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Johnw1104 on 27 June 2016
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OdinHades said:
Johnw1104 said:
People are just too short sighted. The difference between a good console and a great one is about the cost of two to four games, but people would rather settle for the crappy piece of hardware that they're hoping to get years of use out of because it's a tad cheaper.

If I sound bitter, it's because I am lol, we've just had the weakest generation of hardware yet.

Well, there are also people for which a difference in power doesn't make a difference at all. I personally couldn't care less if games run in 4K or 1080p, if they run in 60 fps or 30 fps, if they have AA or tesselation or whatever. I simply do not care. On top of that there are also people who never buy more than two to four games for their system so it does make a real big difference for them. Not everyone is a hardcore gamer, some just get a console for FIFA or whatever. It happens. And there are also people who simply cannot afford a console for 500+ $. Especially children and teenager. When I was a little kid, I only git two games per year. One for my birthday, one at christmas, nothing more. My parents bought the console itself (NES) for me and my brothers together, we had to share it. In that kind of situation, every dollar counts.

Sure, if you live alone, have a decent job and no children, you don't care too much about money and just want a console as good as it gets. But in that case, I'd say just go for a beefy PC. Scorpio and Neo should be an ok solution for people somewhere in between. But at the end of the day, I think it's quite important that consoles are somewhat cheap.

There will always be people for whom the price model doesn't work... as it stands there's undoubtedly plenty who feel $400 is too much. Exactly how strong the hardware needs to be varies across each generation as well.

For this past one, though, the clear reasonable benchmark to meet was reliable 1080p at 60 frames, and no console achieved that. This was the weakest gen we've yet had. That doesn't necessarily bother everyone (Wii U has been my favorite so far, for instance, and it's the weakest), but if I'm going to spend $400 for a console that can't handle what is to be reasonably expected or, say, $500-$550 to hit that benchmark, I'd much prefer the latter. 

Really, I'd like to see how many games the console owners buy on average per console, as that would indicate just how much money they had to throw around. If it's only a few then they probably can't raise the price much, but if it's 10+ then I don't think the extra $100 would be unreasonable. People would never see it that way, though.

When you consider how inexpensive the hardware and software is when adjusted for inflation compared to past years, it's no real surprise that the hardware isn't very impressive these days. I wouldn't mind catching up just a tad.