You know, all those people making new n64, playstation, and gameboy titles might be onto something. Apart from steam, I don't think I've heard anything but bad news from modern consoles.
Talk to console gamers and they still think the PC is sweaty and playing on the PC is like putting your hands in the toilet. I mean, I remember the 1990s when kids were playing flight simulators with this huge plastic joysticks that were always falling apart and needed to be calibrated every five minutes. It's not like that anymore, with Steam Big Picture and either an XBOX ONE or PS4/5 controller your PC is a better console.
The main problem is that, ex. the Steam Controller, nobody can make a decent game controller except for console vendors and when the console vendors go down somebody will have to step up.
I just can't believe the PS5 has sold as many units as it has with just 15 exclusive games, many of which are remakes, even remakes of remakes. That reputation that the PC platform is too sweaty has taken a long long time to die and it doesn't help that ACER and such are coming out with handhelds that are maximum sweat (boot into a Windows Desktop with 10x too small fonts) compared to the consumer electronics experience of the Steam Deck.
> The main problem is that, ex. the Steam Controller, nobody can make a decent game controller except for console vendors and when the console vendors go down somebody will have to step up.
I used to only play on DualShock 4s and even skipped the DualSense because I just loved my DualShock that much.
I use an 8bitDo now and it is better in every way I care about. 8bitDo does not make consoles.
> ex. the Steam Controller, nobody can make a decent game controller except for console vendors
Reading this feels feels like you are the one that is still in 1990s.
Third party controllers have long surpassed the ones from console vendors. Standard console controllers still continue to use potentiometers for sticks. Even pro versions that cost over a hundred euro still use them.
Fair but the form factor is completely different. Dreamcast/xbox I’d consider the real base for modern controllers. But my original point is that once the 360 controller came out everyone (except Sony) has basically 90% copied it. Everything before is pretty distinct.
While Switch is 360-esque now, the Wii Classic Controller had symmetrical sticks at the bottom, Wii U Pro Controller and GamePad had symmetrical sticks on top. So Nintendo wasn't totally committed to the 360 design even if the GameCube controller was almost there before. (Not gonna count the Wiimote as it's a little too different) Steam Deck and Steam Controller have symmetrical sticks as well. I don't think it's as clear cut as you say. 8BitDo and GuliKit have controllers in both form factors also (released in the last 2 years even).
Also worth noting that XInput has been holding back PC controllers so that anything more ambitious than a 360 controller is hard to get working. Microsoft is also the only controller manufacturer to not put gyro in their controllers.
You’re getting too nitty gritty. The general shape/form factor for all controllers, as well as 90% of the button/stick layout, was basically locked by the 360. Every diversion is either Sony or window dressing.
>Talk to console gamers and they still think the PC is sweaty and playing on the PC is like putting your hands in the toilet.
Eh, as someone who owns and plays on both pc and console, the simple truth of the matter is that playing on console is, for the most part, better 'bang for the buck'. You can reliably purchase a console and a budget linux laptop and both will reliably fill their respective niches for the next decade. PC gaming, in my experience, requires a much higher budget, and this was even before the modern pricing madness.
Consoles also had much wider support for couch coop than PC did, so it was a more social experience, and to be blunt, PC gaming has a pretty bad problem with cheating that I simply never experienced on console.
Like I said, I play and enjoy both. I can afford to do so now, but I do feel bad for teens today because even consoles are getting crazy expensive.
> Apart from steam, I don't think I've heard anything but bad news from modern consoles.
Gabe is in his mid 60s, I'm prepared that in the next decade or so there will be a change of guard at Valve and the slow train of enshittification will get moving.
P.S. There's been a lot of groupthink and bandwagoning for Valve, ignoring all the dirt under the rug. But at the end of the day, by comparison, they are the best behaving in the field.
> hands off managing Valve for precisely this reason
Remember that this means he's not the "hands" but he's still very much the head. You'll only know what Valve really is without him when he's no longer around.
The company that gave up making games because there was more money to be had from inserting itself as a middleman into a previously open platform does not deserve any adoration.
The true answer here is that people went where the games went. And those AAA distributors preferred a middleman doing everything for them in exchange for getting a cut. From there, AA and indies went to the middleman because they more or less had to to compete. Whether or not you consider market capture the whims of the consumer or a natural consequence of capitalism is a more philosophical question to ask.
On a more fundamental level, it seems like people will pick convenience over security and freedom every time the choice pops up. In the land of media, this comes down to choosing to put all your eggs in one basket in exchange for having less control over the products you bought. We've seen this across Netflix, Steam, and Spotify as the largest modern examples.
It is market capture, and you don’t get to just hand wave it away with how it’s only philosophical. It has real world ramifications, it is a real consequence that can put consumers under duress (distorting the market) and/or leave them with no viable alternatives (which a free market is allegedly supposed to prevent)
>It is market capture, and you don’t get to just hand wave it away with how it’s only philosophical.
I don't get to declare it one way just because I think it's true either.
If people truly want all their eggs in one basket, is it market capture if you are 100% upfront (which these companies aren't, but lets suppose), and people come into it anyway? I suppose my philosophy here comes down to "you can only protect people from themselves for so long before exploitation simply becomes business". Why try and spout freedom to those who actively seek someone or something to be controlled by? Why spout principles of ownership to those who will relinquish it every time for a "cheap" subscription?
Now the real answer is another scary word to this community: regulation. It's been beyond time we had proper digital ownership laws. But we're a very long road away from that in the US.
Gabe is off forming a cult which I assume will consume his focus for the remainder of his life. I'm dead serious he is basically straight up copying Ron L Hubbards, cult on a boat playbook. (related but kinda mean, he is not really health conscious so he is not gonna live to be 90 or anything.)
IDK what this means for the steam platform but I'm guessing it will mean change of some sort.
Honestly, there's never been a better time to be writing games for those platforms. The SDK's are much improved from the proprietary stuff available at the time and the hardware is very well understood. People have been pulling off some utter witchcraft on the N64.
The N64 is never going to get any faster, and emulators can run on just about any potato these days. People have realistic expectations of what the platform can do, so there's no need to spend insane effort making the graphics look better. It's always going to look kinda crappy, and that is Just Fine.
This lets game developers focus on the actual gameplay itself. No "Generic Shooter vol. 26 - now with slightly prettier water!", but innovative stuff focusing on the narrative and on novel gameplay elements.
Kaze and James Lambert are amazing. Kaze's new Mario game looks better than a first party Nintendo title, and James's engines pushes the console to its absolute limits.
I've been thinking about giving it a go myself. It's such a fun and nostalgic console, and the limitations are fun constraints.
The code archeology is really cool too. Seeing Rare's Dinosaur Planet boot up and play after being a lost title. Decompiling all the original titles. Building sequels to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. It's such a fun scene.
Then there's Analogue 3D and ModRetro too, which make it fun to play as physical hardware.
It was last night, after seeing Linux on the Atari Jaguar, I was just pondering over that whole scene.
Then I decided to throw on Metal Slug X, a classic of the Neo Geo. Then it struck me, "Could I attempt porting this to Jaguar?!".
It would be a great start project to familurise myself with this older stuff again. They both have a 12MHz 68k, it is just that the graphics and audio cores are different. Would probably have to base it off the CD version so that the memory addressing is already handled (it loaded all assets into 1MB RAM - twice the jaguars storage).
It doesn't sound impossible. But the Jags RISC chips were notorious for being a little slow due to limited cache space, so it might not be so straight forward.
