alt Hacker NewsThe main thing consoles have going for them, imo, is the standardization of hardware. It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world.
Some console gamers seem to think PC gaming requires hours of fiddling with settings and drivers. I think we've all had that experience on PC (cough Bethesda cough), but I doubt to the degree the console-side would have you believe. Most AAA games will self-optimize their settings to a playable state, and indie games don't tend to demand more than your standard gaming laptop can provide...but I'm sure we've all been burned some 10-odd years ago buying a Steam game that just wouldn't run on your iGPU...that experience sticks around in the brain a while
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During college, before I switched to linux, the DRM packaged with Spore bricked my computer in the middle of a semester. That's what turned me off of PC gaming.
This is also why Steam hardware matters.
If something runs on a Steam Deck, you can be sure it will run on your >= Steam Deck-equivalent device.
> It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world.
It used to be a selling point of console indeed, however nowadays console are separated by Pro/Non-pro, different revisions and you aren't really guaranteed on how well your game is going to run unless you watch a Youtube let's play of the game you want.
"Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world"
Let me tell you, as someone that repairs a TON of XBox 360s, this comment is very, VERY wrong. The GPU isn't even the same revision between the same batch runs. Did you get Xenos? Zeus? Jupiter? That determined one set of things needed for install/refurbish. Is that a Valhalla motherboard in your hands? That just limited you to a very narrow and specific set of hardware you could utilize.
Oh and performance between all of those models varied WILDLY. Silicon lottery is a fucking JOKE on the XBox 360.
That's one thing. The other is price. Consoles can be sold at a loss, particularly early in their 10-year cycle, when early on the loss is high, but close to the end of the cycle the loss is minimal, and so they appear much cheaper.