The console wars have been lost

https://xeiaso.net/notes/2026/console-wars-lost/

by ExMachina73 • 13 days ago

38 117 13 days ago

s_dev• 10 days ago

Consoles mostly died with the PlayStation 3. Consoles (At least Sony and Microsoft's offering) have become repackaged PCs for a while now this will be especially apparent with the Steamboxes going up on the same shelves as Playstations in the future.

I will concede it's hard to reason or discuss about these things without getting lost in a Ship of Theseus definition of what 'console' and 'PC' is and where the lines are. The PlayStation 3 had the cell processor and was fundamentally different to PCs imo.

Nintendo has always seemed to manage stay as a console and seems to come out of the console wars stronger than either Sony or Microsoft, so they seem to be the exception here.

nylonstrung2• 10 days ago

TBH the PS3 probably should have been more similar to PC, the people I've talked to who have worked for it said the architecture was a nightmare to work with.

There's really no reason console games of that era needed, or even could benefit from 6 cores

masklinn2• 10 days ago

The 360 had 3 cores. The PS3 had a single core with vector coprocessors on a ring bus.

GPGPU is what displaced the Cell SPEs, and you wouldn’t count that as cores. In fact the PS3 originally didn’t include a GPU, the SPEs were supposed to handle it all, so in a way they were approaching the same solution from the opposite direction.

stuxnet792• 10 days ago

Everytime this topic comes up I always replay this clip of Gabe Newell ranting about having to write multi-threaded code for the PS3 and chuckle [1]

Was writing code for the PS3 genuinely difficult or was it also a skill issue? The counter-argument I've heard is that multi threaded programming just wasn't as common at the time due to minimal number of cores available on most consumer hardware.

Perhaps the PS3 would have fared better with a different generation of developers.

[1] https://youtu.be/dKYT6NzsUZQ?si=wzf5e5iBP3MEEJEn

aleph_minus_one2• 10 days ago

There's really no reason console games of that era needed, or even could benefit from 6 cores

First: One problem of the PS3 was that in a late stage of its development a (rather weak) GPU was "tacked on" (originally, the Cell was supposed to replace the GPU).

Now for your point:

Just have a look what scientists did on PS3 clusters using the SPUs of the Cell, and considering this imagine what creative things would have been possible for games on the PS3.

The problem was that at this time, game development got much less specific to one platform (in opposite to how it was for basically all the previous game console generations, though I am willing to admit that the original Xbox being very similar to a PC did give a hint concerning the direction the game industry was heading), so you wanted a much more "standardized" (typically meaning: similar to PC) architecture. The Xbox 360 was simply much more similar to PCs, so it was much easier to port engines from one platform to another.

the people I've talked to who have worked for it said the architecture was a nightmare to work with.

For previous console generations this was less of a problem (basically every console was quirky). It is easy to find statements of developers on the internet how the PS2 was magnitudes more of a nightmare to develop for than the PS3.

So, before, being difficult to develop for a console was much more accepted in consideration of the unique features each console brought to the table. What did change was rather the expectation among developers to be able to easily port engines between platforms.

brazzy3• 10 days ago

I really don't think having a custom CPU and hardware architecture different from PCs is the defining property of a gaming console. Nobody cares about that except developers and hardware nerds.

A console is a computer purpose-built and streamlined for playing games. No more, no less.

bigcityslider6• 10 days ago

A game console is also locked down from the user, usually because the company is selling hardware at a loss, wants to maintain control, and wants to prevent cheating in online games. May also have exclusive games tied to the hardware.

Gigachad13• 10 days ago

The line is far more blurred now. The Steam Machine is a purpose built device streamlined for playing games. Yet without any hardware modifications you can put it on your desk and load windows on it. So it's clearly a PC too.

The nitpicking on language here is entirely due to the fact the distinction is no longer clear like it once was.

kakacik• 10 days ago

That cell cpu made development a hell according to devs. Or SDK around, at the end it doesnt matter. Sony even admitted to this being their strategy, so that later games look better and better as even brilliant devs only over time figured out how to squeeze full performance out of HW.

What an arrogance that everybody paid for in final prices. Well, thats yesterday reality, arrogance of companies thinking they have endless moat and can milk users forever is always eventually punished. Not losing sleep over them.

