Kai MS is getting out of the console market because they would always eventually stick their foot in their mouth. I can constantly bring up mistakes they made over the generations while some of what Sony has done that is really noticeable has been in this generation more than anything.
The points I can make against XBox are in the first generation XBox Live eventually launched like 4 years down the road and there were plans for a Level 5 game called "True Fantasy Live Online" which was an MS second party game. This ended up becoming "Fantasy Life" online on 3DS and was a modest hit and has definitely grown in popularity with it getting a relaunch on the Switch. Instead once "Phantasy Star Online" was coming to the XBox they dropped that and THAT game cost the XBL fee AND a separate monthly fee from Sega.
For the original games from XBox they had a number of them that WERE successful besides Halo that never transitioned to the 360 to capitalize on, case in point, MechAssault and Microsoft OWNED FASA at that point. This represents another problem of MS as well, after they buy companies they have unrealistic release schedules.
Another two games of the lack of the XBox to XBox 360 shifts are Nightcaster and Quantum Redshift. Both are competent games at their respective types, Nightcaster being like Gauntlet with gameplay and Quantum Redshift being like MS' own Wipeout.
A big mistake is MS didn't internationalize all their XBox Game Studios by translating them. A great case in point was Nezumix, a mouse simulator, a fun idea. Another was Magatama, an action game MS was bragging about made by a Final Fantasy Alum.
As for 360 you had a Shadowrun that ended up being scrapped with single player because MS didn't have the patience to let them finish so it only released with the Multiplayer as an arena PVP. Project Gotham Racing, which was a notable, much loved arcade racer was "replaced" with Forza Horizon instead of MS having sense and offering both. LETTING Bioware be bought by EA after Mass Effect was such a system seller.
Ending Mistwalker because the games didn't sell enough and never mind "Blue Dragon" gave them an opening they weren't ready to capitalize on. If Microsoft would have had at least a new mid LOCKED in exclusive every month, with a high profile one every 2-3 months....well, after a couple years they would have gotten substantial market share especially then. Instead they bought timed exclusives where the Japanese knew they were coming to other consoles. MS had shmup exclusives from Cave and others but that is a niche and a small part of the larger market.
THEN MS "realized" their mistake with the XBox One and Japanese games supposedly and we got Recore which was fantastic and like Mega Man in 3D, not like how Legends was more Action RPG instead of a straight action game like Recore. It didn't sell like they wanted so they dropped it. MS is expecting gold every time.
The sad thing is if they continued to support Mistwalker for a time it could have been a real competitor to EnixSquare with their various properties.
I totally forgot another game that was 2nd party on the XBox that was Otogi and made by From Software. Not ONCE has MS looked at From's success with Dark Souls and asked for another Otogi. Yes Murakumo failed but so what, totally different genre.
Sudeki was a basic flub where MS hired the wrong game studio of the same name. MS realized that people were a fan of Climax of Landstalker and Dark Savior fame but instead of getting Climax Of Japan they hired Climax Of UK.
Another BIG flub MS made was "Viva Pinata" which was a big hit but Bill talked about it being for young teen girls with the game selling a lot of copies to guys in their 30-40's.
MS said they wanted families for the 360 and a Mario Party competitor was made called "Everyparty" was never sold in the US and it already had an English option for it.
What about Chromehounds? It was a 360 exclusive released by Sega so I am not sure on this one. Still it is a well loved Mech game by From.
MS has a constant culture of shortsightedness, not looking at the bigger picture and it shows in these efforts. It cost them in the run with the 360 vs. the PS3 where Sony eventually won due to first party exclusive mainstays along with Japanese exclusiveness because of momentum.
MS acknowledges this failure and goes on a buying spree instead of cultivating a Recore sequel and a number of new releases from the XBox OG catalog like a "Crimson Skies 3" along with a number of others I mentioned from the original XBox. I would have approached the guy who made "Phantom Dust" to make an all new game for the One as well.
Heck XBox Indies was an awesome thing on the 360 and none of these games were ever transitioned to the One or 360 as being able to play offline, unless you have a 360 dev. kit. Some of these games are now 360 exclusives and nowhere else. Where is EvilQuest anywhere? Or Vorpal?

