Phoenixmgs said:
Phones are not more complex than computers. And people can fuck around with their phones because they can't really break them like you break a computer by fucking around with it.
Tell that the the rather huge number of people I know who have broken their phones from fucking around with them, software sense, not hardware. While laptop tech support exists, so do phone tech support people - and it isn't just for hardware issues.
As for not being as complex as a computer... Do you even know what these things do these days? They have different hardware and graphics levels, they have firmware updates, software updates, dependency updates. They have an ungodly number of settings, especially if you head to Android phones,
You never had to download a video codec? Come on, did you just start using PCs at Windows 10? Windows Media Player didn't know how to play shit without a slew of codecs. Windows 10 is the 1st Windows OS that can play MKVs out of the box, and MKVs are a rather popular and quite old container. IIRC, Windows XP couldn't even play DVDs out of the box.
You're assuming I use Windows Media Player. Most videos I watch on the internet, which doesn't rely on Windows Media Player at all. DVDs I can just insert and watch these days too.
I don't know why we're heading back to Windows XP for talking about how modern computers compare to modern consoles.
If we're being honest, most videos watched on a computer are almost certainly going to come from Youtube, or Netflix - both of which are plainly accessible from your internet browser, and don't require you setting up Windows Media Player to do anything with.
I never said I was tech support. And, I do go through just about every laptop model. My company gets stuff that's recycled, a company upgrades all their machines and give us the old stuff, people return basically a brand new computer to Best Buy for some reason, etc. I've probably completely taken apart every laptop model that's Windows 7 or newer. Quite often we actually get a whole pallet full of business class laptops. We see just about every laptop out there, and very few actually have dedicated GPUs. Yes, the business class ones have the greatest percentage of GPUs. The cheapest gaming laptop I see on Best Buy's site is $800.
SmartPhones took off because it was the Internet on the go. They were made incredibly easy to use even with an OS that was new to everyone. Everyone already knew how to use a browser, Facebook, Netflix, YouTube, etc. It's smartphones and tablets that have people no longer needing laptops in general. Thus, they'd rather buy a console vs a gaming laptop. And, I was talking about things that do one thing like FireSticks that people buy even though their PC can already do that.
You already had internet on the go though. I was browsing the internet and watching videos on my Brick phone long before Smartphones. Smartphones took off because they did more than that. They are your phone, they are the internet, they are your calendar, they are an entertainment device, they are a notepad, they are a camera, they are a photo editing suite. Anything you need to do on the go, they can do. The problems, of course, show up as soon as it becomes anything requiring large amounts of work. Staring at the small screen for half an hour while typing up your resume, for example, is something most people would rather avoid. Doing your work on your phone is often painful, unless its purely messaging people info. They are, however, an all-rounder device.
Around the time smartphones first appeared, there was a lot more confusion in how to use them to, what they could do, and how to do it. There were instructions, demonstrations on stage intended to instruct users as part of the marketing, and even that resulted in many people still not knowing how to use their phone. Millennials caught on fast, because they knew how to use computers, and that translated into how to use these new phones. Those who didn't have much experience with computers? Still struggled, until someone they knew taught them. The reason they're so easy these days, is people have been using them for so long. A person who never brought a smartphone has trouble when they get a new one. I would know, several family members recently got new iPhones, a year or so back, moving up from bricks, and sat there for a week going "How do I use this?". After being taught by me and others who were more experienced, they got the hang of the basics, but even today they don't actually get how to do a lot of basic stuff, and occasionally do break something on their phone. These are people who work in the tech industry too. God help them had they been given an Android.
And, funnily enough, everyone I know that owns a smartphone, also owns a laptop because their Smartphone is just painful to use for some things. This includes both those who are in the tech industry, and those who aren't, because more and more jobs are requiring laptops, running your house is requiring a computer, paying your bills requires a computer, going to school requires a computer, studying at university requires a computer - and you get very limited time on these machines at work, school, or university. Not enough to get everything you need to get done done.
I'd also look at Firesticks and say look at how they replace people wanting to get a console for this functionality too. The whole thing with them is they are a USB stick [Ok, technically HDMI stick, but the same shape, size, and ease of use] that literally is plug and play. No figuring out which wires go where, easiest thing in the world to store, and software updates really aren't a thing there. They happen, but unless you go looking for them you almost wouldn't know they exist. They're also only around $40, which is cheap enough that a lot of people won't mind trying them out to see if they have a benefit or not, vs buying a far more expensive option to do the same.
Despite that, I don't know a single person who owns one. Down here almost everyone instead uses their laptop or console for that sort of thing, often both. I mean, the service is offered here, so obviously some people use it, but they're very hidden in niche shelves in stores, if they're there at all, and anyone you talk to it unlikely to own one. The advertising for them has even all but evaporated since their launch. Different things happen in different regions it would seem, who would have thought?
All those PS4 facts are true. You don't have to wait for the entire install to finish to start playing. Maybe waiting 2 minutes tops like I said isn't 100% accurate, but it is a fact that you don't have to wait for the entire install to finish. I love to see you prove that somebody's PS4 can't download updates in the background or while in standby mode, that wouldn't make sense if my PS4 could do that while someone else's couldn't.
Again, in your experience.
2 minutes tops is an exaggeration, but so is having the whole game at your fingertips. More often you get a small demo part of a level, or something akin to it. Even your example was marred by people running into such issues.