This behavior and inevitable result can be mapped into many other things, ie current german car manufacturing.

stuxnet792• 10 days ago

Sony even admitted to this being their strategy, so that later games look better and better as even brilliant devs only over time figured out how to squeeze full performance out of HW.

I think the real strategy was to make it harder for natively developed PS3 games to be ported to other platforms.

It was a sensible strategy except they effectively lost the console wars right out the gate by delaying their release a year. This alienated developers who didn't want to go through the effort of doing development the PS3 way when it was hard to program for AND had little traction among consumers.

If the PS3 had come out a year before the 360 things might have played out differently.

Sony's hubris around the PS3 was very risky. They caught up in sales by the end of that generation but early PS3 adopters unfortunately had to deal with fundamentally broken, unoptimized ports despite having superior (if over-engineered) hardware.

Also the PS3 disaster ultimately set the stage for the PS4 which had a drastically simpler architecture. PS4 was a lot easier to program for but if compared to a PC with equivalent specs it was overpriced and much more locked down.

mort9610• 10 days ago

We're definitely way past the point where console hardware is vastly different from PC hardware; we're not in the age where what makes a console special is having a sprite processor which allows it to render graphics in a way that mainstream PC hardware is incapable of. It's all pretty much just x86 APUs from AMD, slightly customized compared to what you get off the shelf.

However everything other than the hardware is what makes consoles special. They're a special-purpose device which is specifically designed to only be used with a game pad on a big screen. That means stupid stuff like a pop-up which needs mouse interaction, or the system getting confused about window focus, or games which have controller support but whose launchers need mouse interaction -- issues which have always plagued living room gaming PCs -- just categorically can not exist.

And they live in a completely different market. You have one mass produced computer which benefits from economies of scale, sold to a captive audience which has to buy games from the manufacturer. This allows completely different pricing strategies from non-console PCs where the manufacturer needs to make a significant profit on every device sold.

Then there's the developer angle. In the traditional desktop PC world, you have to work around performance quirks of many different GPU manufacturers and their drivers, and you're always in this careful balancing act where increasing graphics or CPU processing time by a little bit reduces your potential market. A console, representing exactly one hardware configuration owned by millions of people, allows much more extreme hardware utilization; you can consume every available CPU core, every available byte of memory, hit exactly 16.6ms frame times, and your game is gonna run at a smooth 60 FPS for everyone.

So yes, the computer science behind consoles is boring these days, they're "just PCs". But the market dynamics and developer implications mean they still have a place as a product that has a fundamentally different role than a traditional PC.

This is coming from someone who hasn't owned a console since the PS4 FWIW; I play my games on a Linux box with an Xbox controller in my living room.

Gigachad13• 10 days ago

However everything other than the hardware is what makes consoles special. They're a special-purpose device which is specifically designed to only be used with a game pad on a big screen. That means stupid stuff like a pop-up which needs mouse interaction or the system getting confused about window focus, issues which have always plagued living room gaming PCs, just categorically can not exist.

This is exactly the problem Valve has solved. SteamOS presents a just works managed OS that is fully usable with a console controller. You hit the middle button on your game controller and the steam machine just turns on, wakes your TV, and switchs the input. The UX difference between Console and PC is shrinking to near zero.

thatjoeoverthr2• 10 days ago

The PS3 is one of a handful of systems that actually had a special processor. The NES and Genesis had common desktop CPUs. The PS1, 2 and N64 had MIPS processors which were in heavy use in workstations. GC, Wii, Xbox 360 had PowerPC. What was unusual was a special and temporary period from the 90s where “pc = x86 = basic” because everything else one way or another failed out of the market. That moment is passed and today all basic activity is done on arm based phones. Gaming is now one of the main niches of the x86, along with servers and corporate desktop. The special feature of the game console was always “we made these standards, we will commit to them for five years and sell a lot of units for you to ship games on.”

mort9610• 10 days ago

To my knowledge, all consoles until the Xbox 360 had normal CPUs, but very special graphics hardware. They were decidedly not typical PC hardware.

nylonstrung2• 10 days ago

Consoles just don't make sense in any modern context. It's profoundly wasteful to have an edge device sitting in your living room, unused for 99% of the time that can only do an incredibly small subset of what a gaming computer can

Every PS5 in existence is destined to become e-waste

Not to mention how bad the developer and porting experience is compared to PC/Steam Machine

nubinetwork• 10 days ago

Every PS5 in existence is destined to become e-waste

So is your pc hardware, unless you expect to stay on that 9800x3d and 4090 for the next 30 years...

silon422• 10 days ago

4090 probably won't survive, but I could see 9800x3d still being usable.

mrpopo• 10 days ago

Every PS5 in existence is destined to become e-waste

Just like every Android device or computer in your household? Are you trying to make a point for cloud computing?

