At 10PM Eastern on October 20th, I was dutifully parked on Nintendo’s home page, waiting for the reveal of their new console, codenamed NX. I wanted to see what Nintendo planned to release for general consumption. Six minutes later, I had my information.
The console, now named Switch, was better than I expected it to be. It looked nice, the functionality seemed well thought out, and it looks like they really want to market it right. No Wii U debacle here; Big N wanted you to know what this baby could do. And it looks real interesting.
Too bad I will never buy it. It came out too late; I had already sworn off any new consoles.
To be honest, this has not been an easy decision for me. I love video game consoles. I have 25 of them, from the original 6-switch Atari VCS (2600) to the PlayStation 4. The only reason why I don’t have a Neo-Geo AES is because I love my children too much too pawn them…but I thought about it at least twice. I wish I had every classic console.
The concept of a console has changed dramatically, though, and I’m not fond of those changes.
The first dramatic change popped up for me a couple of months ago. I popped Street Fighter V into my PlayStation 4 for the first time. I wanted to go a couple hundred rounds with the game and write up my impressions for my Never Played series. But first, I had to wait ONE ENTIRE DAY while the game installed in my console and updated. This is a game that I physically own the disc for, and I couldn’t play it for a full day after loading it in!
Worse still, after all the updates were done and the PS4 showed SF V was ready to play, I started the game up…only for the game to tell me it had ANOTHER update that the PS4 did not detect that had to be applied BY THE GAME! I thought that the great thing about the updates was the system applied them all for you. Now there are updates that require starting the game first? Overwatch did the same thing to me, locking out everything except the tutorial with Soldier 76 while it updated AFTER the PS4 told me it was ready to play.
I understand that updates for video games are a regular occurrence nowadays. The days of just popping a new game in and playing are dead. But does it have to be such a pain in the ass?
For comparison, I recently did a clean install of Windows 10 for my son. He likes to have his PC nuked from time to time as a way of gaining performance lost from OS bloat. After the installation was complete and all drivers were updated, he began to restore his games. He downloaded the World of Warcraft and Diablo III installers and installed Steam. In a little less than a day, his ENTIRE Steam library – about 43 games – and both WoW and Diablo III were installed and ready. He installed and updated 45 games in the time it took me to install and update one!
A major part of the blame for that belongs to the console manufacturers themselves. They’re not trying to sell you great gaming experiences; they’re trying to mimic the PC gaming experience!
Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Sony’s PlayStation Network are robust platforms that provide a lot of services that are very beneficial to console owners. In some ways, they even outstrip Steam. But the underlying network infrastructure on consoles is garbage. The Web is full of complaints from users, stating their download speeds are awful. Most blame restrictions on the consoles that prevent them from downloading at full speed. The PS4 is the greatest offender here; this post highlights the details.
So consoles are currently machines whose games require constant updating but whose network speeds are slower than a two-legged turtle dragging across molasses. That’s not something I want for a console.
Of course, speed is also the motivating factor behind this generation’s mid-cycle refresh. For the first time ever, Microsoft and Sony are introducing mid-generation console updates that highlight major processing upgrades. Sony struck first with its PlayStation 4 Pro, due out next month. Its specs are a significant bump up from its generational predecessor. The goal for the PS4 Pro, according to Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Andrew House, is to keep Sony’s console relevant versus PC.
“There’s a dip mid-console lifecycle where the players who want the very best graphical experience will start to migrate to PC, because that’s obviously where it’s to be had,” House told the Guardian in September. “We wanted to keep those people within our eco-system by giving them the very best and very highest [performance quality].”
Meanwhile, Microsoft has positioned its buttressed console, codenamed Project Scorpio, as the most powerful console ever. The console, due out late next year, is supposed to be the console that bridges the gap between console and PC gaming.
In the process, Microsoft’s and Sony’s new entries are completely shitting on all the advantages are supposed to have over PCs.
Back when consoles were just consoles and not just PCs in training, they had two very distinct advantages: you could plug in a game and just play it, and the games you bought for the console five years from launch would require the same hardware as before. The console was the kitchen appliance of video games: you popped a game in and it just worked.
The PC was the realm of customizability and volatility. If you bought your PC in 2000, there was no guarantee it would run games from 2005 perfectly. You might have to change your video card or add more memory. If you were unlucky, you would have to change your CPU. That would mean possibly changing your whole motherboard. Your memory and other components might not be compatible with the new motherboard. That was the price you paid for playing on PC: constant upgrading, reshuffling, and tweaking.
Nowadays, however, PCs with Steam accounts (or GOG, or Origin, or Uplay) seem to be more stable than consoles. You buy a game on the PC and it’s updated seamlessly and without fuss. Plus, the games scales with any upgrades you perform on the platform.
Consoles, meanwhile, seem to choke on any downloads, especially updates. Every game requires day-one patches, which require large chunks of time away from playing games. It’s the same on PC, but that platform can handle the downloads better than today’s consoles. Again as a test, I popped in Doom on the Xbox One just to verify. The game is STILL downloading updates, 12 hours after commencement!
Even if my games play fine now on consoles, I have to sit around and wonder if the upgraded mid-generation consoles that are coming out will play them better. Upgrading to one of them is not as simple as a regular PC upgrade. I can’t just pop something gin my existing rig and get a boost; I have to buy a whole new machine and either replace or store my old one.
Will the Nintendo Switch have the same issues as Microsoft’s and Sony’s boxes? It is too early to say” What I CAN say is that I am no longer interested in new consoles. If the Switch will require constant updating and mandate a mid-generational console refresh, then I am out on consoles for good. If it brings back customer agency and hides its customers from the UI… so be it.
At 10:07 PM Eastern on October 20th, I lamented my lost love for the new consoles. At least I will still have older consoles that I can collect. And they will be proper consoles, not baby PCs with schizophrenia.
