Excited to see if they announce a price for the PS5 Pro tomorrow, especially with them gradually raising prices on the PS5 and accessories here and there in various markets. Thing is gonna cost a mint for a little extra ray tracing, a few more FPS.
PS3 era Sony is back, baby…
unfortunately the economics of modern consoles are just really bad due largely to a) exchange rates and b) most GPU advancement these days being primarily intended for professional use cases which then have to trickle down to gamers, which is why Nintendo and Valve are doing so well with “well it works great for a handheld!”-tier performance
1080p is plenty, thank you
resolution shouldn’t really be the defining criteria for graphics upgrades for that matter and I think it represents both a lack of a imagination and a necessary shorthand that it often winds up being used as a stand-in
Switch 2 is in all likelihood going to produce PS5-looking games while rendering at something close to 720p which is why the PS5 can’t catch a break
Instead of just a specs upgrade, I hope the Switch 2 does some bonkers shit and has like three screens that interlock or can hook on to your face for bad VR and also brings back Streetpass but now tied to your phone via a bad app that they’ll stop supporting in 2 years
Does Xbox advertise the power of AI yet? Will the PS5 Pro have an AI advertising bullet point?
it does really seem like that with the cost of hardware going up for stupid reasons and stupid features, microsoft being essentially a too-rich-for-it’s-own-good directionless third party, sony back to being supremely uninspired, and AAA games in general falling into a more and more narrow gameplay niche, that a good-enough switch 2 is primed to just sweep everything else away. like, what are you really gonna get for sticking with sony? why would you spend $900 on a GPU? what’s the downside to just buying a switch 2 and riding old PC hardware for a decade?
yup, they have a ridiculous open goal right now (which, to their credit, they did a lot to prime, whether they anticipated the Tegra being such a good platform to architect on ten years ago or not)
I do think super-high-end PC stuff (eg Alan Wake 2, Outlaws on high settings, possibly Stalker 2 or Flight Simulator 2) is in a class of its own right now but it’s proportionally way harder to access and in a much narrower niche than it was at this time last generation (which was a higher historical peak than it got credit for) and if that’s the only thing you can’t get on Nintendo, which it’s looking like it will be for the near-term future, that’s saying a lot
monhun wilds will probably be a Switch 2 launch game
Microsoft is probably going to try really hard to get Game Pass on Switch, I expect the third chapter of FF7 remake will launch on there as well
switch 2 is also going to make the steam deck a more niche value for people who have big libraries on pc or want outside of nintendo’s store vs. two years ago where it was being pitched to people as “the switch pro you’ve wanted + runs elden ring ok”
that said, this is nintendo, they are fully capable of getting obstinate and fucking everything up. what if the switch 2 is $500, isn’t quite good enough, and launches with a shitty LCD panel? what if they mess up backwards compatibility in some stupid way? what if the joycons are exactly as shitty as they are now, only nintendo also locks third parties out like sony has? what if their online multiplayer strategy gets even worse? what if the thing just has like no internal storage again and you have to run more complicated games off of SD cards, what does that look like?
it should be totally possible for them to hit $400 with Series S-level hardware plus a bunch of FP16 cores for ray tracing and DLSS
they will probably need to go the Steam Deck route of replaceable NVMe rather than SD cards because storage bandwidth is going to be a huge problem otherwise and I think they will enjoy charging a fortune for upgrades and peripherals like that but tbh that should be the main gotcha. Apple margins on storage and controllers and such. the Dock might not be included in $400. The OLED one will be $600. all first party games will be $70-80. etc
Based on that alluring setup … there’s nothing else Nintendo can do to fxxk it up big time, like they always do when the goal is wide open:
It’s almost scary to think of how Big N always manages to drop the ball in the most unexpected way, and faced with a quasi win by default, how could they manage to bot—
February 2025:
Handheld gaming branch sold to Microsoft
what’s going to be interesting is if valve shows much sense of caring about or defending their newfound position of second place in the console market a few years from now
it is easy to at least see a nintendo that simply doesn’t give a shit. if they launch a switch 2 with monster hunter wilds, the ability to plug in botw and totk and play them at 60 fps, and then release like a mario kart and an animal crossing within a year, they make a zillion dollars. they don’t even have to get anything right.
precisely. 2025-7, and whether Playstation implodes completely, is mostly going to be down to which of their competitors refuses to care more
I think we’re still waiting for more console normies to find out how much games get discounted during Steam sales, and Valve making hardware is step towards that.
I also would be shocked if the storefront rules for content on Switch 2 were the same as Switch, which had its own rules revised in a more conservative direction during its lifespan, and awareness that PC is the least restrictive platform content-wise will similarly help PC gaming adoption if the other platform owners decide it’s time for a crackdown.
there’s a strong undercurrent among AAA devs right now of suggesting that big games are actually too cheap, so I suspect this too will make great timing for Nintendo
steam sales r not nearly as disproportionate as they once were, a lot of publishers push digital sales cross-platform at same or very close levels simultaneously, there’s also always like 10 themed sales going on on each console at any given time.
Obv computer is broadest library and generally cheapest but if ur budget conscious “normie” I find it hard to believe in pc dominance. Plug & play + lack of menu fiddling go a long way (speaking personally)
I’m a little curious how the switch 2 will differentiate itself (if at all?).
Like if it’s a higher performance redux with backwards compatibility are they confident that their current user base is gamer-esque enough to care about performance upgrades and/or follow console upgrades that it won’t be a Wii U repeat ?
God it is so funny to see Sony step on every rake possible. Who has money for a slightly better box and you increased by 15,000 the box you were already selling AND the only controller you can use with it?
Might as well start charging to even turn it on.