I think consoles can come around being cost competitive again and I think a RISCV console could really offer a best bang for your buck proposition soon enough.

As it stands, with these flubs, I think Sega could create a new console in partnership with Namco Bandai or Konami and clean house. Konami owns all the Hudson Soft IP's and Sega has PILES of still unreleased arcade games with no home port. The sales of Astro City Mini proved people still want that as Sega gave people in Japan a follow up with the Mini V.
I would launch the new console with a new Tokimeki Memorial, Sonic Adventure 3, Crackin' DJ and Scud Race to name a few. Later I would see a Dragon Force 3 and Phantasy Star V released, with the latter possibly being given the Octopath treatment.

Yes. But PS4 discs are 50GB only for reference, but they're still great as well.

200 GB is not even the magical threshold. I remember as an RPG gamer... the maximum amount of discs i ever had in a disc-case was 4 discs at once. https://game-rave.com/?p=6302

However, they would have to change the case-size or simply use 2 BD cases at once for a total of 4 BDs. Theoretically 400 GB is realistic using a box with 2 BD cases or something comparable.

Still, in about 99% of all modern games, it does not exceed 200 GB, so a single BD case is sufficient so far.

So, nope... BDs are absolutely able to hold a entire game, even in todays age of many huge sized games.

A example of a 2 disc BD box is Horizon Forbidden West Complete, Nihon Collection (Nihon 1+2, not anymore available) or Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

In general i do not recommend for the industry to go above 200 GB because this is just insane and most people simply lack the required space or will always have to install/uninstall their newest games as soon as above 5.

Guess not even Sony did expect those games to grow that big, so they kinda was in hurry upgrading the PS5 SSD which initially was way to small (below 1 TB is just not big enough, can barely hold 3 new big games).

Oh and the mistakes Sony made were the PS5 Pro, scrapping Japan Studios and their CONSTANT censorship, even with the original Playstation. Sadly no one mentions the last two that much as to the general public and most gamers are unaware.
I will even defend the PS3 price a little as they really wanted it to be bc though I believe we may have gotten $50 or a little more on those models IF the PS2 had not been such a blowout vs. the other consoles.
Now the BIGGEST one I think besides the PS5 Pro but that most just overlook is the PSTV. THAT should have been a Roku with games and at that price point would have sold very well. Instead they disabled Netflix, didn't ADD new streaming apps. and made you have to do a trick to play old PSP games they bragged about being able to play. It is like whoever was in charge of that was trying to KILL any chance of the Vita getting a second life.
At its discounted $130 in the US and I think it may have been $100 for a fairly bare pack, they could have taken some definite marketshare from Roku and opened up a new market for them. They ended up doing Vue later for crying out loud so they realized the viability of streaming.

Do you need new parts? And we're not talking of fire-sale 'i found a RTX 3080 for $50 on ebay' type of stuff, pretty sure he was looking at what was the most common available for those parts. And while 4k and Sony even suggesting 8k gaming is available, the hookups and requirements to get it working probably isn't worth it. So 1080 gaming is more-or-less the target, until HDMI-2 comes or something which has 25x the bandwidth on a single cable and probably uses optical to transmit data.

How often do you need a warranty or extended warranty? Unless you're especially unlucky or clumsy you don't need it. I've only ever called in for a warranty once, when the databoard for a hard drive failed on a 1-year old machine, and they sent me a new hard drive without any of my data... Which sucked.

Not long ago i bought a second Ti 1050 for $100, which is the same card i'm using now. As long as you don't need the latest and greatest, you can get one or two generations back hardware on the cheap and get a very good experience.

Heh reminds me, i usually buy Netbooks/Chromebooks for $50-$100, flash them and put linux on them. Very respectable computers for simple tasks, taking with you anywhere. No you aren't gaming on them (well i got minecraft to work VERY well on it) but why spend $400+ on a machine when you can get it for $50 refurbished?

The only challenging thing i've had so far, is Waifu2x and RealSR want more memory to work on the GPU, but changing the settings in the tile-size reduces it to work just fine.

