Console market craters as Xbox sales crash 33% to the lowest since launch 25 years ago, PS5 sales drop 25%
https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/console-gaming/console-market-craters-as-xbox-sales-crash-33-percent-to-the-lowest-since-launch-25-years-ago-ps5-sales-drop-25-percent-steep-price-hikes-push-series-x-to-usd800-and-ps5-pro-to-usd900Open linkView original on lemmus.org
243 replies
LOL Consoles are too expensive, and this is the find out stage of their fuck around journey. Its not all that surprising, especially with the ending of physical games on Sony's part and Microsoft being generally shitty... They might not recover for a while. Bully for them!
This is true. Who wants to spend all that money at once. My PC may be more expensive than I console but I spent no more than $250 at a time as I upgraded it. People don't need $1000 graphics cards to play modern games.
I had a ps3 and a ps4 and was fully up for getting a ps5. Then it came out right around COVID time and I couldn't get one anywhere because of scalpers. So I thought, "No worries, I'll just wait a year or two and pick one up for cheap." Then it just never got cheaper. Now it's like a 5-6 year old machine that costs over $900 CAD so I just never bothered.
And in the midst of these increasing hardware costs Sony thinks people would not mind paying the premium for their digital only games, completely killing the second hand and retail markets, bless their heart.
I'm amazed they've not crashed more. The PS5 and Xbox whatever the fuck they called it are both 6 years old, if you haven't already decided to buy one why would you get one now after the price hike?
Some people really want to play gta 6 before it comes to pc I guess
That’s how I ended up buying a PS3 back when GTA V was released. Well, that and Gran Turismo and wanting a Blu-ray player. But it was still not really worth it.
Same, but mostly because a cute girl told me we could play GTA together if I got it on PS3
Well did you?
Yeah it was a good time
Gran Turismo 6 was a fun game though
I was actually a little disappointed. Friends of mine were huge GT fans and played the shit out of it, but when I played it I found the AI opponents horribly stupid and the missing damage model was mildly weird, to say the least. I expected more than what I got. It wasn’t a bad game, but just not what I expected.
Every GT game has shitty AI. I mostly play them to just drive a whole lot of cars fast on a track for fun.
I'll eat my shoe if a PC under $1000 will be able to play GTA VI even halfway decently when it comes to the platform. My handheld PC is nominally way more powerful than my Series S, but I'm lucky to get half the performance out of it because the Series S gets a bespoke treatment from devs to make it work well.
Same, was expecting sales to plummet. Guessing gta6 presales tempered the fall
Gaming in general is way too expensive now.
At least we have retro games to play instead.
Which I'm playing on my Steam Deck! Which starts at only...wait, 750 dollars?!?
Edit: $790
Bought it when it came out 419€. I dont see myself paying twice the price today.
Crazy to think the base lcd model was like $350 only 2-3 years ago. I know it's not valves fault but that is a huge jump in price.
Or you could get an AYN Thor for 350$ + 30$ shipping and a wait time of 3 months
Or you could download an emulator and play on a 10 year old laptop on a big screen tv.
I can’t get over how great ps2 emulation is
PS3 is decent but half the games I wanna play aren’t ready yet, the ones that are done are great though
Given how fast AI recompiles are coming out just wait a week or two.
Yeah, that's definitely directly comparable to a portable device like a Steam Deck or AYN Thor.
About as comparable as the AYN Thor (Android phone with weird form factor) is to Steam Deck (PC with weird form factor).
Are you unfamiliar with the concept of portability? Or do you carry a television everywhere that you go?
Laptops are portable. I think the point of the TV was that the formfactor and weight of the system aren't a big issue when docked.
I think you can put SteamOS on those badboys now too, so you can say goodbye to shitty Android launchers
Or you could buy a miyoo mini plus and get it within a week for like $50.
That's what I did and I play all my retro games on it, I even prefer it over my steam deck for retro gaming.
That's true. Or depending on what I want to play, lots of even cheaper systems. Although the Steam Deck is JUST powerful enough for everything I want to play.
Edit: Also I use the shit out of steam play streaming to TVs and things
I dont really feel anything for newer games. Theres been very few that ive been excited about. Graphics dont woo me in the slightest.
I feel ill booting up any console after the 360. Even the 360 was the start of enshittification.
"Wait, you mean this has no internet, you put the game in and it works? Wait, you own the game? Sony vs Illinois made that illegal years ago! no sign in or email? How do they track your eye movements for serving ads? How do they count your verification cans ?" -2040 kids.
I thought the Ps2/3 gens were the last truly good years of not overly monetized gaming.
Pretty much.
Everything is too expensive now! Late-stage capitalism sucks...
Only if you want brand new games and top spec hardware. I get free games every day, and I can play them on my old laptop, my dedicated handheld, or even my phone!
Not just here but everywhere. Everyone (except those with too much) is holding tight to their wallet until trump dies and some stability comes back to the world.
These companies have said plainly that they don't see prices returning to pre-pandemic levels even if the current economic crisis is resolved. Corpos are too greedy, and the people in power are even greedier.
Just another flavor of rent never goes down.
And yet somehow there are millions of people preordering GTA 6 for 100 bucks lol
its not even a choice for me. i have been unemployed for over 2 years now. since just before he got elected.
I don't really see what difference trump dying would make to me tbh. Got enough money, don't really want to buy many things even though I can afford them.
