Next-Gen Consoles, Are They Any Good?

[Stefky]

It is, because you get the same things from steam (great discounts and dedicated servers) and origin (free games every month and dedicated servers) for free. And what if I don't care and just want to play a couple of online games with my friends who might have them, while playing everything else on pc?

 

Steam does not offer dedicated servers. Some publishers provide dedicated servers for their games, which are sold on Steam. You are talking about only the very biggest publishers who do though. EA do (whose games you get on origin). What MS have done is offer any developer on their platform the use of a huge network of dedicated servers for next to nothing. Titanfall would never have had them without. 

 

Steam doesn't really offer much of anything. It's a store front.The discounts you get are set by the publishers when their games aren't selling anymore. When you get discounts on PS+ of XBL Gold it is because Sony and MS have negotiated them and likely paid or them. The same with the "free" games you get on those platforms. Sony and MS paid up for those free games to add value to your subscription.

 

Free games on Origin? Right. A single publisher offering you old sequels that are no longer selling with an advert pasted in the corner. They lose nothing (why was anyone going to buy BF3 rather than BF4 today?) and make money off the advert, and they get more people to download Origin. Are you seriously comparing that to PS+?

 

PS+ - which offers top indie and AAA games month after month forever - essentially meaning you can buy a console and just pay the less-than-£3 a month and play great games forever. By the looks of the latest Games with Gold, MS is starting to catch up with the quality too. 

 

The bottom line is, if you don't want to pay, don't. Stick to the PC, but stop whining. That people get value for money from the 75p a week they pay for these services is unquestionable to all but the most spoilt first world children. 

[Sauron]

Steam does not offer dedicated servers. Some publishers provide dedicated servers for their games, which are sold on Steam. You are talking about only the very biggest publishers who do though. EA do (whose games you get on origin). What MS have done is offer any developer on their platform the use of a huge network of dedicated servers for next to nothing. Titanfall would never have had them without. 

 

Steam doesn't really offer much of anything. It's a store front.The discounts you get are set by the publishers when their games aren't selling anymore. When you get discounts on PS+ of XBL Gold it is because Sony and MS have negotiated them and likely paid or them. The same with the "free" games you get on those platforms. Sony and MS paid up for those free games to add value to your subscription.

 

Free games on Origin? Right. A single publisher offering you old sequels that are no longer selling with an advert pasted in the corner. They lose nothing (why was anyone going to buy BF3 rather than BF4 today?) and make money off the advert, and they get more people to download Origin. Are you seriously comparing that to PS+?

 

PS+ - which offers top indie and AAA games month after month forever - essentially meaning you can buy a console and just pay the less-than-£3 a month and play great games forever. By the looks of the latest Games with Gold, MS is starting to catch up with the quality too. 

 

The bottom line is, if you don't want to pay, don't. Stick to the PC, but stop whining. That people get value for money from the 75p a week they pay for these services is unquestionable to all but the most spoilt first world children. 

You have no idea how steam works, do you? Steam sells digital copies of games, then part of that revenue goes to the developer and part of it goes to Valve. Valve can decide to make all the discounts they want without asking developers as long as those deveolpers get the same percentage. If Valve earns more money from the sale, so do the devs. Today there are metro last light for 10$, Dead space and dead space 2 for 2.49 each, and a total of 100 games or dlc for up to 75% less money. And sometimes even their best-selling games are on discount, I've seen bioshock infinite for 5$ at least twice, and that game game out in 2013.

 

That part on free games on origin though. So I'm the spoilet first world child and you complain about free stuff? Even if I'm sure ea is only doing it only to get more people on origin, but who cares? It's still free games and if I want to stop using origin I can do it, guess what, for free. What's that part about ads? I haven't seen a single ad on origin ever, other than of course on the store front page (DUH).

"They lose nothing (why was anyone going to buy BF3 rather than BF4 today?) and make money off the advert, and they get more people to download Origin. Are you seriously comparing that to PS+?" So you would argue that newwe is always better? Bf4 is one of the most broken and unfinished games on the market at the moment. While bf3 is pretty buggy too, it's nowhere close to as terrible. Last month we got dead space 1, arguably the best episode in the series. Yes, I compare that to ps+. Why shouldn't I? Digital copies work differently from physical ones, it costs exactly 0 to generate one and all those 60$ they ask you are pure revenue.