On the other hand to get a respectable framerate on Horizon Zero Dawn, i effectively had to run it at 720p, on certain settings turned on simply because it needed it that badly.

Does it have to be? I'm happy with Xbox360 and PS3 graphics. Hell i am replaying Sprite PS2 games and am fine, so i don't see the point.

Besides, hardly anyone is playing PS5 games, there's like... 6? No everyone is playing PS4 and earlier games.

If it helps you any, i played morrowind with a machine that had 6Gb space total over 2 drives. I could install Morrowind AND Diablo 2, and nothing else.

Games are too big today, they should be sub 20Gb, hell preferably 10Gb (Skyrim i have closer to 8Gb space usage). They just don't know how to opimize games anymore and are doing everything uncompressed it seems.

Though once AV1 or another comparable codec becomes commonplace enough with hardware built into every video card, video heavy games may see a huge reduction. I've seen on average a 10:1 reduction on videos, 40-minute 3Gb files going to 350Mb. So who knows.

Don't see why. I LOVE playing games from a ramdrive. Copy the game to ramdrive, run at full speed with no hardware limitations, removes the need for an SSD so long as you give it 10 minutes to copy beforehand. But again the $5,000 machine (well more like $3k if you drop the graphical RGB bling, which i would totally do) is the upper limits of what a lot of gamers probably will do, and not realistic for most people, same for the $50k machine which they admit probably had too many bottlenecks and had worse performance than the $5k machine.

Again games are too damn big. Why do you need 100Gb games? Geez... I'm seeing some games that want 200Gb now.

Though to be honest that is one way to stop the inevitable 'piracy' problem, making things so damn big they aren't worth acquiring.

Don't forget whatever you make DIY is going to be worth twice the value. So if you spend $600 you get on par a $1,200 machine. Though the GPU is still the largest determining factor in raw graphical power.

Sorry for the confusion, I wrote that while I was doing something else and entirely botched what I meant to say.

I was actually meaning...

... that I hoped I'd purchased my last console with the PS4...

... not that I wished consoles to have ended completely (which is certainly what it reads like.).

I guess, around 2020, when Sony was releasing their PS5: Almost no game was actually exceeding 100 GB, even Cyberpunk... one of the biggest games of that time, was well below 100 GB. Somehow, as soon as the 100 GB BD has been released it was slowly "raising the bar", perhaps psychologically... i can not say. Because the online distribution has been around way longer than this, so there was not really a known limit. Somehow, they was in need of this psychological "mark". Not so long ago, they had in mind "if we can go up to 100 why not even go up to 200..." guess thats how this philosophy kinda was starting and slowly... around 100-200 GB, ideally around 150 GB, so there is some "open space for addons", became the new "big franchise standard". Why not.... it still does suit the BDs, so i think no one can say "we got wasted space".

Nah... there is a pre build PC with almost same peformance for around the same price, 650 CHF.

https://www.galaxus.ch/de/s1/product/captiva-advanced-gaming-r76-172-ryzen-5-rtx-3050-amd-ryzen-5-5500-16-gb-500-gb-ssd-geforce-rtx-3050--37213126?tagIds=614

The Ryzen 5500 CPU is about same performance, and the 8 GB version of 3050 is about same performance too. The other specs are more or less the same, as well, for almost the same price. In general the overall quality was dropped even more... the PSU is now 450 W only but it is hard dropping the already worse quality even more. Sure, i would build it myself because it will raise the quality.... this is exactly the statement i always did. The performance can be more or less the same... at the same price.

Those pre build manufacturers know "how to be cheap" because it is the stuff their customers are looking out for. Yet, they as well know how to decrease the overall quality to a level of a... insecure firecracker but at least those builds got a warranty.

There is another advantage of building stuff yourself: You get a much better insight of "how stuff works", which is very useful on eliminating problems that will always happen. If no knowledge... always have to look out for someone who can help... and not always free.

In general, my point never was that i can not go as low as 600 USD if i use the biggest junk i am able to get BUT it is very hard to get a quality I CAN BE HAPPY WITH and at the same time at a affordable price, this is the true challenge. This will take around 800-900 USD, according to the newest maths, There willl simply be better stuff inside that surely will last longer... but not necessarily with better performance.

