Gamers may have begun to shy away from the now more expensive PS5. U.S. April data highlights a 30% decline in PlayStation console sales compared to the previous year. Before the impending Switch 2 price increase, Nintendo’s handheld extended its lead over the competition.
At this point console cost just as much as PC so why not get a PC or PC handheld if you can?
Because my hobby is gaming. I don’t have time to take on the additional hobby of fiddling with a PC.
Also, PC prices have gone up too, haven’t they?
The days of having to constantly fiddle with your pc are pretty long gone. I built my current pc a couple years ago and have only had to open it for some minor upgrades (new ssd) and cleaning.
PC prices are definitely up though.
For many that is even too much, then add to that all the software issues, fiddling with settings, etc etc. Consoles are and will be for a long time the simpler and quicker way to play. (For most “normal” people)
You have to clean your consoles too, dust doesn’t discriminate
Also, upgrading your SSD isn’t mandatory, BUT you can do it if you want
That’s a level of lazy I can’t get behind, but I guess the market exists for a reason.
It’s not laziness; it’s time. I’ve got three kids and a full time job. If I sit down to play a game and I’m spending that time fiddling with drivers or trying to figure out why the video isn’t displaying on my tv, then I don’t get to play a game.
I swear, PC snobs are worse than recipe writers about underestimating prep time.
“Fiddling with drivers” means pressing UPDATE on your graphics driver once every couple of months, even less frequently if you don’t play the newest AAA Games.
Getting the screen to display takes the same time as with a console: Once while setting up and usually amounts to “Plug in the chord”.
If you want to play on console you do you, but this shouldn’t be your reason.
Uh huh. And it takes fifteen minutes to caramelize onions.
The last time I had to “fiddle” with drivers on Windows, I had this integrated GPU. Now check the release date on that. Everything I’ve owned since then, has simply required the drivers to be installed. Brand new AAA games often get game-specific optimizations, which is the main reason to keep them up to date. Otherwise you don’t need to update very often.
With nVidia on Linux I’ve had more issues, but that also depends on your distro and it’s not really as bad as people would have you think. AMD is less problematic and running a more mainstream distro helps too. I switched to CachyOS and now I have fewer issues than on TumbleWeed.
Especially when the price of consoles are matching PCs. The price of being that lazy is too high, and that’s not even factoring the advantages of everything you get out of a PC.
Price of consoles went up with RAM and storage. It got more expensive on PC too. Brand new midrange prebuilt (5060ti, 9500f, 16 GB of RAM) is now 1500€ near me. PS5 Slim Digital is 549€ at the same store.
You get more use out of the PC, but the price difference is big enough that if you just want something for gaming and already have a laptop for non-gaming PC use cases, you might as well get a console.
Some of us have lives beyond work and gaming that requires our time and money.
Depends on what you play on PC. A lot of AAA decent releases are, but there’s stuff regularly on sale and it’s pretty easy to accumulate a backlog just from sales of good games.
There’s also reasonably priced releases like Silksong but that’s more rare
PC prices as in the PCs themselves. RAM and storage are way up over the last year.
Ah yes. Getting a PC that breaks into the game market has always been a bit more pricey - though the Deck helped that - but these days the component cost is just insane.
Fiddling with a PC? You buy a PC and it’s done. Install Steam, install games, let’s go.
At best, if you want to switch OSs or try out new things, you’ll spend some time learning how that works. And if you want to try to stretch out the longevity, you can get new RAM, new video card, a replacement CPU. But, all of that is your choice.
As a bonus, you get something way way more powerful than a console that has a web browser, document editor, video/music player, Jellyfin server, streaming platform, whatever you want.
Buy a PC? Ok, let me just go to the PC store and say, “One PC, please.” It’s that simple, right? I don’t have to do hours of research to understand what the components are and then even more research to understand which ones are best?
Be serious.
There are websites that have recommended setups for you to configure and you can ten order the parts to the shop and people will build the PC for you.
But then again, you don’t seem to be interested in any sort of solution for that matter though as far as I can tell
First of all, pointing vaguely at the internet and saying there are websites is supremely unhelpful.
Second, why would I need a solution when I can just buy a console and not have that problem in the first place?
Ah shit, I should’ve known you’re banned from using search engines and can’t just lookup a single phrase like ‘recommended pc builds 2026’
I don’t get it, you’re obviously extremely uninterested in having this conversation - and yet you’re so invested in it.
Isearched that phrase just for fun, and it turns out a budget PC is $800?
I’m not interested in discussing all the reasons PCs aren’t a good fit for me. I just don’t like when PC snobs act like it’s the right fit for everyone. You’re obviously the “invested” one here.
Alright my dude, in that cause you’re just a dick I guess
I was only saying that getting a PC really does not have to be as effort consuming as you may imagine it to be, hoping to potentially give you some new options.
Mate, a new PS5 Pro is $900, Slim around $700. Thats what the whole post has been about.
You’re just trolling now.
Getting piled, but you’re right
Even if you get that all sorted there is still the form factor as well. Consoles usually offer a small form factor for their performance which van be attractive for people who game on their living room tv. Pc gaming is still mostly associated with desktop gaming which is not for everyone.
It is. You can absolutely buy completely configured and built PCs if you want.
If you go to a computer store and tell them you want a gaming PC to replace your console with X budget you will walk out with one.
Pc prices are way up too
man I need to be patient gamer by the next November when the new is GTA released only in consoles. Hope I stay a pure PC gamer by that time…