You'll also note that, in context, the statement was about the general "All the PS3s problems are fixed and this is a convenient plug and play gaming machine". That's your experience. Circumstantially many things change. Different games behave differently, the same games behave differently on different PS4s. People might want to play a game, and get stuck in the middle of an update because it began updating just before they turned on their console. People have limited bandwidth, and thus may disable automated updating so they can control when it comes in, so they don't get charged a fortune for it. People can struggle with the interface, or find parts of it annoying.
I definitely would expect this generation of consoles to be more of a wait and see approach if the general console gamer really did hate last-gen consoles.
You'd be surprised. People are often willing to forgive a mistake or two, especially if they're not complete and total failures. Brand loyalty is a powerful thing, and in all honesty if people hated the previous gen of consoles, they'd actually be far faster to jump off them to a new option - which will almost always be the next gen up because of brand loyalty. A person who buys an iPhone 7 now, and next year comes back hating it, but sees that something they disliked is fixed in the iPhone 7S next year, isn't going to jump ship to Android, even if overall the better option for all their wants lies there, and its only one problem rather than all that the 7S fixes. They're going to jump to the 7S as they have loyalty to Apple, from the barriers to exit of using their products and services, and they hate the 7 - while the 7S is better, even though still maybe worse than the 6. Naturally, this is all example iPhone generations - I'm not actually making any statements about who actually likes what generation - but consumers will move to jump off a console generation they don't like ASAP, and will, in general, jump to the platform they have the most brand loyalty for. This means you'd actually likely see an uptake in initial sales. If this generation is also bad, then we'll start to see decreased initial sales, to some extent, in the future. Even this doesn't necessarily hold though.
Take Firaxis and Civilization. They're last several games have launched in a severely fucked up state for a lot of people at launch. Unfinished, undeveloped systems, mediocre gameplay, you play it for a few games then leave because it just doesn't work. You'd think people would hold back on pre-ordering Civ VI right?
Top selling game on Steam a couple of hours after it came out.
Its nice to think that people act rationally, but often we don't. Often we act in irrational ways due to biases in our mind that perpetuate logical fallacies, or due to emotional attachments to something, or hope. Additionally, a ton of new players were brought into Civ through Civ V's expansions, and they all brought the new Civ, without having been as burned on the other games. SOME people take a more wait and see approach. The majority, as we've noted with pre-order culture these days, probably never will.
There's lots more titles available on PC vs consoles. I'm mainly talking about AAA gaming. I brought up Witcher 3 because that is a series with little console presence before obviously Witcher 3 and it sold way more on consoles. Even if the profits were the same, we are still talking about a PC series that made as much profit on consoles as PC.
And, again, we can look at Dark Soul's for a counterpoint. It happens both ways. Honestly, it often depends more on how the game is marketed, and who towards, as to which will sell more.
Regardless of their being more titles on the PC, the statement we're testing is that people prefer playing on the consoles, to playing on the PC. Were this true it shouldn't really matter how many PC titles there are, console sales shouldn't be shrinking. Additionally, even on PC, a huge portion of sales are from AAA games. Of course, this depends on how you define AAA games. My bet is that you're counting AAA as console-focused games, coming out of Studios like Ubisoft, and ignoring the massive production values behind games made by companies like Blizzard for Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft, which count as AAA games and sell tons.
I will note that some of the rapid growth of PC revenue, not sales, comes from MoBA games, and other such competitive team based titles. That brings up Overwatch though, which, with a multiplatform release, by all accounts seems to have dwarfed all console combined sales with the PC. Roughly $210-$230 million more in revenue from the PC [269 overall, 5 places less than $59 million on console]. It also had unusually high physical sales for PC, at 18% of total retail sales. And you really can't say Overwatch isn't a core AAA title.
It really does depend more on the game, how its marketed, and where the focus is, as to where it sells more. Overall though, PC is faster growing in terms of gaming. They are the better overall gaming machine in the eyes of many if this is the case, where PC game sales increase, and consoles decrease.
I know MS marketed the Xbone as like the ultimate entertainment box and it failed because of that. MS was basically like the Xbone can do all this stuff that your TV can already do and that obviously turned people away. Whereas the PS4 couldn't even play MP3s at launch and people bought it because it played games and focused on playing games. The PS4 is about the best you can do considering how modern gaming is with all the updates and whatnot. The main reason why I haven't bought a Wii U (as I need to play Bayonetta 2) is because Nintendo forces me to buy a tablet that I don't want.
To say the Xbone failed is a bit disingenuous. It has not done as successfully as the PS4, certainly, but there are also more factors to that than simply the UI design and usability. I have no doubt those, however, do play into it somewhat, and that does re-iterate my point; consoles need to focus on their strengths. The coming of the Pro is heralding an even further departure from those strengths, to instead try and compete more with PCs. Yeah, this is also a wider industry problem of the AAA industry, but the consoles are entirely dependent on that industry. If that industry erodes console advantages, that's a problem for the consoles, and they need to find a way to adapt to that properly, without letting the trends of increasing complexity continue to erode the whole plug'n'play thing consoles have going on. Especially seeing as PC keeps getting easier and easier to use as time goes on too.
I'm not saying consoles are completely without a point now, I'm not saying everybody hates them, or that they don't have some level of advantage over the PC still. That advantage, these days, is small though, especially with increasing adoption of computers through all walks of life, increasing complexity of all devices we own, and the increasing ease of use of PC in general, while consoles have been slowly doing the opposite. I'm simply saying that continuing down this path of higher and higher complexity isn't the right one for consoles, and that they need to instead focus on their ease of access. The main thing it seems we disagree on is whether the PS4 is infallible and perfect, or whether it too has its issues, which make it less user friendly than it ideally should be.