I could afford a new gaming PC every year. But my RTX2070 is fine. I won't spend money without a good reason to and I don't really see many good reasons right now. I have pretty much anything I could reasonably.
Cutting my hours worked, that could be something to go for.
Lol as if one person can be the cause of all this
People have unfairly held US presidents responsible for the state of the economy in the past... But in this case Trump's illegal tariffs and pointless war with Iran absolutely are the cause of current high prices, or at least huge contributing factors. Republicans are a disaster for the economy...
He's both effect and cause, he wouldn't be there if the USA didn't have fundamental social problems, and if he didn't exist, someone else could have been in his place causing different problems
The evolved system is the cause. One person with several minions could easily topple this.
It's the same theme everywhere. They build for some kind of non existent luxury market while buyers stretch themselves thin. Now no one has any money left and credit cards are maxed.
We're not buying what's being sold. So now what?
Now they blame millennials and gen z kids for ruining gaming
And then they switch to everything being a live service so instead of buying games you just have access to the "whole library" of games (for whatever payment tier you're in) which they will change and remove games without warning and deleting all of your progress unless you pay them at least $20 a month for cloud saves
Oh and the only games in the games library are ai slop vibe coded games that are unplayable carbon copies of each other
Man, Ubisoft sure did trailblaze for the industry. Including that part where it has already started dying before its competitors.
Steve Bannon ruined gaming.
No, I will not be taking further questions.
If me putting another 1000 hours into factorio is millennials killing gaming, I guess I will go and kill gaming.
Nuclear MLRS robot spiders. Railway artillery cannons. Flamethrower turrets. Industrialised warfare. Why would I leave? I just started a marathon deathworld run.
Raising Prices and making them the EXACT same as Computers but Worse didn't bring in MORE Sales? Quick! MAYBE if we Raise the Prices MORE it'll Reverse course!
-EVERY High Paid CEO ever!
I wouldn't call it exact same. Hardware, yes, compatible. But that is not what a console is about. The hardware compatibility to a PC if any is a positive for consoles, because it makes ports and develop on the games much easier without much fuss. And consoles aren't worse to a PC in all cases, they still have some value. The operating system and game compatibility, and ease of use are major factors.
It's not exactly the same, but I do feel like it's almost always worse in the console side these days (excepting Nintendo here).
On console you're juggling patches and updates, installing to drive, you have concerns about whether games will play well on non-pro versions of the system, Xbox is traditionally hostile to physical media while PS is ending it.
If you're going to install digital games and download updates, worry about compatibility, might as well play on PC. Those issues are less on console, but present on both.
Meanwhile most games are getting PC ports (since modern consoles are very PC like and games need the extra sales), you're not as locked down to a single store, you have more room to upgrade incrementally (in theory). Operating system is also in favor of PC.
Ease of use I'd still grant that consoles have advantage, sure.
I don't argue all this to put down consoles, I love consoles and played only/mostly on consoles for many years. But I think there's a lot of truth to saying modern PS and Xbox have moved so close to PC that they're losing the pros and embracing the same cons.
This is a much more nuanced take I could agree with. The previous comment wasn't like that. I decided to go full PC gaming around the end of XBOX 360 generation, because I saw it coming and consoles were more PC like ever, and PCs (thanks to Steam) more console like ever. It's been what, 2 decades almost and I can say confidently that consoles are not exactly the same like PCs.
But in an other comment the user I replied to said he didn't even talk about all of the stuff, but was talking about the price. If we talk about the price, yeah sure, the gap has almost vanished. One of the biggest advantages of buying a console was also its initial price of hardware.
As for the PC more and more like console, it's even more true with something like Steam Machine and Steam Deck, but without the downside of locked down console. That's the closest we get to a console like experience and usability. Meanwhile current gen consoles have a PC architecture, getting digital only, supports keyboard (and mouse?) for selected games, updates are similar to PC, but without the issues of a PC. The user does not need to type in password on boot, doesn't need to update several parts of the system, no need to install drivers.
They are closer than ever in history of computing, PC and gaming. But there are lot of differences that I cannot say exactly the same (which you personally agree with me, based on the reply).
That's how it works on a steam machine/deck. You get an update from steam that updates your whole system. That's it. If you install other stuff from outside steam then things change, but you can't do that in a console anyway.
I know (own first gen Steam Deck myself), but most people don't have SteamOS. In Windows this is still necessary, because it's not just for gaming and unlike SteamOS it isn't read only mode.
That's an user problem. SteamOS is already compatible with many pc's, and there are other linux distros that work similar to steamos when it comes to updating. Users still want windows when for the majority of them, it's a non-issue to switch to linux.
People want windows but then complain that windows is awful. I mean, stop hitting yourself?
The problem is that not all hardware and software functions under Linux.
It was about the prices... THEY are the same
Oh, right. I thought you were talking about the architecture. And for the prices, well I wouldn't say its the same, but let's say that consoles no longer have a price advantage of the hardware. Because PCs gone up in prices too, as consoles gone up, so consoles never catched up to PC in that regard.
Clearly this is because people are just tired of buying physical goods. They want digital consoles!
Yeah! Everything muat be digital and if someone still wants the box it can just have a paper with a code in it.
I mean who would like to play the single player game about 5 years later when the servers are down?
