The fact that developers have to cater to multiple platforms that have hardware limitations and different operating systems has led to worse quality of games of time. Console exclusives are anti-competitive, monopolistic, and they lead to a terrible consumer experience.
The graphics card has become the single most expensive part in a gaming PC by far, it’s ridiculous. Because of how crazy nvidia has been with their pricing, and AMD being happy to match them in pricing, I’m fine sticking with my eight year old PC. Most games I play are older anyway. I think eventually integrated GPUs will be considered “good enough” that most PCs won’t be using a dedicated graphics card, just like how dedicated sound cards aren’t the norm anymore. The downside would be having to get a new CPU to have a new GPU as well, but with even low-end graphics cards being ridiculously expensive, you’d basically be getting a free CPU upgrade with your GPU upgrade.
Yeah, I’m part of the gang keeping the trusty 1060 in the top GPUs on Steam.
If there was a PS5 priced PC of similar spec I’d be all over it. As it stands I’ll just not upgrade until my current one dies.
Yeah, I know people are on board with the Steam Deck, but it’s an interesting process to see more and more laptops and small PCs targeting that same hardware and the handhelds making it a target that developers want to keep in mind.
I think there’s a future where whatever the baseline integrated GPU for each CPU generation is becomes the new “console target” because that’s where people will be gaming on handhelds and laptops, with dedicated GPUs becoming the old PC market spec for enthusiasts wanting to crank it all up.
I’m not against it, but it’s a lower target than the equivalent same-gen console spec, which is also some APU but without the limitation of having to be working on a battery. In that sense I hope we keep getting console generations to have a decent gradient of handheld battery-powerd APU>console wall plugged APU>dedicated GPU. That seems like a reasonable spectrum.