If I bought one it would end up in the pile of gaming devices I don’t use. I have an RG35XXSP for GBA, GB,and GC, a Retroid Mini for PSP, Vita, NES, SNES, PSX, DC, and arcade, a Retroid Pocket Nova for PS2, GC, and N64, an AYN Odin 2 portal for Android games, PC games/streaming, a 5800X3D/7900XTX PC for 4K OLED gaming, and a 5700X3D/9070XT for 1440P widescreen gaming. I’m nearing 660 games on my steam/epic/gog libraries and I have 2TB of rom dumps for all of the retro systems. I’ve spent thousands of dollars to realize I don’t like gaming, I liked hanging out with my friends.
It’s the same theme everywhere. They build for some kind of non existent luxury market while buyers stretch themselves thin. Now no one has any money left and credit cards are maxed.
We’re not buying what’s being sold. So now what?
Now they blame millennials and gen z kids for ruining gaming
And then they switch to everything being a live service so instead of buying games you just have access to the “whole library” of games (for whatever payment tier you’re in) which they will change and remove games without warning and deleting all of your progress unless you pay them at least $20 a month for cloud saves
Oh and the only games in the games library are ai slop vibe coded games that are unplayable carbon copies of each other
Clearly this is because people are just tired of buying physical goods. They want digital consoles!
The future will be even worse. Have you seen what people have been doing with AI the last couple of weeks. People have decompiled entire games using AI and made PS5 games run on PC natively. Something that took years by multiple devs takes a few days by a single dev with a Claude account. Sony and MS are definitely shitting their pants right now. Their solution will be cloud streaming only consoles.
Good thing there’s already more good games out than I could play if I lived another hundred years.
Stadia tried it.
Yeah! Everything muat be digital and if someone still wants the box it can just have a paper with a code in it.
I mean who would like to play the single player game about 5 years later when the servers are down?
Right?
Can’t play games when hungry.
You’ve clearly never seen me ignore all my biological needs to play games for 14 straight hours.
Amateur!
Yeah, indicators are indicating. Things they don’t seem to talk about. Used car lots are empty while new car lots are full. The tourist restaurants no longer have waiting lists. Gaming is a luxury expense, as in we don’t need it to survive, while new game prices are higher than they’ve ever been. I’m willing to bet most if not all luxury spending is down.
Prices are high and companies decided shitty AI is better than good people. So jobs are getting scarcer or paying less.
In the words of my kids: we’re cooked fam.
Another industry with its bottom falling out.
Doesn’t mention how Switches and Steam Decks are doing, but I would venture to guess that Valve is eating Sony and Microsoft’s lunch.
Sony and Microsoft don’t even know Valve exists. The Steam Deck sold in its lifetime less than each console in a few weeks after launch.
Given that RAM prices are up on everything, probably not.
People aren’t avoiding new consoles because they object to Sony’s business practices. They’re avoiding them because they’ve been priced outside of the “toy” category.
Gabecube is projected to sell several hundred thousand copies. PlayStation 5 is close to 100 million units sold.
“Sold” as in the past tense of “sell”.
It is estimated that Playstation sold 13 million consoles in 2026.
And yet Valve’s revenue was twice that of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s. Steam can run on a generic PC; Steam Deck and GabeCube are merely gravy. Storefronts are where the money’s made. Hell, haven’t PS5s been selling at a loss until recently? What’s 13 million times a negative amount?
I am all for the little guy. I looked up all the stats because of what you said. PS roughly 10 million estimated by end of year, Xbox roughly 2 million by end of year. Gabecube maybe around 60k per month with a total in 2026 of around 400k units sold. That will be roughly half of Xbox sales if they performed similarly the entire year.
Impressive start, but the PS blows them out of the water.
I will be curious how PS5 does moving forward and how well any PS6 does. Seems like Sony is in the FA stage and might be transitioning to FO.
PS5 pro prices are through the roof so it will likely keep sales muted plus everyone is ready for the new console by now. With prices the way they are the next console generation could be three years away. That is an extremely long cycle and will further hurt their sales.
Not just here but everywhere. Everyone (except those with too much) is holding tight to their wallet until trump dies and some stability comes back to the world.
its not even a choice for me. i have been unemployed for over 2 years now. since just before he got elected.
And yet somehow there are millions of people preordering GTA 6 for 100 bucks lol
These companies have said plainly that they don’t see prices returning to pre-pandemic levels even if the current economic crisis is resolved. Corpos are too greedy, and the people in power are even greedier.
