80% of Fortnite players are on console. Despite everyone owning a PC that could play the game people are still going out of their way to purchase a console, an online sub, and play shooters with controllers instead of mouse and keyboard. Consoles are only dying because SONY and Microsoft are run by blithering idiots. They should be dominating the gaming market against PCs. They are only destroying their businesses in hopes of controlling gaming's equivalent of Netflix.
Their strategy is not making games. But simply forcing everyone to Gamepass or some service where they rent seek everyone permanently.
Steamdeck is niche and will never be anything more than that. It has sold 1% of the hardware of the Nintendo Switch. PSP and Vita combined were probably close to 100million hardware units moved. All Nintendo DS models totaled 150million in sales. Steamdeck is another Valve product where its small GabeN fanboys will clamor about how godlike everything Valve and Steam does is perfect yet almost no one will pay attention.
Fair point. Though what I meant with the Steamdeck is that it's the first time a PC has been put in a box and has successfully been sold to an audience. I agree the Steamdeck is very much a luxury item, but who says other cheaper and more focused alternatives can't be shat out? Imagine a "Fortnite box" which only plays Fortnite but costs like 100$ tops and includes some store credit in the deal? Why the fuck get a PS5 or 6 or whatever when you can get the Fortbox, plug it into your TV and start dabbing on people. Same deal with more expanded scope where you get an "Epicbox" that connects to your epic store directly with a stupid proof interface like SteamOS and with decent enough specs to run most things in average 1080p that gets scaled up in 4k. At the right price, I can see more than a few people interested in that over the next Soybox. Why?
Fucking exclusives, when every game is everywhere, you will play it in the most convenient way possible. The moment Sony has almost no exclusives and the few they do have nobody gives a shit, it becomes a very expensive brick. Your Fortnite is played on console example, yes, but a PS4 can also play Fortnite, no need to upgrade in any shape way or form. Nintendo as per usual can play on it's own wavelength due to exclusives and an insane amount of brand loyalty that only Sonic kind of replicates.
The casual mindset probably just wants to take the path with higher convenience and lower perceived price. If they can just pay what seems like a small fee and have instant access to lots of games, that probably seems way better than ordering a physical copy and waiting for it or going out to buy it, or even waiting for it to download.
If they can pay a monthly fee and just play whatever slop they like conveniently, they'll probably take that option. I'm just guessing though, as I don't have any insight into their customer data
I can definitely see this, people that like to play the new thing for a couple of hours and then go to the next thing, but the question is if you have enough adopters to make infrastructure and licensing worth it yet keep it cheap enough for people to stick with it. 5 bucks a month? Yeah, people would go into that. 10 bucks? Starting to be a big ugly ask. Anything more than that and it's a dead service. Don't remember how much XBOX's was, but since that one is also inherent to the windows and PC platform, it isn't asking for a Microsoft box to actually use unlike PSN.
because mouse & keyboard sucks while playing on a couch, and most consoles are used in the living room (or mancave with a couch).
same reason you don't buy a steam deck to play it at a desk.
Hence, why steamdeck being successful really opens up the possibility of attempting a computer as "console" model.
People have been saying Nintendo is dead since the 2010s. Even during the Wii and DS days people were saying they should go mobile and third party.
I don't know why, but people have been autistically wrong about Nintendo for almost the last 15 years.
To be fair, Gamecube sales were tepid, wii was a fluke that captured the shovelware market but failed at the "hardcore" one and wii u was an absolute disaster. That the switch blew up so much was in nobody's bingo. What Nintendo has always done very well is never losing cash on hardware and having a solid warchest. That they basically had (and still have) a monopoly on portable videogames keeps them in a healthy state and even though the 3ds had a tepid start, their lack of real competition let it keep pushing though even though nobody gave a shit about the 3d part of it.
Also, I have to insist on how autistic and dedicated the Nintendo fanbase is. Sony could copy the Nintendo formula to a T and still get worse numbers since they don't have bing bing wahoo man and silent elf boy and you depend on your internal stuff until the third parties lose fear of working with you. Nintendo has finally gotten back third party support, but it had shit third party support from N64 onward outside of a few gems here and there.
Everyone shits on the Gamecube but its third party stuff is great. I don't even own Sunshine or Double Dash, but Rogue Squadron, Eternal Darkness and Monkey Ball are top tier, as well as its port of Ikaruga.
Not relevant to a console's success. Gamecube had one of the most high quality libraries out there (though a lot of it's third party went elsewhere, gamecube is still the best way to play it), Wii U is also very solid, Dreamcast was a banger till it sudokud and I have heard a ton of good things from both of Sony's portable systems. Sadly, a console with a solid game library does not translate to actual market success.