 

And the titanfall dedicated servers thing made me lol, considering xbox live users are paying while pc users are not even though both use the same servers. Keep paying for our experience if you want.

 

The thing is, these discounts and other online services should be a selling point of the console, be what makes it a reasonable choice compared to pc or the other console, not something you pay extra for. And by accepting this and buying the consoles en mass console gamers have basically said "this is fine" when it shouldn't be. I find it unacceptable. If you can live with it, good for you. I'm going to spare that money and use it to upgrade my pc in the future.

[Stefky]

You have no idea how steam works, do you? Steam sells digital copies of games, then part of that revenue goes to the developer and part of it goes to Valve. Valve can decide to make all the discounts they want without asking developers as long as those deveolpers get the same percentage. If Valve earns more money from the sale, so do the devs. Today there are metro last light for 10$, Dead space and dead space 2 for 2.49 each, and a total of 100 games or dlc for up to 75% less money. And sometimes even their best-selling games are on discount, I've seen bioshock infinite for 5$ at least twice, and that game game out in 2013.

 

That part on free games on origin though. So I'm the spoilet first world child and you complain about free stuff? Even if I'm sure ea is only doing it only to get more people on origin, but who cares? It's still free games and if I want to stop using origin I can do it, guess what, for free. What's that part about ads? I haven't seen a single ad on origin ever, other than of course on the store front page (DUH).

"They lose nothing (why was anyone going to buy BF3 rather than BF4 today?) and make money off the advert, and they get more people to download Origin. Are you seriously comparing that to PS+?" So you would argue that newwe is always better? Bf4 is one of the most broken and unfinished games on the market at the moment. While bf3 is pretty buggy too, it's nowhere close to as terrible. Last month we got dead space 1, arguably the best episode in the series. Yes, I compare that to ps+. Why shouldn't I? Digital copies work differently from physical ones, it costs exactly 0 to generate one and all those 60$ they ask you are pure revenue.

 

And the titanfall dedicated servers thing made me lol, considering xbox live users are paying while pc users are not even though both use the same servers. Keep paying for our experience if you want.

 

The thing is, these discounts and other online services should be a selling point of the console, be what makes it a reasonable choice compared to pc or the other console, not something you pay extra for. And by accepting this and buying the consoles en mass console gamers have basically said "this is fine" when it shouldn't be. I find it unacceptable. If you can live with it, good for you. I'm going to spare that money and use it to upgrade my pc in the future.

 

Forget the "spoilt first world child" thing, I was just having a bad day so I apologise for that. But it is the publishers who set the price of games on all platforms always. Valve just get a cut. 

 

The reason publishers do not do this on consoles is that the high street retailers have them by the balls. People still buy most of their games in shops, the same was true of PC games when Valve first launched Steam and you did not see those crazy discounts then. Publishers were only able to basically ignore the retailers when it came to digital game prices with Steam is that at a certain point Steam purchases reached a critical mass. Now Publishers can make a lot of money by slashing the prices of games when they stop selling - there is no production and distribution, bar Valve's cut it's pure profit.

 

This will happen on consoles too the further console gamers move towards digital purchasing.

 

The point I am making is that when Sony and MS offer discounts on games through their services, they have had to go to publishers and negotiate and likely pay for them. On Steam it is just the publisher choosing to milk some more funds out of a game that long stopped being purchased on Steam.

 

And no, you really cannot compare free games on origin to PS+, or what Games with Gold is starting to evolve into. 

 

We are talking about a single publisher Vs every publisher. All EA games Vs a huge and varied selection of games - multiple games every month. And when I said no one was going to buy BF3 today - that is just a fact. If they wanted it, they bought it when it was released. It's a dead donkey now and EA lost nothing in profit by giving it away and ensured a load more people had downloaded their flagging store front.

 

You could get PS+ and technically never buy a single game again. Can you say the same with Origins free games? 

 

It's not "unacceptable" for companies to ask for money for services provided. You get the choice as a consumer whether you want to buy those services, but nothing you get with them does not have a value. You can't just expect everything to be given to you for free and then stamp your feet and claim its "unacceptable" when people ask you to pay for something. That is unacceptable to me.

[Sauron]

Forget the "spoilt first world child" thing, I was just having a bad day so I apologise for that. But it is the publishers who set the price of games on all platforms always. Valve just get a cut. 