Right?
Stadia tried it.
Ahead of its time, IMO. And honestly should not even have wireless. Might be usable in grandma's house out in the middle of the woods (unless Grandma's got a shit-ton of IoT stuff...or one cheap security camera), but just about anywhere else it's far too unreliable.
The future will be even worse. Have you seen what people have been doing with AI the last couple of weeks. People have decompiled entire games using AI and made PS5 games run on PC natively. Something that took years by multiple devs takes a few days by a single dev with a Claude account. Sony and MS are definitely shitting their pants right now. Their solution will be cloud streaming only consoles.
Good thing there's already more good games out than I could play if I lived another hundred years.
Honestly, almost every console runs on my PC. Why not just make Microsoft Xbox for Linux?
The hardware now is just an x64 or ARM platform built to a certain spec running a custom OS. Basically, a PC or a tablet or a Mac Mini.
When you look at it that way, the idea of these walled-garden publishers and marketplaces starts to make absolutely zero fucking sense.
The need for consoles is rapidly getting eroded. There's no proprietary hardware, no special sauce, nothing that they can do that a moderately spec'd PC can't do, and often for less money.
Where they still succeed is just being easy enough, that they more-or-less just work predictably with barely more effort than running the updates that it prompts the user to run. And they're fucking all that up with stupid shit like Virtual Gamecards. It's honestly impressive that Nintendo managed to be the straw that broke my fucking back, would've never seen that coming. At least I knew what I was signing up for with GamePass (and they knew exactly why I term'd it when I did).
I won't purchase another system because I don't want to deal with 1) constant downloads- new games, game updates, system updates, data collection 2) logging in all the time 3) not owning a physical copy of a game.
They complicated the fuck out of doing basic things on their systems and I want no part of it. What have they done to keep the consumer interested in their systems?
Microtransactions, ads, no offline modes, you don't own your own games any more... well they topped all of it with the new console. You buy games that are just empty boxes. Might be a slip of paper in there letting you rent it for $80 flat fee, but they'll take that game back any time they damn well please.
NOW BEG FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT PEASANT.
I find it weird tho, Xbox literally started 'cloud' gaming a few years ago and now there's games that can't be played on consoles. You need a subscription to cloud game instead of just using your console to run the game
They’ve never taken a game back. Everyone is causing a fear that doesn’t exist. I only buy digital, never had a problem.
This is either a blatant lie or unfathomable ignorance.
Ubisoft has done just that and so have several others. It's the entire reason for the stop killing games movement.
https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
Theres no way you are a "gamer" and have never heard of it.
Did we forget Nintendo shut down their entire store just to open a new one?
What's to stop people from remaking the game and discontinuing support for the original? That happens in Apple's App Store.
I've lost a purchased game twice. Now I have a copy on my PC so no need to buy it a third time.
Sony has done it this year https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2026/06/26/purchased-studio-canal-content-removed-playstation-library
I guess technically it's movies and TV in this case, not games. But the precedent is there.
Haven't had a problem yet*
Exclusives.
Legit the only reason.
I guess it's also "easier" in a "It just works*" kind of way. Like you can have a pretty good expectation to how well a game will run on your system, and no fiddling with settings, or drivers, etc.
This is a big point for the steam deck and similar handhelds. There's now a benchmark PC platform.
I'd rather wait for the ps5 emulator(s)
Hardware costs have gone up, compelling games releases for them have gone down (and didn't start from a good position).
Such a mystery.
Not to mention they explicitly stated disc sales are dead. All my console games are physical, so I will no longer buy consoles games or consoles. Seems like the way to go.
Don't forget you also don't own those 120$ games!
Plus they bought up all those game studios only to close them, lay off all the workers, and cancel the finished or in-progress games for tax breaks. And like Sony, they have said that they will no longer support physical games, creating a monopoly in their digital store and destroying further goodwill from gamers like me. They have completely lost the plot...
OMG! It's almost like constantly raising prices just isn't working out!
It doesn't matter how expensive RAM gets, what the market is doing, how much AI is driving up component prices, or whether the market is bullish or bearish. At some point, consumers reach a breaking point. When a product becomes too expensive, people stop buying it. They don't particularly care why it's expensive. They care whether it's worth the asking price, and whether they can justify spending that much money on it.
And that's the problem Sony and Microsoft seem to be running into. Between rising console prices, increasingly expensive games, subscription price hikes, and a growing number of anti-consumer practices, they've made gaming an increasingly expensive hobby while giving consumers fewer reasons to feel good about spending their money.
What's worse is that these companies have spent years alienating a significant portion of their own fan bases. Aggressive monetization, digital ownership concerns, restrictive ecosystems, and the push toward subscriptions have steadily eroded consumer goodwill. You can only squeeze your customers so much before they start questioning whether they want to remain customers at all.
At the end of the day, consumers aren't obligated to buy a PlayStation or an Xbox just because they bought one last generation. They can stick with their existing hardware, buy fewer games, switch platforms, or walk away from gaming altogether.
You can't price your way to endless growth, especially when you're simultaneously giving your customers more reasons not to buy your products. Eventually, the market pushes back. And frankly, it's hardly surprising that we're seeing that happen now.
If I have to drop nearly $1k on a gaming platform the money is so much better spent on a PC anyway.