In my mind, just not worth it cutting so much corners. Investing 200-300 more will bring out a so much cooler build with almost no ugly corners anymore, including more RAM and 4 times the space.

There is usually a good reason someone is selling something that was originally priced over 10 times higher is now almost offered for free. Perhaps this card is unstable or what else... no one knows for sure. In my country, the customers like to offer used stuff but... the good used stuff is rarely cheaper than 50% cut, and if the cut is way lower than this on a still capable hardware... it is always a lot of risk for the buyer.

Sure, with enough of luck, almost everything may work, but not everyone is praised with this beloved "luck".

If you turn in a drive, your data will always become wiped. It is your own thing backing up your data and if you fail... there are still very pricey "data restoration" companies around but this will be a huge load of coins for you, so better try to avoid it.

I had my fair share of warranty-demand, but i am someone excessively using my stuff... not a casual user barely touching my hardware ever. RAM never fails... so no use... but i enjoy having warranty on a board or drives, even a GPU,.... definitely. Most recently even the CPUs was depleting in quality a lot... so much CPU issues... so even this warranty can nowadays be useful. In the past CPUs was never a issue but this, unfortunately, had changed.

Well, this GPU is not worth more than this... but if it is good enough for you, i guess "we have a deal". Everyone got different needs, this is certain.

You mean games that are PS5 only developed?

Even Horizon Forbidden West is not entirely PS4 anymore because the DLC and Complete Edition is PS5 and PC only.

There are probably (i did not count, just guessing here) not more than one dozen PS5 only games i got installed but every game is a PS5 version which is improved for PS5 with better graphics or better FPS. I know you may not care much for graphics nor FPS... i just say its advantage for those who care.
Optimization is surely something not always done properly because it is simply expensive and time consuming. Having a dedicated console may help because it is simply easier optimizing something for a single system instead of a "lake of systems"; yet some devs make it pretty well... even on PC.

However, i do not agree that they should bring the games down to 10-20 GB and that there is no advantage for bigger games. Regarding compression: This is the standard for any games and its content because without compression it is impossible getting any data size we actually still can "handle". Uncompressed would mean a game of 200 GB size is 500 GB or even 1 TB. The age of uncompressed game content is over for valid reasons, This is actually one of many reasons why games still may need a lot of loading time because it have to be "decompressed" first, which is a lot of work on the CPU. Sony was addressing this issue using a dedicated Kraken-decompressor chip able to remove the load from CPU during loading. However, the CPU is still having a lot of work during game loading, so, it will not remove any CPU demand but it is useful in order to reduce loading times even more. Every PS5 game is compressed, this is pretty much the standard.

Sony surely made some wise moves and i think Mark Cerny as a designer surely got his bright moments. The only issue is simply, some people in the managements are apparently less bright than this and are trying to dump down the PS5 like mad... in order to get "better numbers on coins". They could shot themself in the foot doing it... so it might not have the desired effect and ultimately... create some bad consoles.

RAM drive is not a good option. I am not going into the details but in order to work properly the software needs support and this support is not given. On the other hand, a properly optimized game runs pretty fast from a SSD with maximum security, so there is no need trying out freaky stuff.

Still, many games automatically use a "RAM buffer" with the available RAM handed out to them by the system. This is then used in order to cache data and thus reducing loading times. So, many games are basically already using RAM drive capabilities, without the need for install. On a modern game being optimized for SSD and data cache... using a RAM drive utility may even cause more harm than good.

Just by removing RGB it surely will not drop to 3000.... not even 4000. The price increase is not that high because most RGB is pretty much standard on certain hardware.

A 5000 build is purely Premium, surely not for the mass or mainstream, but no one said there is the need for it... i think for around 1000 a pretty well made PC is already possible.

However... what people can afford or not is always not only dependable on their overall income and expenses, but as well on the priorities they got. Many people may be able to afford it but they got other stuff more important to them and of course... only very wealthy people can afford it all... most people need to set priorities. They may be able to afford ONE BIG thing but not many big things at once.

