The assholes managing these megacorps are in it for the buck. When they squeeze the final scraps of profit, they go do it somewhere else, having padded their bank accounts and their resume with tales of how they are able to extract maximum returns…
Honestly, I think we are entering an era where via a prompt you will be able to ask AI to make you any experience, show, game, book, VR, song etc etc. I say this as someone who is a VR developer and knows my days are numbered. So are Nintendo’s.
I sadly don’t have the time nor the nerves to fight my PC, but I sincerely hope that intel GPUs become a force on the market to consider in the future, prices from the big two are way too high, competition might change that.
With the huge improvements that have been putting into their drivers, I think their 2nd generation cards will actually be worth getting. At least in comparison to a Radeon.
Can we all please admit that we merely tolerate keyboard as a gaming input device because of the precision that mouse provides? (Except maybe some special cases, like RTS) It’s a glorified typewriter, and we (PC gamers) use it only because at some point, it was all that we had and we just got used to it. There must be something better than a panel of buttons.
As I said, except special occasions. But ultimately, it’s still not perfect for anything but typing-heavy games. I can probably imagine a better propriety input method even for RTS that would forgo finger gymnastics.
Gaming sticks (and weird ass abominations like trackball mice) were quite popular for some time during late 90s and early 00s, but now they’re mostly limited to certain games like flight/space games and usually part of a HOTAS setup.
What I miss on keyboard & mouse setups is any form of analogue input, usually best for driving in games and walking faster/slower etc. But nothing is stopping me from just plugging in any controller and it’ll usually work on PC just fine.
For everything else I simply prefer keyboard anyway, many more buttons and combinations that controllers often lack. Lots of controller supported games these days need ways around having too many buttons by adding modifiers or having to use select-wheels and what not.
Hell I’d even go as far as adding a Stream Deck to my setup (I don’t even stream), just to have another panel of (configurable) buttons to use for various games and stuff.
You can technically get analog keyboard switches for your WASD movement and such, but afaik it’d be quite expensive and require a fairly customized keyboard to pull off. But it can be done!
Also I love having extra mouse buttons for all my modifiers. I use mine in WoW to access all my hotbars without moving my hand to press any modifier keys on the keyboard, really nice setup.
Yeah I thought about trying an analogue keyboard but I don’t think I’ll enjoy how those keys would work, just doesn’t feel natural on a keyboard.
I also recently got a mouse with 12 buttons, specifically for WoW at the time lol. I have whole grid set up for just using those buttons. So many more (easy) keybinds opened up because of that.
Yup I’m with you here. I love KBM and it’s my preferred way to play for most games, but when it comes to driving I’d much prefer a controller with analogue triggers and a stick (unless it’s a sim racer, in which case a wheel of course) for that extra precision.
Unfortunately I can’t think of a good design to give that level of control to just one hand. Analogue keys are a thing but they sound awful, nowhere near enough precision due to the short travel of them.
On PC, I game exclusively with trackballs and have since the nineties. I’ve never not been given the side eye when someone found out that’s how I play.
When was this magical time during which they were popular?
I remember a friend had one of those things, it was some experience lol
I think one of my uncles and one of my teachers had one too, but it’s been like 24 years or so.
They were also featured heavily on just about every computer expo we went to during that time, I think it was a pretty short period that they were marketed but I remember seeing them everywhere for that time. Like it was the hype at the moment, like how 3D screens and VR had been hyped really hard for a short while and then just died down kinda quickly.
Well, fair enough that you were exposed to them. I didn’t have a lot of friends, especially not those even remotely into any kind of tech, as a kid; I think I first heard of trackballs from a programming teacher in about 1996 and bought one to try out of curiosity. Ever since then I’ve used one whenever it was an option.
I’ve even mostly used the same model. If you look in my comment history, you can see I recently mentioned that most of what I use is Kensington Orbits. I’ve tried other models, but they don’t work for me.
The one PC gaming exception for me is Minecraft. In that game you have to right-click a lot (as I’m sure you know) and I guess I haven’t developed the muscles for that because it makes my wrist very tired very quickly. Still, I play a lot of FPS games and have no problem holding the right click for zoom and such; only quick, repetitive right-clicking causes problems for me.
edit: To address your original comment, I have one friend who uses a trackball at work but a regular mouse for anything else. Other than that, I rarely meet anyone who has even heard of them, let alone used them, let alone consistently done so.
I remember playing Red Alert on 90s Toshiba Satellite Pro laptops with the cursor nipple in the middle of the keyboard, I got pretty good at using the nipple (lmao). But they didn’t really come back on newer laptop models after that.
Same seemed to happen with most trackball hype, although I knew they were still around. I don’t recall if it was one with the ball on top or on the left side, all I remember not being able to ever scroll in the direction I needed because the angle was always off for me.
