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Nah, it’s getting better every year. Adding crappy games doesn’t change the huge backlog of great games I have.
Yeah. Pretty much boils down to, “There is fewer good triple A games coming out, and less significant hardware advancements.” This doesn’t mean its getting worse, just means its getting better slower. Even if you read it as “getting worse as compared to other platforms” it doesn’t really work seeing as all these issues affect other platforms just as much, and often more.
Much of this isn’t unique to PC gaming. And if there ever was a dark age for PC hardware, we’ve recently crawled out of it, thankfully.
What bugs me the most right now (and doesn’t quite get addressed in this article) is low performance standards. Everyone’s pushing 4K and ray tracing, which makes it hard out here for us framerate nerds. It’s starting to feel like every major release that comes out is Crysis, something for my hardware to grow into. Only with blurry anti-aliasing/supersampling techniques now.
One new, big positive I’m not seeing talked about much is a growing variety of Japanese publishers are taking PC seriously now, and that hasn’t happened in over thirty years. I’m including Sony in this, even with their recent missteps in the space, and Square Enix’s recently announced restructuring suggests simultaneous PC releases in the future for their games. That will inject some competition in PC gaming, although be aware that Japan has its own share of publishers that release broken ports.
And if there ever was a dark age for PC hardware, we’ve recently crawled out of it, thankfully.
With high-end GPUs costing what they still cost, I don’t think we’re out of it just yet.
My recent realization is that the very high-end of the GPU market is totally unnecessary. A 4070 can play practically any game at 4K with decent framerates. And if you are fine with just “high” settings instead of maxed out, at very good framerates too.
A 4070 is the high end, though. Any laptop with a 4070 in it will cost over £1.5k
Pretty sure nobody cares, but man as a third world country guy it feels weird as fuck to see these reasonable-looking numbers only to multiply by 50 and get a heart attack.
I don’t disagree, but gaming laptops are always overpriced. You’re paying a premium for the small form factor. (And I assume they also have the much less powerful RTX 4070 Mobile, which makes the value proposition even worse for laptops.)
In 2020 I bought a 2080 Super for more than 800€, I considered it crazy expensive but I had the money and my 1070 had died. 23 months later it died and Amazon refunded the money, so I proceeded to buy another GPU. That money was only enough for a 3070ti and I still had to pay 30-40€ more. I’m happy with my 3070ti for now, and I hope it lasts long enough, I don’t think I can afford that kind of money anymore.
What bugs me the most right now (and doesn’t quite get addressed in this article) is low performance standards.
I’d add low control standards. Since everything is a console port now, everything needs to be dumbed down to be playable by controller. That’s why we don’t see certain genres much any more (sims or RTS) and get shooters with included aim “aids” or cross-play wouldn’t be possible.
Personally I disagree.
I am having fun playing some excellent indies that is released this year. This is not possible 25 years ago.
So glad the indie scene exists and is thriving. Media outlets/youtubers give AAA way too much airtime.
Even if it’s them complaining about bad AAA games, that’s still time that could be shouting out truly creative games.
I been avoiding AAA like the plague lately. It’s $70 for half the fucking game and you got to consult a spread sheet to make sure you don’t get the wrong one. Your lucky if you put 10 hours in on it total.
I found an indy game today for $15 and binged it for 10 hours. Hoping for a slow week at work to play more.
The number of gamers that are still entirely unaware of games like Noita or Project Zomboid (to name a few) is absolutely criminal.
Have not heard of project zomboid, will check it out. Noita is on my radar.
It’s because of algorithms. Anything well known gets boosted because it thinks people will be interested. Honestly as gamers we should take a leaf out of the FFXIV community book and advertise the games we love more.
Simultaneously were in the age of retro revivals with emulation being at its peak thanks to the open source software community and the absolute pile of handheld form factor consoles available in the market.
Every bad launch has damaged the industry as a whole. The reputation for PC gaming has been diminished by a thousand cuts. No one expects a game to be good on launch. Everyone has been burned at least once by this.
It’s the enshitification taking hold, which is essentially Wall Street pressing their thumbs on creators to squeeze out every bit of money they can.
There are diamonds out there though, and not a surprise they always come from private or indie companies. These are the games I’ve gravitated to.
Kinda trash but I hope maybe some interesting discussion about just the trends both positive and negative.
Wtf is going on with the thumbnail of this article?
Clearly game journos and I are playing different games because things are great so long as you drop AAA (garbage) and multiplayer FPS (cheating).
GPU prices are a bit stupid but I have been playing/buying with a new rule lately and it’s great: if it doesn’t play well on the Steam Deck, I just don’t buy it. Problem solved.
It’s so rare that a game that even needs a better card comes up it’d be hard to justify a new card even if prices were normal. I feel like I play maybe one game a year that makes me consider upgrading.