Gigachad13• 10 days ago

I can accept the waste of having a second much lower power CPU in the phone I use with me every day. But I can't justify having both a gaming pc and a playstation/xbox that's exactly the same thing with a different OS on it. They even play the same games these days.

Something that weighs on me is the fact that every tech device you own is constantly devaluing as it ages, eventually becoming worthless when support ends and the servers are shut down. It makes far more sense to own the least possible and get the most use out of each one. Unlike most things you own that only devalue as they are worn out and damaged.

charcircuit3• 10 days ago

The servers in clouds get "retired" too.

otabdeveloper45• 10 days ago

"Game consoles" are a niche lifestyle item for gen-X and millennials with money to waste. (Like vinyl records.)

Nobody under 20 knows what a "console" is even for, they play games on their iPhone almost exclusively.

applfanboysbgon4• 10 days ago

This is hilariously incorrect and out-of-touch. Obviously phones are #1 by a huge margin, but the console market is as large as it's ever been as gaming as a whole became genuinely mainstream, and kids absolutely still play on them. Switch at 155 million sales, PS5 at 93 million, and under-20s have plenty of experience with hand-me-downs.

rvz• 10 days ago

This comment is peak HN.

Nobody under 20 knows what a "console" is even for, they play games on their iPhone almost exclusively.

Imagine saying this before GTA 6 which will release only on consoles this year.

That will be the game to get the entire world on their games consoles.

yoz-y2• 10 days ago

If only mobile devices had better external monitor support. It’s funny that iOS / macOS has by far the best controller experience from all devices pairing wise (even getting an Xbox controller to work properly on windows requires a dongle). iPad + controller just lacks games (and with emulators not even that, just good configuration).

frollogaston• 10 days ago

Article author is an example

Markoff2• 9 days ago

apparently my two primary school kids are nobodies for enjoying their PS3 or RetroArch

and they don't have smartphone yet, if they do it will be heavily restricted, they can play games on PS3 or portable like SF2000, phone ain't gaming device

queenkjuul• 8 days ago

Every single person under 20 knows what a Nintendo Switch is

yulaow• 10 days ago

The thing I like about console compared to pc (which I use the most for gaming) is the total absence of cheaters except maybe a super minority.

To make an example try to play a multiplayer famous fps (like battlefield6 or cod) on console and then on pc, it's not even the same experience. On pc it is basically full of aimbotters, wallhackers, nodamagers, etc every single damn game, on console you get the actual safe experience. Sadly this is one of the reasons why I play mostly only pve games on pc

brazzy3• 10 days ago

It makes sense as long as building hardware optimized for games is either significantly cheaper, or yields a better customer experience, than the available alternatives.

To most people, a separate gaming appliance is seen as convenience, not waste.

voidUpdate5• 10 days ago

People want the convenience. Generally , a console "just works", whereas a PC is more likely to need some messing about to get working optimally. Console devs have one target hardware that they can target, whereas PC games could be run on a huge variety of hardware

Gigachad13• 10 days ago

Valve has essentially fixed this in most aspects. My Steam Deck is as much of a "just works" experience as the switch. In fact I think it just works even easier because it automatically syncs my saves between my gaming desktop and it so I have the same saves when I travel.

Windows is a clusterfuck, but PC is larger than Windows. Anti cheat is a problem left to solve, but I think this is just a matter of time.

dv_dt4• 10 days ago

And Sony by eliminating physical media, forces a whole set of online inconveniences onto gamers..

thdr• 10 days ago

I always find this argument pretty weak. Most of my household appliances are unused most of the time. And I very much value the fact that they're available for me if I want to use them. Why would I somehow want to give up that autonomy for my game console just because it happens to be connected to the internet?