Especially since on PC apps like retro arch give you better access to backlogs that these companies aren’t even offering! You want to play PS2 games 4k upscale 60 fps? Can’t do that on PS5. You can surely do it on PC though.
Yeah, being a PC is also a plus, since it isn't relegated to only being a gaming machine like consoles. Can actually use it for productivity to do things like 3d modeling, video editing, coding, etc.
Gooning............
PC ends up being so much cheaper in the long run... Far better game prices and no subscription cancer
And you can do a lot more with a PC, nevermind upgradability
Gaming is not an expensive hobby at all if you stick to good games. The best game in the world runs on a Pentium 2 with 64MB of RAM.
Does CDDA still run on 64MB?
Is it... Is it Doom?
Doom needs a toaster. No I meant Deus Ex.
Can't play games when hungry.
Yeah, indicators are indicating. Things they don’t seem to talk about. Used car lots are empty while new car lots are full. The tourist restaurants no longer have waiting lists. Gaming is a luxury expense, as in we don’t need it to survive, while new game prices are higher than they’ve ever been. I’m willing to bet most if not all luxury spending is down.
Prices are high and companies decided shitty AI is better than good people. So jobs are getting scarcer or paying less.
In the words of my kids: we’re cooked fam.
Spending might be down overall for the average person, but that doesn't necessarily mean no spending either. Could be moving to spend somewhere else, on things perceived to be better value for money.
Last AAA game I bought was shadow of mordor and it was discounted to £2.50 at the time. If I had paid £60 for that I would want a refund. It wasn't a bad game by any means but no where near enough playtime of value to be worth that price. Meanwhile Factorio or Rimworld release at much lower prices and keep their price for over a decade because people generally see them as being worth it even after all this time.
You've clearly never seen me ignore all my biological needs to play games for 14 straight hours.
Amateur!
Clearly you don't have good enough games. When I first got Factorio I became nocturnal.
I literally own two ps4s and two copies of a game my SO and I wanted to play together, but neither of us have an active PS+. We would both have to resub just to play it together in the same room. It ended up being cheaper just to buy two copies again on Steam to play it together on PC/laptop. There's no reason to own a console anymore. Their convenience is completely gone.
Similar-ish story here. I set up a Minecraft server for the household and set up Minecraft on the Switch so my kid can play it. Turns out you have to have a fucking Nintendo subscription to play online in Minecraft on the goddamn Switch on my own server that's on my own local network in my own house.
Let's not even mention that you can't even add a custom server on the switch, you can only play preselected servers or Minecraft realms that you have to pay for. I had to do essentially DNS fuckery to make that work.
Fuck these companies.
I bought Minecraft for switch to play with my son. What a shit experience it was.
First off, it took like an hour of trial and error to even get the two of us playing in split screen. Then I realized that to render split screen the game had reduced the draw distance to like 1/4th of what it was on PC years ago. We dealt with it until we actually had a good area built up and the frame rate dropped to like 10fps. Then my wife accidentally let Minecraft update and it bricked split screen until I completely turned off the switches WiFi.
Recently purchased Java for PC, spent another hour getting couch co-op going on that and it's a completely different experience.
To be fair, most of your complaint is about the hardware of a low-power device not being able to handle rendering double the game and then compensating accordingly.
Which is an expected outcome.
The game is advertised and sold as having split screen co-op. Having to mess with console settings to get it to work and the resulting experience being shit isn't excusable. Of course I didn't expect a full PC equivalent but I expected it to have a minimum of polish and optimization.
If they couldn't make the game do split screen decently, they shouldn't put that as a feature. If the game can't be run decently in single player, they shouldn't have sold it at all.
That's infuriating. What game? If you don't mind me asking.
Monster Hunter; we both already have World on PS4. Rise and its DLC was/is on sale for $10 so we just got that instead.
Two full games and their DLC for the cost of one month of PS+.
I've just bought my first console in nearly 10 years but it wasn't any of the big three. My partner and I are loving our new Steam Machine.
Congrats! My wife and I have two steam decks. Great "consoles". Super fun.
Ah yes, the Nex Playground.
Curious to see Nintendo's numbers in comparison.
And yeah, those prices are insane. At a certain point, just pay for a PC and have access to whatever you want. Plus, you don't have to pay an additional fee for online features. It doesn't have to be the best gaming rig ever, especially for most people. And recoup the money spent on a gaming rig by escaping the closed eco system. Wait for good sales on PC games or turn to the high seas.
And honestly, outside of Nintendo, I haven't seen a console exclusive game on Xbox or PS5 that I've wanted to play in years.
Those prices though. People can still game without consoles, and with the way they're destroying the economy, it seems people are realizing they can ditch the consoles for other options.
N: "here is a new Mario game or something, whatever, nobody cares anymore, $80 pricing why not"
Customers: excited screaming and trampling each other
Not gonna pretend that I'm not one of them. I'd probably buy a Switch 3 today if they said it was bundled with Super Mario Odyssey 2.
I'm a sucker for first party N games.
Yes and no. Yes in many cases, but no in exclusives. Also it depends on the operating system, because Windows 11 is terrible. It's so much cleaner to just boot up a console and play something, than to use Windows. Linux? Yes, that's better, but then you have less games to choose from (especially with the online multiplayer games). Whether this is enough as a replacement depends on many factors. So saying "just buy a PC" is not always the right choice. And that comes from someone who advocates PC and always says "PC is the endgame". We are not there yet. Also god bless Valve (for now).
