It doesn't have to be either graphics or good gamepaly. Both, please.

In all seriousness, a gaming industry not ruled by sheer limitless greed where hardware is actually affordable would be nice.

TBF the current state of console prices isn’t entirely a consequence of greed— it’s the rising manufacturing costs. Between a chip shortage, an oil crisis, and tariffs, not only has hardware been forced into luxury pricing, but the average consumer has less disposable income in itself due to stagflation, exacerbating the rising costs ten-fold.

Taking a hit on hardware is no longer feasible when software costs as much as it does to develop, on top of the market sensitivity to rising software prices.

VR without having to wear a headset...or really move at all. Couch VR, like the PS9 ad or Inception or something.

We're still extremely early into gaming. More realistic graphics and more immersive sounds are all well and good, but they still fall well short of the real-life-like sensorial experience you'd have if you truly embodied your character in a meaningful sense.

VR is the first baby step toward that, but then what? We still need much better science and tech, especially in BCI, for one.

But one day the likes of Elden Ring and GTA6 will have much more in common with the Atari 2600 Space Invaders port than whatever's the state of the art by then.

I get that the cost of doing business has risen, but c'mon just take the hit on hardware in the short term, it's not worth pricing out most of your audience and putting your business at risk long term.

Seeing how this approached worked for Sony during the PS3 generation and Nintendo during the Wii U/3DS generation, I don’t believe what you’re looking for is sustainable. Especially not without harming their employees (via mass layoffs, wage caps, etc.). What we’re seeing right now is 5-10y at minimum of troubled waters— can’t say that it’d be wise for them to take the hit for so long. Losing investors, losing profits, and scaling back is not in our best interest.

The memory crisis, tariffs, and the Iran War could be over much sooner than 5 years. If you price out most of your audience, you risk destroying your business altogether. Switch 2 for example needs to carry Nintendo for the next 7-8 years, it can't do that if it becomes so expensive its install base remains small.

I'd say you're both kinda right. Nintendo doesn't wanna take the hit but also needs to build up the Switch 2 install base so did a modest price increase outside of Japan to balance things whereas the PS5 already has a really big install base so Sony gave it a significant one tanking sales which isn't that big of a deal since they can last till things hopefully start getting better by the time the PS6 comes out. On the other hand they did keep that digital Japanese model the same price for now to prevent the brand from outright dying over there since selling a few hundred thousand of those a year at a notable loss is a small price to pay to prevent that.