I have gaming machines from the 80s that still work and that I still love. They're not e-waste.

dv_dt4• 10 days ago

That modern consoles find themselves oddly displaced is true to me also, but what is also true is that I have an Apple TV and a cable-co provided android tv box attached to my TV. Neither particularly emphasizes the gaming experience, but it seems like there is an unexplored technical space somewhere between an ARM box and a full PC that every console company but Nintendo seems afraid of.

I think they need to give up on the "best Graphics" feature point and focus on some other set of values. It's one they've lost every generation to PC GPUs, and ARM connected GPU's are perfectly capable of providing a good gaming experience. Most Steam games really don't require anything close to a bleeding edge GPU.

If consoles are lost, at least lost from Sony and XBox, it's because they decided not to compete in the space - there are still plenty of opportunities to explore.

ghusto4• 9 days ago

They make sense to many people, even if not to you.

I'll take a one-function device over a general device any day. You switch it on, it does the thing, you switch it off. General purpose computers are the exception that proves the rule, in that "the thing" in their case _is_ everything.

I couldn't care less about playing with randos on the internet, but am very interested in playing with people I know in the same room.

jdw643• 10 days ago

I also think Steam was a game that had no choice but to win. AAA development costs have gotten so huge that even platform-exclusive developers find it burdensome, so they end up releasing on PC as well. And when that happens, Valve's value only grows. A console generation lasts about 8 years, but with Steam, once you buy a game, you can probably keep playing it until Gabe Newell dies. On top of that, CDs don't last as long as you'd think. Three years ago, I put an old game CD into a console, but the disc was damaged and wouldn't run. (It was a game called MH2.) In that sense, I think Steam is better because you can always restore your purchases.

frenzcan• 10 days ago

you can probably keep playing it until Gabe Newell dies

I remember Valve talking about the concern that if anything happens to Valve they have some contingency that basically releases your whole library to you without Steam DRM/etc.

jdw643• 10 days ago

cool!

inigyou2• 10 days ago

If that's true, when they sell out to private equity, that'll be the first thing private equity deletes.

compiler-devel• 10 days ago

I've never had a problem with any CDs, even my old Quake CD from about 30 years ago. Probably there's an issue with your drive or the disc wasn't stored well.

jdw643• 10 days ago

As you said, it could be that I didn't store it properly, or it could be an issue with the CD reader on the old console.

Gigachad13• 10 days ago

I've also never had a problem with any steam game I've purchased. I know in theory this could change at any time, but it's been 20 years now and it hasn't so they have earned some trust. Trust Playstation and Nintendo do not have.

romanovcode• 10 days ago

My husband and I both can't remember why we even got a PS5 in the first place

You are going to remember why you have PS5 in about 120 days.

sl-1• 10 days ago

Why? Sorry about my ignorance, but what will happen in about 120 days?

skimmed_milk• 10 days ago

I think its a reference to GTA 6 releasing

jhack2• 10 days ago

“If I can't give people physical games as gifts anymore, why should I bother buying the new console?”

“Man, Valve really does win by doing absolutely nothing while the rest of the industry shoots itself in the head.”

Good luck buying physical games on PC?

alex435782• 10 days ago

The argument is that physical media was the one benefit consoles had. If you’re just buying a locked down, non-upgradable, low performance PC disguised as a console (without access to the superior Steam storefront), why not just get a PC?

jhack2• 10 days ago

Lower up-front cost and hardware longevity are the two major ones. Whenever GTA VI launches on PC, good luck running it on your $500 PC from 2020.

charcircuit3• 9 days ago

PC has physical media too. For the last couple years I've only bought physical PC games.

phaser• 10 days ago

I fear for what happens when Gabe Newell retires and the MBA cancer fully infects Valve.

They are making SteamOS compatible with other hardware, if you want to build a steam machine of your own. Also their contributions to Wine and Fex will enable other Linux gaming platforms that are not SteamOS to have the same compatibility layer.

revolvingthrow• 10 days ago

Proton is already good enough that you don’t need SteamOS. I’m not that much of a gamer so my numbers are hardly representative, but about 90% of video games I tried ran with zero issues through Heroic Launcher and GE-Proton. The ability to install SteamOS on your own hardware is nice, but largely irrelevant. It was Valve’s previous work on Proton which was important.