However, some of the exclusivity issues go away with emulation, recompilation and decompilation efforts.
It's pretty much only those mmo games at this point. Pretty much everything else works, often better than they work on Windows 11
@prole @thingsiplay i tried some MMOs on Linux which have a steam launcher. All of those i tried, worked fine - incomplete list: (T)ESO, EvE, Skull&Bones, Nostale, Neverwinter, Elite Dangerous.
Yeah I was referring specifically to ones with anti-cheat, which are mostly first person shooters.
But yeah I think most people who haven't tried it yet would be shocked by how well gaming works on Linux at this point.
The anticheats actually do work on linix, they just can't spy on you as effectively so publishers aren't interested. Really tells you that the priority isn't on anti-cheat, but on rifling through you shit.
Besides, if they wanted anticheat that works, it would be server side anyway.
It's not even mmo games but rather competitive multiplayer games.
So online games with large amounts of players?
So like Massively Multiplayer Online games?
Warframe is an MMO and plays fine. Final Fantasy 14 is an MMO and plays fine. So does FF11, so do the mihoyo lot, and a good bunch of gachas. And also many other MMO's that I'm leaving behind.
No, it's not MMO's, it's a specific subset of them which is the competititive pvp ones.
I think exclusives are a bit of a none starter now. Previous gens of consoles certainly had a good chunk of exclusive games that may have enticed people in. But this gen has had very few that would be "system selling good". And then you have all of the pc exclusives as a counter argument.
I would also say that you have a significant backlog of incredible games that you can still buy and play, and don't tend to disappear as you move between generations on PC, so unless you are wanting the newest shiny game, you will have too much to play in your life time.
Also windows 11 isn't terrible... It isn't good, but it's fine. And I don't think I agree with it being cleaner to boot up a console and just play a game. If you have steam run at start up, they are pretty equal.
Sounds like Stockholm Syndrome. I guess if you don't know any better...
No, I prefer using something like KDE, and do a fair bit, but win11 is still not terrible.
If you want terrible, vista before service pack 2, win 8 and even xp before it got updated. Fuck xp 64bit was a genuine shit show as people tried to convert.
Agree on the exclusivity thing and also I'm one of those with big backlog; it grows faster than I can play. There is no need for me to buy day 1 expensive AAA games. I disagree with all points made in the last segment of your reply.
Windows 11 is in my opinion terrible. The updates, the spying, the bloat, the UI, the ads, can't customize much... I don't like anything in Windows 11. And it gets in the way of playing games too, especially if you want to play with gamepad all the time and messages appear (Steam Controller however helps a lot here). To a point that I will never use Windows 11 on my own computer ever. (and it's not like I wouldn't have experience in Win11 too)
If you ever used SteamOS through Steam Deck in example, then I think you would agree with me. Starting Windows requires a password entering, which is not an issue with consoles. Then Windows loads lot of crap and bloat and you might use the computer for other stuff than gaming too. Here and there are issues using it to play games, like updating drivers, configuration and so on. Playing games on a console is much cleaner and simpler than Windows 11 on PC. SteamOS is also cleaner than Windows 11, but consoles still a lot less problematic in regard that.
They are not. Running Steam in foreground in Big Picture mode is just not the same. It looks the same on the surface, but there are lot of little issues.
I do have a steam deck, and have also used several Linux installs. If you are booting a Linux pc you should be entering a password.
You can also have a local account on windows 11 and not have a password. So it just boots to desktop and shows steam. I personally don't have big picture running on windows, I have a mouse and just click on the game I want to play.
I also have never experienced windows stopping me from playing with a controller(Xbox, ps5 or steam controllers old and new), or interacting with big picture mode.
It seems like you have tiny things that you are blowing way out of proportion. Like a windows pc taking longer to load than a console, we are talking seconds difference.
Doesn't mention how Switches and Steam Decks are doing, but I would venture to guess that Valve is eating Sony and Microsoft's lunch.
Gabecube is projected to sell several hundred thousand copies. PlayStation 5 is close to 100 million units sold.
I will be curious how PS5 does moving forward and how well any PS6 does. Seems like Sony is in the FA stage and might be transitioning to FO.
PS5 pro prices are through the roof so it will likely keep sales muted plus everyone is ready for the new console by now. With prices the way they are the next console generation could be three years away. That is an extremely long cycle and will further hurt their sales.
"Sold" as in the past tense of "sell".
It is estimated that Playstation sold 13 million consoles in 2026.
And yet Valve's revenue was twice that of Sony Interactive Entertainment's. Steam can run on a generic PC; Steam Deck and GabeCube are merely gravy. Storefronts are where the money's made. Hell, haven't PS5s been selling at a loss until recently? What's 13 million times a negative amount?
I am all for the little guy. I looked up all the stats because of what you said. PS roughly 10 million estimated by end of year, Xbox roughly 2 million by end of year. Gabecube maybe around 60k per month with a total in 2026 of around 400k units sold. That will be roughly half of Xbox sales if they performed similarly the entire year.
Impressive start, but the PS blows them out of the water.
You've missed the point. Any computer can run games from Valve. Why buy a stupid expensive console when you've already got everything you need? This is why Sony and Microsoft are losing sales.