 

The reason publishers do not do this on consoles is that the high street retailers have them by the balls. People still buy most of their games in shops, the same was true of PC games when Valve first launched. Publishers were only able to basically ignore the retailers when it came to game prices with Steam is that at a certain point Steam purchases reached a critical mass. Now Publishers can make a lot of money by slashing the prices of games when they stop selling - there is no production and distribution, bar Valve's cut it's pure profit.

 

This will happen on consoles too the further console gamers move towards digital purchasing.

 

The point I am making is that when Sony and MS offer discounts on games through their services, they have had to go to publishers and negotiate and likely pay for them. On Steam it is just the publisher choosing to milk some more funds out of a game that long stopped being purchased on Steam.

 

And no, you really cannot compare free games on origin to PS+, or what Games with Gold is starting to evolve into. 

 

We are talking about a single publisher Vs every publisher. All EA games Vs a huge and varied selection of games - multiple games every month. And when I said no one was going to buy BF3 today - that is just a fact. If they wanted it, they bought it when it was released. It's a dead donkey now and EA lost nothing in profit by giving it away and ensured a load more people had downloaded their flagging store front.

 

You could get PS+ and technically never buy a single game again. Can you say the same with Origins free games? 

 

It's not "unacceptable" for companies to ask for money for services provided. You get the choice as a consumer whether you want to buy those services, but nothing you get with them does not have a value. You can't just expect everything to be given to you for free and then stamp your feet and claim its "unacceptable" when people ask you to pay for something. That is unacceptable to me.

I understand what you're saying, and I'll gladly forget the first world thing. The problem is, even it does cost more for ms and sony to provide those services, that is their problem, not something the gamer should suffer. Maybe they couldn't do otherwise (and I strongly doubt it since ps3 had free online multiplayer and other online services that are now behind that paywall), but that only makes the platform less worthy of your money. In the long run you're paying more than you would for a high end pc or a mid end one with upgrades, and both of these offer more. As for the "you could never buy a game again" argument, well that only applies if you only play those games. What if I only play bf3 and dead space and all the free to play games you can get on pc? I could. I feel nintendo of all companies has taken the right approach: they make a cheaper console with no sub fee and offer you games with such  high replayability that you can be content with 3 or 4. It would be much better if you had online multiplayer and all the streaming and internet related functions for free and then you had the option of subbing to gold or ps+ for deals and free games. The way it is now is not unacceptable because I don't want to pay for services in general, it is unacceptable because most of those services are free on a different (and hardwarewise superior) platform in the form of pc. 75$ a year are a lot compared to the original cost of the unit and what you would get by investing them in a more powerful pc, especially if you sum them to the sometimes 20$ extra you must pay for retail games and the fact that discounts are there, but not in the quantity steam offers (for no sub fee).

[Stefky]

I understand what you're saying, and I'll gladly forget the first world thing. The problem is, even it does cost more for ms and sony to provide those services, that is their problem, not something the gamer should suffer. Maybe they couldn't do otherwise (and I strongly doubt it since ps3 had free online multiplayer and other online services that are now behind that paywall), but that only makes the platform less worthy of your money. In the long run you're paying more than you would for a high end pc or a mid end one with upgrades, and both of these offer more. As for the "you could never buy a game again" argument, well that only applies if you only play those games. What if I only play bf3 and dead space and all the free to play games you can get on pc? I could. I feel nintendo of all companies has taken the right approach: they make a cheaper console with no sub fee and offer you games with such  high replayability that you can be content with 3 or 4. It would be much better if you had online multiplayer and all the streaming and internet related functions for free and then you had the option of subbing to gold or ps+ for deals and free games. The way it is now is not unacceptable because I don't want to pay for services in general, it is unacceptable because most of those services are free on a different (and hardwarewise superior) platform in the form of pc. 75$ a year are a lot compared to the original cost of the unit and what you would get by investing them in a more powerful pc, especially if you sum them to the sometimes 20$ extra you must pay for retail games and the fact that discounts are there, but not in the quantity steam offers (for no sub fee).

 

If we want there to keep on being consoles, they need to be profitable, you also want them to be reliable, polished services. If you don't, you don't buy one and leave it at that. 

 

Are you aware that, without a paid subscription, the PS3 as an arm of Sony's business failed to turn a profit for around four years after its release? It also failed to provide a reliable service.