Just another flavor of rent never goes down.
How long until someone digs up a bunch of Halo Infinite discs from a New Mexico desert?
Fallout 1&2 intensifies.
Hardware costs have gone up, compelling games releases for them have gone down (and didn’t start from a good position).
Such a mystery.
Not to mention they explicitly stated disc sales are dead. All my console games are physical, so I will no longer buy consoles games or consoles. Seems like the way to go.
How is this when PS5s just sold out for the GTA VI launch? How much did that askew the YoY or YTD?
Gaming in general is way too expensive now.
At least we have retro games to play instead.
I dont really feel anything for newer games. Theres been very few that ive been excited about. Graphics dont woo me in the slightest.
I feel ill booting up any console after the 360. Even the 360 was the start of enshittification.
“Wait, you mean this has no internet, you put the game in and it works? Wait, you own the game? Sony vs Illinois made that illegal years ago! no sign in or email? How do they track your eye movements for serving ads? How do they count your verification cans ?” -2040 kids.
I thought the Ps2/3 gens were the last truly good years of not overly monetized gaming.
Pretty much.
Which I’m playing on my Steam Deck! Which starts at only…wait, 750 dollars?!?
Edit: $790
Bought it when it came out 419€. I dont see myself paying twice the price today.
Or you could get an AYN Thor for 350$ + 30$ shipping and a wait time of 3 months
Or you could download an emulator and play on a 10 year old laptop on a big screen tv.
I can’t get over how great ps2 emulation is
PS3 is decent but half the games I wanna play aren’t ready yet, the ones that are done are great though
Yeah, that’s definitely directly comparable to a portable device like a Steam Deck or AYN Thor.
About as comparable as the AYN Thor (Android phone with weird form factor) is to Steam Deck (PC with weird form factor).
Are you unfamiliar with the concept of portability? Or do you carry a television everywhere that you go?
Laptops are portable. I think the point of the TV was that the formfactor and weight of the system aren’t a big issue when docked.
I think you can put SteamOS on those badboys now too, so you can say goodbye to shitty Android launchers
That’s true. Or depending on what I want to play, lots of even cheaper systems. Although the Steam Deck is JUST powerful enough for everything I want to play.
Edit: Also I use the shit out of steam play streaming to TVs and things
Good. Die.
I’m amazed they’ve not crashed more. The PS5 and Xbox whatever the fuck they called it are both 6 years old, if you haven’t already decided to buy one why would you get one now after the price hike?
Some people really want to play gta 6 before it comes to pc I guess
That’s how I ended up buying a PS3 back when GTA V was released. Well, that and Gran Turismo and wanting a Blu-ray player. But it was still not really worth it.
Same, but mostly because a cute girl told me we could play GTA together if I got it on PS3
Gran Turismo 6 was a fun game though
I was actually a little disappointed. Friends of mine were huge GT fans and played the shit out of it, but when I played it I found the AI opponents horribly stupid and the missing damage model was mildly weird, to say the least. I expected more than what I got. It wasn’t a bad game, but just not what I expected.
Every GT game has shitty AI. I mostly play them to just drive a whole lot of cars fast on a track for fun.
Same, was expecting sales to plummet. Guessing gta6 presales tempered the fall
I’ve just bought my first console in nearly 10 years but it wasn’t any of the big three. My partner and I are loving our new Steam Machine.
Ah yes, the Nex Playground.
Congrats! My wife and I have two steam decks. Great “consoles”. Super fun.
LOL Consoles are too expensive, and this is the find out stage of their fuck around journey. Its not all that surprising, especially with the ending of physical games on Sony’s part and Microsoft being generally shitty… They might not recover for a while. Bully for them!
I had a ps3 and a ps4 and was fully up for getting a ps5. Then it came out right around COVID time and I couldn’t get one anywhere because of scalpers. So I thought, “No worries, I’ll just wait a year or two and pick one up for cheap.” Then it just never got cheaper. Now it’s like a 5-6 year old machine that costs over $900 CAD so I just never bothered.
And in the midst of these increasing hardware costs Sony thinks people would not mind paying the premium for their digital only games, completely killing the second hand and retail markets, bless their heart.
This is true. Who wants to spend all that money at once. My PC may be more expensive than I console but I spent no more than $250 at a time as I upgraded it. People don’t need $1000 graphics cards to play modern games.