The original point was sales. I do agree with your point of view though. I just need to build a gaming computer for each gamer in the house. Six computers at today's prices.... Nevermind! I guess we are sticking with what we got for now.
Given that RAM prices are up on everything, probably not.
People aren't avoiding new consoles because they object to Sony's business practices. They're avoiding them because they've been priced outside of the "toy" category.
Sony and Microsoft don't even know Valve exists. The Steam Deck sold in its lifetime less than each console in a few weeks after launch.
The new Xbox coming out next year is going to have direct Steam support. And that's no accident.
Xbox series X|S sold a total of just under 35 million. Those are actually estimate numbers, as Microslop stopped reporting their (embarrassing) numbers years ago.
Steam has an average of 38.5 million concurrent users, with a peak of 43.5 million users.
Steam is literally bigger than Microslop's Xbox division, and infinitely more profitable. Sony's PS5 has sold something like 91 million units.
The Steam Deck isn't the relevant metric here. Every single computer with Steam installed is.
They were clearly referring to hardware sales because that's what this post is about. As far as software sales go steam obviously does better since the market of people of with a pc is greater than consoles. Same reason why mobile is by far the largest gaming market.
Turns out, fucking over your customers is bad for buisness. Who could have guessed?
Not Sony or MS.
Og Xbox rocked. Because sega engineers made it.
Sega engineers? I know the XBOX was always seen as the spiritual successor to the Dreamcast, because it was continuation from software by Sega just when Sega stopped with hardware. So far so good. But how does it come it was engineered by Sega?
Indeed. OG xbox feels a lot more like a Microsoft endeavor. It's built on x86 hardware with very little proprietary components, powered by direct x.
Several of Sega's engineers went there after Sega hardware shut down.
Interesting indeed. I was not aware of this. I'll probably dig into this subject later today.
Well, for one thing, compare a Dreamcast controller to an original Xbox controller
The Dreamcast also ran a form of Windows CE and had its own version of Xbox Live. Dreamcast was a prelude to what 21st century gaming would be like more or less.
Woah, this is the first I'm hearing about it running windows CE. Got anything where I can read more?
BTW the Windows CE label was even on the console I think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast#/media/File:Dreamcast-Console-Set.png (ah yes, I remembered it correctly) I was always wondering what this has anything to do with Windows. I think it wasn't a full Windows anyway, and components were modular. Never digged into this myself, which is a shame because I'm interested. Found following interesting link:
- https://blink.copetti.org/writings/consoles/dreamcast/operating-system/
It was an opt in feature, not the main operating system I think. Don't know what the actual OS of the Dreamcast is.
And the obvious links:
Thank you for the detailed answer! That's interesting!
It literally says Windows CE on the console…
Because I see so many Sega Dreamcasts in my day to day life, in 2026. Man, fuck off. Have some curiosity about the world.
You fuck off, too lazy to zoom in on a picture of it LMAO
Congratulations to PCs for winning the console wars :3
The win is in vain if you can't buy PC hardware either.
There are still many thousands of games playable on older hardware.
Console players living in a world of only triple A games. Have yet to discover that 20$ games from indie developers are thousand times better
Yes you can it's just now comparable in cost to a flagship console
If I bought one it would end up in the pile of gaming devices I don't use. I have an RG35XXSP for GBA, GB,and GC, a Retroid Mini for PSP, Vita, NES, SNES, PSX, DC, and arcade, a Retroid Pocket Nova for PS2, GC, and N64, an AYN Odin 2 portal for Android games, PC games/streaming, a 5800X3D/7900XTX PC for 4K OLED gaming, and a 5700X3D/9070XT for 1440P widescreen gaming. I'm nearing 660 games on my steam/epic/gog libraries and I have 2TB of rom dumps for all of the retro systems. I've spent thousands of dollars to realize I don't like gaming, I liked hanging out with my friends.
Good lesson to learn. You can possibly still sell all that shit and break even, the way prices are these days.
Another industry with its bottom falling out.
Oh no! Major corporations are not making billions?!
How can we help!
/s
As a PC gamer concerned about game preservation: good. Consoles are just walled hardware fiefdoms.
Do they know most of their customers have budget and they can't just spend entirety of it for gaming stuff?
There are also their potential customers that will gated by those huge cost for entry-level gaming setup.
Also for those who don't even have budget, why the hell they gonna participate on those out of reach game ecosystem?
Looking at my own gaming expenses, I've definitely stopped buying as much as I did say 10 years ago. To me it seems like the value of what you get for your money has fallen. I can afford it, but why should I? On one side, the corporations are actively trying to lock down everything and make it clear I'm just a guest in their theme park and on the other, they're offering investment safe sequels and remakes of past successes. I'm also kinda tired of Sony's "AAA cinematic gaming experiences".
I may also be getting too old cause all excitement of GTA VI fell through the floor once I learned I can't own a copy without the explicit approval of either console maker. So fuck that...
Honestly, the value for money in the gaming industry is the best its ever been outside of AAA and consoles.
Market spending correlates this, more money than ever is being spent but its focussed on indies, AAA sales have been dropping and big studios are losing money, deservedly.
Yup, I do this as well. Most of my gaming expenses go towards PC games now.