 

PSN, until the last couple of years of Gen7, was a hollow joke. The same goes for the PS3 OS. It was shoddy, slow, awful store front, threadbare in terms of features, ridiculous download speeds hampered by poorly design firmware, frequent server outages, firmware updates that bricked consoles, threadbare security due to lack of resource put into it. Why? Because they were not treating their online infrastructure like a service, they were treating it as something people could take or leave as it was free, they did not have a huge staff dedicated to it.

 

Meanwhile, MS charged £2.50 or so a month - a tiny amount really - and provided a wealth of features, regular OS updates that turned the console eventually into a fully fledged entertainment hub, solid servers that were seldom down, rock solid security that was never hacked. Everything worked, everything was fast, reliable. The world had never seen a console manufacturer ask for money to use their console before, yet the 360 dominated the first half of the generation and it was only losing focus on games and getting sidetracked by Kinect that saw them lose that dominance. They have always had an entire division dedicated to the service and the OS that work throughout the generation to make it better and keep it maintained and reliable. They can do this because they do treat it like a service and charge a small amount for it. 

 

Sony meanwhile, with a free "service" made a loss on PS3 as a business venture for four long years before finally scraping even. 

 

People don't mind paying for something that works. Sony introduced PS+ as a stealth way of getting their audience used to the idea of a paid service, because they knew they would need one to keep their head above water next gen. That was good for everyone, as that lead to Games for Gold, which is finally picking up. Not only do we now have an assurance of reliability, but also at least two games a month for next to no cost.

 

Consoles are dissimilar to PCs in many ways - the biggest way is that there is no "PC Corp Ltd" that spends hundreds of millions on R&D to make the machine and then needs to somehow make it back despite making pretty meagre profits on the hardware. Without an online service, console manufacturers in the modern age seriously struggle to make consoles profitable, and that is why Sony almost drowned for the first four years of last gen, and why they both now have one.

 

You might say "why should I care" but you are on the console forums here so you should understand most of the people here like what they offer.

 

I have a PC I recently built with a 780Ti and 4770k - it utterly batters the PS4 in terms of visuals, I can get cheaper games (like I said, this will come to consoles once the retailers have been beaten by digital sales), and I feel like it was worth the £1,500 odd I ploughed into building it (that is another side point - you pay for the better graphics of PC, especially now at the start of the generation). Yet sometimes I long for PC gaming to be as reliable as console gaming, for there to be a "PC Corp Ltd" that has ultimate responsibility for your experience.

 

I've bought 8 games since I bought it - four of those have required some kind of trouble shooting to run and two still have serious issues that won't be fixed until the developer patches them (or in the case of Metro Last Light, likely never will be). PC gaming is a wild west because there is no platform holder whoes reputation and hardware sales rely on your experience. Games just work because Sony and MS (more MS) make damn well sure they do before you can release them. When a publisher fucks up like Bethesda did with PS3 Skyrim, Sony even sends engineers to them to try and solve the problem. On PC the game might work, or you might have to go on Google and work out how to make it work, or it might never be stable at all.

 

Consoles are still a better option for laid back, in front of TV gaming because no one takes responsibility on PCs and its left to the consumer to try and solve problems the developers couldn't be bothered to fix. Until that changes, consoles will always have a place. If you accept that, you have to accept that the model they are working with, making hardware, is much harder to make profitable than Valve just sitting there and taking a cut off everything on Steam. I'm still happy I got a PC, and I still intend on doing all my serious gaming here, but I am not abandoning consoles yet because they value something I value - quality of customer experience. And I don't mind paying a little to get it.

[Jedicake]

At first I voted "No way" but then deleted the vote and said I wouldn't mind if I got one, cause there's one very specific game that I would like to play that isn't on PC

[Sauron]

<what you wrote>

You make valid points as to why console manifacturers need or want to make certain choices like sub fee, the only point I feel like debating in what you said is that the reasons for which ps3 didn't fare very well were not related so much to there not being sub fee (the ps2 did much better with none of that) but rather to the fact that it was very expensive at launch and people didn't really feel it was worth upgrading to from a ps2 or whatever they had before.

