The Ebb and Flow of Gaming (Long, Little Ranty) · 1:27pm Dec 19th, 2018
Last night on break, I went across the street to the mall, and picked up my 12th game for my PS4 Pro; got it nice and cheap as it's two-and-a-half years old now. Doom 2016. I bought this game for PC back at launch in May 2016, and for the most part absolutely loved it, playing it nonstop for four weeks making my way up the difficulty levels until finally cheesing my way through Nightmare.
Now that I'm sacrificing the precision of a mouse, I've started on Ultra Violence. It also made me realize something else:
The vast majority of my gaming this year has been on console.
I bought my gaming PC three and a half years ago, and last upgraded it a year and a half ago, swapping out my GTX 970 for a 1080. It's been a worthwhile upgrade, but my new PS4 Pro still took the majority of my spare time this year. Even my 2018 game purchases; only one was on PC, Subnautica. The rest were over on Sony's machine.
I think there's a few reasons as to why.
1. The graphical landscape. PC enthusiasts have been gaming at 1440p for years, and now are pushing more and more frames at 4k. Me? I've been happy at 1080p for eight years now. Making that jump from 30 fps to 60 fps was astounding. But I'm not ready to invest in higher tier monitors because of the high costs, lack of frames, and in the case of an ultrawide, lack of title support and lack of decent quality control.
Since I am still perfectly happy gaming at 1080p60, there is absolutely nothing my 1080 cannot handle, and when I do run into framerate issues, it's always another piece of the puzzle; either the game engine cannot keep up (StarCraft 2) or my 4th gen CPU drops to its knees long before my 1080 even breaks a sweat (Witcher 3).
And whatever "supersampling" the PS4 Pro does with a lot of games at Full HD, is absolutely fucking stunning, to the point I am buying games I originally played on PC. 1080p isn't supposed to look this good when it comes to games like RDR2 and Horizon Zero Dawn. But how do you do that on PC? I'd rather have the GTX 1080 flex it's muscles to give me downsampled 2k or 4k graphics at 60fps rather than render Doom at 200+ fps at 1080p, which is well into the territory of diminishing returns for framerates.
My point is, when it comes to current gen multiplatformers, my PS4 Pro is going toe to toe with my 3.5 year-old gaming rig.
2. The rise of Steam's competition. For the better part of a decade, PC gamers had a glorious superior option when it came to a centralized digital marketplace; Steam. We bitched and moaned back when it was a required installation for Half-Life 2 in 2004, but those cries were soon muffled when the semi-annual wallet-raping Steam sales came knocking. PC gamers would buy dozens of games, many for cents on the dollar, and spend the next several months playing three of them.
But lately, other large publishers have risen to challenge Steam's dominance, and the Steam sales have certainly lost their zeal in the last couple years. But Steam still has a major advantage to all these other marketplaces; their reviews and their very generous refund policy. These two features that are quite deliberately absent from the competition make me absolutely refuse to give them a chance.
I wonder how much money Bethesda would have had to refund if they had released Fallout 76 on Steam. And I'm certain they knew it.
I for one, want a fallback option when they pull the same bullshit for their higher quality offerings, like Doom Eternal and (hopefully) Elder Scrolls VI. The PS4 is that fallback option.
I currently tolerate three launchers on my PC. Steam, GoG, and Battle.net. Steam is king, GoG is the rogue anti-DRM crusader, and Battle.net, only because I play weekly matches of StarCraft 2 with my husband. I uninstalled Origin earlier this year, vowing never to go back, when another user had his account hacked and shadowbanned, with customer support being completely uncooperative. The amount of hell he had to raise on Reddit before an EA community manager stepped up was, quite frankly, lawsuit-worthy. I am very proud to say that it has been over a year since I have given EA a cent, since Battlefront 2 in November 2017.
My point is, to Steam's competitors. I don't care if developers get a little more money if we buy from your platform. I care what your platform does for me as a consumer. You want me to try it? It has to do everything Steam does (reviews, refunds, forums, mod managing lite) and more.
Because I'm not going to walk out of Valve's palace to go see your rickety shack down the alley just because you pulled your game from Steam. I just won't give you my money, or I'll switch to a console that has a centralized, undivided marketplace.
Well, that's all from me for now. Sorry about the mouthful, just had to get it off my chest. Thanks for reading, if you did.
I agree 100% as far as Steam's competitors. I'm using up to 6 launchers on my PC (Steam, GOG, Battlenet, Uplay, Origin and Bethesda net), I really don't need any more. Steam isn't perfect, but it has the most features available for users and, quite frankly, it is just the most convenient. Steam is as close to a centralized store PC players will have, and I think most other competitors fall short of Valve's service. For me, the biggest problem with them (with the notable exception of GOG) is that they barely have any games on their service. Steam has thousands upon thousands of games, while Uplay or Origin only have a few hundred, and I'm only interested in a small fraction of that selection. Epic Games' Store, with a shoddy Privacy Policy and Tencent being a major backer, makes me wary of using it, let alone giving them any money.
I'm glad Steam has actual competitors now. They've held a soft monopoly on the PC games industry for over a decade at this point, and they used that to satisfy their own greed.
4983048
Until they have reviews and refunds, they are not competitors. They are inferior services.