint there's no reason for this cost creep. In practice, companies are pushing it, and although it probably does not apply to the HN crowd, but consumers are also demanding better graphics.

The industry and its fans are its own worst enemies. However, if you don't go bonkers over recent AAA games, gaming has never been more accessible or cheaper. I didn't buy a game this steam sale for more than $3, and each game would run on more or less anything.

Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I would wager these survey results are completely meaningless. Being angry at Sony for ending physical games is the "correct opinion" right now and all of the social media influencers are getting big views off of the drama. And a significant number of people will just parrot the outrage they hear about even if they don't actually care. But by the time the PS6 comes out, I would bet that a significant portion of those who claim this is too far and they'll never buy from Sony again will be back buying their devices.

It does suck, and you should join the PCMR. But I imagine this will blow over before long.

I would only buy consoles after they had been out a few years, mid to late lifetime of the console, the primary benefit was it's nice to have in the living room instead of on a desk. Most of the games I bought were used or on sale. All of my purchases have been long tail distribution of a system. If a console goes digital only I won't buy the console. Most of my games are on pc now anyway, none of the modern games are way better than older ones, the only reason to keep up with the times is for community and discussion around the current events of the game, but I prefered single player games in the first place. But even now I have a backlog I can never finish in my lifetime, most of which are considered good.

So long story short, if Sony goes digital only, I will go back to retro and pc and I won't feel like I'm missing out that much if at all.

Don't really have the room for a gaming PC anymore after moving, I've got my old one but it needs some fixing up (RTX 3080). 1TB Xbox One Series X I got second hand for about $400 (also added a storage expansion for about $130) is doing me sound for any gaming needs (currency converted from GBP). All the games optimised, usually 60fps, no messing about with settings other than the quality/performance switches. Looks great on the TV with 4K/HDR. Laptop for the day to day workstation stuff. Lovely controller. Been enjoying Forza Horizon 6 and just started playing Star Wars Outlaws.

Used to be pretty 'PC Master Race' but then life got in the way.

I do miss stuff like modded Valve games and keyboard & mouse, but can run them somewhat on my laptop.

Consoles have been on their last gap as the difference between what consoles and PCs offer have converged. PS2 had significant sales because it was many customers first DVD player. With everything digital and console prices coming close to mid-tier Gaming PCs, where's the benefit of buying a console? Nintendo was smart for making the Switch a hybrid console.

Why? It makes no sense really... you buy into a console and stay with it until the next release...

Last time I checked, the ps6 hasn't been announced, there probably won't be a Xbox one X/S/pro/whatever successor any time soon, and PC hardware is expensive or hard to get right now.

Just stay the road for 6 months and see how the market shakes out.

I think it's driven more about piracy than anything else. Steam is not an alternative if you hate digital only games. PC as a platform (and that can mean anything from Windows to Linux to Mac) is an alternative as cheaper gaming becasue 1, you can pirate games easier 2, you can emulate older games.

It really comes down to the next PS6 exclusive, would people buy a console just to play Dark Souls 4? That's the billion dollar question

Sure. Until the first FromSoftware PS6 exclusive is released.

Child, six, seriously considering running away from home after parents refuse to serve dinner on dinosaur plate.

People realize that Steam doesn't use physical media, right? The real issue is the lack of consumer friendly regulation, not the medium.

I was waiting for GTA 6… but if it’s not released in disk, then I will simply pass. If new games start to be non-physical, then I will simply stop playing new games

Not sure why. looking at the polls it would seem the primary points are

1) Sony ending physical disks

2) potential high price of next gen.

1 is hilarious, even games that come on physical disks are already mostly useless without internet. I had a ps4 and bought "Last of Us" and the game is literally unbeatable without an internet connection. It has a game breaking bug that isn't patched on disk. Many other games are crap or broken without patches. Also jumping to PC where there hasn't been physical media in ages and 99% of games have DRM is just out of the frying pan into the fire. based on the market share for GOG I can assure you only a small fraction of gamers actually care about "owning" their games.

2 is kinda stupid, they mentioned a price point of $1,000, not sure you can build a next-gen-console comparable PC for that price. My current computer's GPU cost more than that by itself and anything but a pittance of RAM will too.

I mean go for it, more PC gamers the better (it's my chosen platform) but if you weren't already on board years ago not sure anything has really changed.

I don’t think I’ll jump back to PC but I look forward seeing SteamOS getting more traction. Windows really needs to get their act together.

I won't make the mistake to buy any other sony product.

If I were Sony, I would worry just as much about the people who bow out of playing games altogether, or just retreat into retro games especially with all the new Android handhelds targeting them.

Only problem with PC gaming is gpu & ram prices.

All forms of entertainment are entering crisis, because there is so much of it competing for attention, and so many years of back catalog that are still entertaining and available for free-or-nearly-free. Premium gaming and premium content of any kind seems unsustainable.

It's an open poll on a website with no sampling and no detection for bad actors.

For goodness sake, this is literally useless. It tells us nothing.

Even a games website should be embarrassed of it's journalism trying to run this as a story.

I'm more surprised that one of the top Playstation-related sites only got 6k votes on a poll. Times sure have changed.

I haven't bought a Sony product since 2005 when they put a rootkit on music CDs. Apparently their customer-hostile attitude hasn't changed much.

Literally no point to specific hardware

Sorry but gamers are the most docile customer base, this won’t translate to anything.

I for one recommend building an i7 box and really anything from that generation are still really good CPUs if youre making a gaming box. Otherwise you may run into RAM costs or some other high hardware costs.

“…and Tom, we’re hearing reports that those numbers are approaching 80% in groups of consumers who have been informed they can simply use a controller with a PC.”