The bigger fear is of course Valve itself. They have many, many levers they could turn to squeeze their audience. This is of course a terrible long-term decision—Valve being a good steward is why PC gamers largely don’t even bother to learn what other online storefronts offer—but long-term planning is irrelevant if you’re a CEO who’s looking for a new yacht and to lateral away after 3 years of record profits.

@edit: admittedly there is something to be said about the "I don’t _want_ a PC experience, I just want to play the games on my couch" crowd. Being able to set up SteamOS on your own hardware _is_ nice, I just don’t think it’s relevant to any post-Gaben enshittification.

andrewl-hn• 10 days ago

It's less about platforms and more about games themselves. Games on Steam has to follow certain rules that are mostly consumer-friendly. And the fear is that some of these rules will be relaxed to increase Steam's revenue, and as a result the store will be flooded with ad-ridden gatcha-slop that is completely saturated mobile.

wewewedxfgdf• 10 days ago

Microsoft has destroyed Xbox and Windows.

It's all corporate and cloud from here.

spo81rty• 10 days ago

Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite are all my kids play. Everything else is fighting for scraps it feels like. Not to mention a million mobile games.

outime• 10 days ago

The Steam Deck (or a more modern equivalent) offers the best of both worlds. It's a gaming device that can play not only Steam games but also titles from other platforms (and emulate consoles). At the same time it doubles as a fully unlocked PC so you can do whatever you want with it - or simply use it like a traditional console if you prefer with a Dock and a controller (which could very well be a PS/XBOX one).

It's like a Nintendo Switch but much more capable. That said, I understand that non-tech-savvy or more casual gamers may not find the concept especially appealing. I suppose that would ultimately be a marketing challenge to solve.

charcircuit3• 10 days ago

Consumers are WAY more price conscious than this author recognizes. Also it's strange to complain about the PS5's price increasing to $599.99 when the Steam Machine is $1,128. Almost double. There is no world the Steam Machine outsells the PS5 or PS6.

Delphiza• 10 days ago

Somewhere along the way, consoles lost where they fit into the 'living room space'. The biggest thing (for me) was when games stopped with local co-op. Having two controllers and being able to play together was a good way to spend time doing casual gaming. Lego star wars did it well. Gears of War, Halo and others used to be a good way to to spend time with your children. The Wii had all ages playing together. Now, all that you can do is play Minecraft together. I was watching my (adult0 daughter play the new Subnautica, and would like to have joined in without having to go to a different room.

pjc50• 10 days ago

The biggest thing (for me) was when games stopped with local co-op. Having two controllers and being able to play together was a good way to spend time doing casual gaming. Lego star wars did it well.

The Switch with its detachable two controllers always knew this.

dv_dt4• 10 days ago

Cutting the default hw setup to one controller was definitely MBA coded shortsightedness imo. It was de-incentivizing for living room multi-player modes in games, which in turn reduced a unique console advantage vs PC, all for a small savings in hardware.

goobatrooba• 9 days ago

I guess they were hoping to sell additional controllers..

crtasm• 9 days ago

Even my Super Nintendo with Street Fighter II pack-in only included a single controller. Christmas day was fun but not as fun as it could have been.

pllbnk• 10 days ago

Exactly. AAA games are not needed to have fun. I and my wife are having a lot of fun playing Dr. Mario or Street Fighter (the original one) on our 4K TV.

mcphage• 10 days ago

when games stopped with local co-op

The Switch and Switch 2 are still great for this. And to bolster your point, they’re still selling like hotcakes and Nintendo is making gobs of money.

Ferret7446• 8 days ago

I wonder how much of that is due to exclusivity. If Nintendo games were available on PC I expect Switch sales to drop significantly.

Gigachad13• 9 days ago

Nintendo still makes some co op games but you are right it’s an area that has largely died off lately.

I think the boom in the board game industry has been a response to the death of co op video games.

fmajid• 9 days ago

The rise in RAM and storage price means it's more costly and less viable to have a separate device from the PC or Mac you already have, dedicated to playing games.

The console wars have been lost

Related Stories