Haha, all good. Thanks for clarifying :)

Understood and I stand by what I said about Microsoft, they have constantly flubbed many more things than Sony has in the console market.
At the end of the line Microsoft doesn't truly commit, they want the easy win.

You know, this is the one thing that never hooked with me on "console killers". We all know we can build an affordable PC but it almost always requires sacrifice in performance, hardware quality or looks. A cheap console like the Series S is very hard to beat. The newer consoles give more room for spending so it's easier to match them but it's still a chore.

I still believe consoles will go out of relevance tbh at least in high income areas where people don't mind spending thousands on a powerful system.

Spending thousands of coins on a pricey thing is always at first "a thing of someones heart". If there is no love for it, no matter how much coins someone got... they will never spend that much money on it.

So, it does not automatically mean someone in a high income country is in general buying way pricier PC systems. In fact... even in my country the demand for cheap systems is clearly exceeding those systems at a very high price tag.

However; There is a certain minimum level someone need to "achieve" in order to even become viable... i only say viable... else there is per se no possibilities, no matter how much "heart" and priority someone is trying to give. It is clear that in some areas or countries in general the percentage of people "below the viable income level" is simply higher than on other countries. So, they have to suffer more with the lack of viability, and the other thing... the heart which will ultimately set the required priority, will not be able to become developed.

So, naturally, the percentage of expensive builds on high income countries is higher than on those with low income. But it is totally wrong predicting that "if someone is rich they generally will buy more pricey things". The truly wealthy people i know are amongst the most stingy people i ever met! They got the heart for money... but rarely for other things.

The one thing that actually matters is simply: There are more people ABOVE the viable income level.

As i said, handing out lot of resources, no matter money or work, for something else is at first always a thing of someones heart... simply love.

Mhmm, i tend to go with Newegg's refurbished where they give you a 1 year warrenty coverage too and have the belief they at least checked it to work and wiped the drive (if applicable) clean.

Though often with cards it's 'open box' so you gotta find the manual/software yourself, which isn't hard usually just search for the card name and download the drivers.

Gotten like 20 refurbished items, not a bad one yet.

Or isn't put on PS4... or PC.

On a lot of stuff, just choosing a good balance or quality based encoding can do a huge amount. I remember a few years ago, order 1766 or something, they just had everything 'uncompressed' because the decompression time supposedly was slowing the game down. Yeah maybe textures are higher quality but they were talking music being played. It's too much to have hardware decoding of zlib and mp3/aac added as a core feature?

Why not? Remember Skyrim was huge and is only about 10Gb. It's only in the last couple years game sizes have exploded. Course pushing 4k resolutions on everything will do that.

Mhmm the wonders of compression. But better algorithms can do better compression, the quality you target can heavily impact final size vs quality, and resolution... well that's probably the largest part. Screw the push for photo-realism with models in the millions for meshes when a fraction of that will do. same for 4k textures. I reduced the Skyrim textures to 1k and i can't tell the difference.

Yeah, wish there was a toggle of 'don't cache this directory/files' or the whole drive so it doesn't try to do double duty. Though if it goes over it drops what it isn't using since caching is just keeping the data in memory in case it's used later so that isn't so bad. I'd still prefer using a ramdrive myself. I do a lot of stuff on a ramdrive, like processing pictures and video, save the final results to a drive. Also with that memory, data compression goes faster. Ever run 7zip LZMA2 compression with 1500Mb Dictionary? It wants 16Gb memory for 3 threads. Goes up from there. Higher compression, slow since i can't assign all my cores. Would need well over 100Gb ram before i get to where all my cores are in use.

Though i have other processes using nearly all the CPU so that isn't so important.

Well, I still feel Xbox is on the way out. Yes, MS has done a poor job marketing their consoles, but...

... I would argue they only really care about developing their cloud and games service.

IMHO the Xbox division is disposable... and especially since they've been unable to market consoles or develop first party content. But the Xbox may limp around for a bit longer.

While the PS3 was a blunder on release ($500 USD) it did some interesting stuff... like full backwards compatibility and it ran Linux! Too bad the market didn't see what it offered. Maybe similar will happen with PS5 Pro...?