 

But the fact is that ultimately these conditions lead to pc providing the best experience by far, at least in my opinion (and apparently in yours too if I understood correctly), and therefore to the question posed by the op ("are next gen consoles worth buying") I felt the answer was "no, it makes little sense to get one of those instead of a pc".

 

As for sony and ms providing better quality control, that is true to some degree- but at the same time we get games like w_d and bf4 (terribly optimized and pretty buggy on all platforms), which don't seem to be so well controlled after all. If sony and ms had intervened pre-launch to stop the developer from publishing those games on consoles before they were complete, I would completely agree with that point and see this whole thing under a different light. But they didn't, and the reason is that they see these games as system sellers. They don't give a damn about the costumer experience, only about what can sell the platform, be it based on hype or actual service they just don't care.

[DLM_012]

It is, because you get the same things from steam (great discounts and dedicated servers) and origin (free games every month and dedicated servers) for free. And what if I don't care and just want to play a couple of online games with my friends who might have them, while playing everything else on pc?

 

You're telling me that Steam guarantees you 2 high quality, indie/AAA games for free every month?

 

Had to call you out on that. Not to mention Sony offers these games on all three platforms they currently support. Vita, PS3, PS4 - all of which I personally own and quite a few out there do too.

 

Terrible argument. You simply cannot argue with the value that PS+ provides for a measly $50/year

 

The consoles are good for what they do. Make gaming highly accessible to your average gamer and providing a decent entertainment experience as a set top media box. Not to mention exclusives which in itself is highly debatable whether they appeal to you or not but whatever.

[Sauron]

You're telling me that Steam guarantees you 2 high quality, indie/AAA games for free every month?

 

Had to call you out on that. Not to mention Sony offers these games on all three platforms they currently support. Vita, PS3, PS4 - all of which I personally own and quite a few out there do too.

 

Terrible argument. You simply cannot argue with the value that PS+ provides for a measly $50/year

 

The consoles are good for what they do. Make gaming highly accessible to your average gamer and providing a decent entertainment experience as a set top media box. Not to mention exclusives which in itself is highly debatable whether they appeal to you or not but whatever.

*AH-EM* I said ORIGIN gives free games every month. Last month it was dead space, this month it's bf3. With 50$ in a year I can buy up to 50 games on steam if I wait for offers. Beats the 24 you get with ps+. AND, if I don't care about a particular game I just don't buy it. seems to me you don't have that choice with ps+. "Make gaming highly accessible to your average gamer" sorry but gaming on a pc is just as accessible, especially nowadays. When I was a kid I didn't own a console and I played on my dad's pc, even 6-year-old me could operate a pc well enough to play games on it. Insert the disc, go through installation, launch the icon on the desktop. easy as pie. with steam it's even easier: buy the game, leave steam on while it takes care of downloading and installing the game, come back 3 hours later and it's done.

The role of consoles used to be to provide experiences that only a closed system could provide, while maintaining a competitive price compared to pcs. for example, buying a ps2 for 200$ and play exclusives on it that highly benefitted from a controller made sense. now consoles are basically nerfed pcs with sub fee drm and games that don't even play at the resolution and framerates the console was designed to provide. can't do 1080p? fine, but the tone down the price. I would actually rather get a 250$ ps4 that plays 720p 60fps games 100% of the time with no sub fee instead of a 400$ one WITH sub fee and that provides the 1080p 60fps it promises only once in a while.

[Stefky]

I have to continue to disagree that PC gaming is equally accessible, for many reasons:

 

Many games need trouble shooting, many remain unstable.

 

I've had problems with SSFIVAE, Metro Last Light (still unstable), They Breathe, and HUGE, HUGE as-yet-unresolved issues with Watch Dogs which continues to crash on me constantly. I've given up on it for now until they patch it.

 

That would seldom-to-never happen on consoles. Watch Dogs on the consoles just runs, and on PC is it just a huge freaking mess.

 

PCs themselves also need troubleshooting, often have issues, I've had a tonne since I built my PC and feel like I have become an IT tech support guy for myself since becoming a PC gamer. 

 

PC games can LOOK a lot better (if you spend the money on them), games can be cheaper. More accessible? More simple? Not a chance in hell I can agree with that. 

[wingdgundam]

As of this moment, anyone can create a mid range gaming pc for the same money as a “next gen” console.  PC for the most part gets all of the same games, or the eventual port.  Games are cheaper on PC and you can always upgrade.