Honestly the cheapest place to be in gaming is PC even with current prices. I could go to my local thrift store and buy a cheap ass laptop for 50 bucks and play and buy a couple really solid games on steam or GOG for another 50. Would that laptop be great? Probably not but you could do it and there's also the bonus that if you do upgrade to a proper computer all your games still work.
PC also has uncountable choice of affordable games thanks to the indie scene booming. AAA is dying and Im here for it
Finding old gems is difficult, but yep, even with $50 laptop you technically have a lifetime (and 10 times over) worth of old video games available. Graphics and game design was atrocious though.
what would you say is an ideal budget for a mid range build these days? i know it’s prob the absolute worst time to build, but i really want a pc to break free from console life lol.
Do you want new or are you willing to cobble together used stuff? If new, $1k is probably about as low as you want to go, but you can definitely squeeze lower. If you’re interested in used stuff, it really depends on what kind performance you’re looking for. You can put together a computer that’s around ps5 performance for around $500 using an old office pc and like a Radeon 6700. I did something similar to kind of meet ps4 performance back in the day when I was a broke student.
i was thinking maybe getting a pre built i saw something around 1100 usd on micro center cause i dont really know jack about building my own pc. i am fortunate to have buddies game share their huge ps libraries and steam libraries so selection of games is def not an issue. i just dont really know much about compatibility and which is good with what. but for performance wise i would LIKE solid 1440p gaming across the board, 60fps or higher works for me. do you think i should suck it up and build now or pre build and upgrade later?
Fair enough, you really aren’t spending much more, if any at all, on microcenter prebuilts if you’re lucky enough to have one close. There are tons of resources for learning, but if your time is worth more than the hundred bucks or so and you don’t care about customizing it to your needs, wants, or preferences, that’s totally understandable.
But yeah, tough time to get/build a gaming pc. Imo there are a few different strategies to deal with the crazy prices.
Personally if I didn’t already have a pc and old parts laying around I’d go with #2. Get a case I like, decent mobo, cpu, psu. And I’d get a used couple generation old gpu, and absolute minimum viable amount of ram and storage until prices come down. Or I get a raise lol
Currently my desktop is a ryzen 7 1700 and Radeon 5700. It’s getting pretty old now, and if prices weren’t insane I’d have upgraded by now. But tbh, it’s fine. I don’t really care about playing the latest AAA games, and all the games I am interested in playing run absolutely fine at 1440p. So for the time being, it’s fine. I could upgrade the cpu pretty massively for not much money, but eh I’m really not bothered enough to do that until I get a new gpu. But a modest gpu upgrade is a ton of money, so not quite worth it to me yet.
Edit: oh and yeah if you do just grab a prebuilt, you will probably want at least a 9060xt or 5060ti for the gpu if you want to play like brand new AAA games at 1440p and high-ish settings
i appreciate the write up buddy, i’ve been very inclined but yeah this may be the worst time ever to get into pc building… i’ll keep my eyes peeled for a micro center deal if there’s a good one, saw a 9060xt pre built in the realm of 1300 usd. not sure if that’s really good bang for my buck, im also thinking of getting a bundle and perhaps a single fan nvidia gpu, and other parts. i’ve got an SSD lying in my ps5 i can always take out to save some easy cash on the full cost of the build.
Hell if I know, I don't look at PC prices when they're this high.
hahaha that’s fair, looking at it has made me question my choices
50 might be pushing it here, that is super old and low spec. Even an N150 laptop costs more. Can comfortably find 10th gen i5 desktops for under £200 though. Laptops seem to cost quite a bit more if I skim across CEX. I suspect being easier to store helps as they don't want to move them so quickly while desktops are taking up more space and they want to shift it faster.
Downside with those desktops is that its often full of proprietary HP or dell bullshit. But then laptops are even worse so I guess that is your choice. Still, CEX have got a 5 year warranty on second hand things which is pretty good.
I was actually thinking quite out of date actually. Also the thrift store near me tends to have piss cheap laptops cause they are locked or have wipped drives. But even if it's say 16 years old you could still play Kotor, Republic Cammandos, every Fallout up until 4, Dragon Age Origins, and plenty more modern no but good absolutely.
I would probably see if factorio can run on it. Rimworld too.
Modded? No. Unmodded? Maybe. I used to run an ultra modded NV save on a shitty laptop from 2010.
Well it depends on the mods, for both games lightly modded should be fine. Throwing in 100s might be a problem though.
Then again, 1.7 for Rimworld is apparently improving performance by quite a bit. So 2-4 times as many mods?
I thought a hundred plus mods was lightly modded Rimworld? The game is supposed to take over twenty minutes to launch right?
Maybe a decent refurbished gaming laptop for slightly more than $9 hundred dollars or so but yeah, I rather would buy refurbished or used
It's the K-shaped economy.
25% stopped buying. 50% are buying and dealing with things as best they can. And the last 25% are rolling in it and paying exorbitant prices to show off and balancing out the losses.
How long until someone digs up a bunch of Halo Infinite discs from a New Mexico desert?
Fallout 1&2 intensifies.
Lol
This is called demand destruction.
The handheld PC market is really becoming competition, huh?
I looked at buying a ps5 for the first time since it came out a couple weeks ago because I really wanted to play LOTR War in the North again.
Its twice as expensive as it was when it came out.
I just went home and grabbed my old ps2.
Its absolutely insane that this console is so expensive right now.
It is also the last PS I would get because I want physical discs.
The ps5 that comes with a disc drive is useless, as the "physical" copies of games are just empty cases with redemption codes inside.
Wait seriously? No discs at all? For any games?
Nah, that guy is a bit off. I've bought several brand new, 2026 titles this year and they all have discs in the box.
The majority as far as I know.
I strongly oppose this view: with my disc drive PS5 I am able to play games I bought second hand and games I borrowed from my local library
Yeah, those games are by far the minority.
I have literally bought the last few brand new, 2026 PS5 games on disc. I'm getting Control Resonant this week on disc.
If you mean GTAVI, then yeah that's bonkers. But you can get most games with a physical disc currently.
Sounds like it's gotten better? I remember it being a shit show before I sold my ps5.
duh
I can't afford to upgrade my PC with the prices of shit these days so this weekend I actually bought a PS5.
With the new relapse jailbreak the PS5 hacking scene seems to be popping off and it is a way that I can play newer games at a more reasonable price.
Sony certainly didn't get any money though, I always buy secondhand and this is no different and they will not get any money for games either but what with Linux running on old old firmwares it is only a matter of time before these newer, crackable firmwares also get Linux support and then I will effectively have a new, better PC for a fraction of the cost.
In the meantime I can go and play bloodborne finally!
Hoping for Linux support on my 13.60 Playstation 5 too so that I can get a free Steam Machine for the next few years.
It can’t come soon enough even if my Steam Deck is still running well.
Linux on PS5 is dead but might comeback with the new exploit but who knows.
Yeah I’m almost certain it’s gonna come back in a big way.
The question is will it be something permanent, in such case the PS5 would become a real Steam Machine alternative. Or will it just become something that you have to reinstall every time you reboot the console, becoming just a gimmick..
We shall see!
I bought a PS5 with a disc drive for 300 earlier this year secondhand so I had a console when I stay at my parents’ house. It was brand new too lol.
Is this surprising? It was written all over the wall when sony went after anime hubs and pushed hard to shut down free portals. Now microslop is making a push to make movies? That's bound to go as well as sonys garbage. Scroungers looking for scraps that can't read the room.
FAFO
"Computers that are just for games, that you can't do anything else on... And we say what games, and also for lots of them you have to keep paying us to play them... And you can't have any physical ownership of them anymore".
Good. Die.
The world may heal after all ..
And the PC master race wins the blood war
Maybe most people who would want to buy said systems can't afford 1600 dollars for one when they can't even afford groceries and gas? Huh, just maybe.
(Used pricing from GameStop)
What about the Switch 2?
Down 15%
Maybe because instead of getting cheaper over the years since release, they have instead got more expensive.
Wait, can they still be peasants if they're becoming marginal?
👍
these companies have, for decades, failed to provide any compelling reason to spend way too much money on a one trick pony when you can spend not much more on a PC that plays games (better), plus countless other things you can do with a PC, not just for entertainment, but work, production, bills, banking, and on and on.
consoles will never go away though. there will always be a segment of the population who buy into the bombardment of ads telling them that a console is necessary
Gee, I wonder why!
How is this when PS5s just sold out for the GTA VI launch? How much did that askew the YoY or YTD?
The sold.oit because they're not making them in any mind of volume because the components are either super expensive or, increasingly, simply not being manufacturered.
The gaming industry is quickly approaching a huge cliff. The user base is almost impossible to grow at these prices, and as existing consoles/PCs die, the current crop of customers won't be able to buy replacements.
The bloodshed we've seen over the past 2-3 years in the gaming industry is nothing compared to what's coming if hardware prices don't come back down.
I hardly ever use my Sony Netflix box anymore.
Mostly because I stopped buying from them digitally because they won't refund a game if you've downloaded a single solitary bit of data, and now they won't sell physical copies so...
How what Steam console doing?
You literally can't get one because they already sold every single one they were able to manufacture and there's a wait-list of a few months for the next ones they will be able to manufacture.
Amazing how 1 company is doing it right and others are fucking braindead to why.
Stay private steam.
Play box, x-station 400, who cares
"because mmprice too high and digital games*
just buy a PC for 3 times as much money and buy digital games there bro dude
There's a big Xbox shortage right now and it's been like this for months. Where it's difficult to find new Xboxes in stores outside of scalpers selling a handful of overpriced units. The listings I can find on my local Pricerunner site is almost 3 times what it cost back when it launched. It's surprising it hasn't dropped more than it has.
I wonder how gta will affect those numbers, and how those numbers will affect the pc release.
I doubt it will have a huge impact. It's not as if we're at the beginning of the console generation most people will already have a PlayStation.
I can get a fairly good gaming PC for a thousand dollars why would I pay $900 for a games console that's basically worse in every way?
took a little longer than expected
Consumers are willing to pay a surprisingly high amount for hardware. Just not for old ass consoles after hefty price hikes. The gaming landscape is being buried by data centers.
A console seemed like a stupid idea since forever. I never bought a new one, that would be a waste of money. Meanwhile game after game on sale for the pc.
And yet: I have 2 ps2's networked with harddrives, a modified ps3 and ps4, a couply of modified wii's and ds machines.
If it was more than $100 I wasnt buying. Several I got for free. We had our NES and SNES back in the day for about $20 (mid 90's).
People aren't having kids. Without kids who will play the video-games?
There's more kids than ever before