Another thing from that time that stuck with me is that gaming joysticks were more common. I had one for some favorite games, but because I used it so much I am now crippled with the “Invert Y” syndrome. Whenever I play games with controllers I will have to invert the Y axis, because that’s what makes most sense based on the joysticks from back then.
Who in their right mind plays souls games or any action RPG with mouse / keyboard?? You cannot even play demon souls with a mouse. A mouse is for aiming in shooters and the like.
Can you not? I’ve played various third person combat games (are they all part of “hack n slash”?) with a mouse just fine. I do prefer controller, but there’s nothing wrong with using a kb/mouse in most of those games. Is Dark Souls control scheme really that bad?
Notice, that I didn’t say it’s impossible to use KB for gaming, I just said (or implied) that it’s not optimal. It’s not good, it’s just what we have and what we are used to, and there’s a lot of room for improvement. And I say this as a PC gamer of 30+ years. So much so that when I lay my hand on a keyboard it automatically assumes the WASD position, even if I intend to type.
And I’m glad that I brought this perspective to your attention, because we often don’t question what we are used to since childhood. Hopefully, these discussions will eventually bring us something better, that we have not yet thought of.
It is optimal though. I don’t understand why you are saying it’s not? Aiming with a mouse is 9 million % more effective than thumbsticks. Like that’s reality. If you had two equal skilled teams, one on controllers, and one on kb/m (and it’s a first person shooter), the kb/m gang will win like 99% of the time just based on that.
You’re just taking your own opinion about kb/m and assuming that it applies to the masses. It doesn’t. Vast majority of people would agree with me. Kb/m is better for non-controller games.
A lack of analog controls is definitely an issue. Having digital buttons on keys that are either 100% on or off loses a ton of fine control.
Playing GTA and need to make a slight left while driving? On a gamepad you just slightly tilt the stick left to make a smooth turn. On keyboard you have to do a bunch of short little taps on A (and D when you inevitably oversteer) to stop yourself from jerking the wheel left.
I remember really wanting a Logitech G13 when they came out but I could never justify spending the money on one.
For movement I would take something like a HOTAS over keyboard. For example in games with multiple movement speeds finding the right speed is rather cumbersome on keyboard because the key press is an on/off and not a scale.
Similarly on keyboard movement is restricted to 8 directions. If you need to move in some other direction most people actually use a mouse to compensate for the lack of movement options because it’s too cumbersome with a keyboard.
There are benefits to using keyboards but there are places where you can use something better. Analogue input simply gives better movement options.
You’re missing my point and just sticking to the usual false dichotomy of KBM vs. gamepads. I’m saying, we should come up with something better than a device designed for entering text, and I didn’t even criticize mice. Keyboard isn’t and can’t be “optimal” gaming device because that’s not its purpose, and it’s not what it was optimized for. Games just adapted to accommodate the devices already included with every PC, with varying degrees of success. That is just a fact, not an opinion. Keyboards weren’t made for playing games, we just adapted to using them, therefore they aren’t optimal.
Which means that we are yet to develop the optimal device for gaming to use in conjunction with the mouse, one that was designed specifically for that purpose. Just because you “don’t know what else would be better when combined with the mouse” (quote from your other comment) it doesn’t mean that nobody can design something better.
Yes, controller are purpose built for gaming, and they are definitely far superior in a lot of game genres. But mouse still is better for precision control, be it aiming a gun or selecting a unit. And keyboard is holding it back, because it’s just an unoptimized row of buttons.
I didn’t set a goal to pitch something better, I just pointed the fact that we use unoptimized hardware and hopefully somebody is working on something better.
What do you imagine being better though? Like just in general? Some sort of gamepad that has directionals that you use in your left hand while you use the mouse with your right? Something totally different? Like what else is there?
In the very least, something more rounded and ergonomic than a row of buttons, something that lays out the buttons in such a way that they are more easily reachable without moving or contorting your hand. Fewer buttons for the pinky, more buttons for the thumb, which is now pretty much only used to hit spacebar. Maybe a big analog stick that sits under your palm, so you can tilt your entire hand to move (IDK how how useful that would be, but you wanted me to imagine something), leaving your fingers free to perform other actions.
Which is a good thing, I think. The good thing about keyboards is that they can control (to various degrees of efficiency) everything going on on a computer. It’s an allrounder and imo does many things well. I’m not denying that there may be better ways to play games (although some outright require a kb, e.g. games with a text chat), but games supporting keyboards is good and natural considering their allrounder nature.
Might as well throw in a full body haptic feedback suit with a built in fleshlight. In all seriousness idk wtf I’m even arguing about anymore in this thread. Keyboard is totally fine.
For precise inputs keyboards are really good, stuff like tactical shooters, a lot of custom fighting game controllers are basically just paired down keyboards too.
Keyboards are pretty fucking cool, analog sticks are easy to use and good if you need the 360 degree movement, but otherwise keyboards all the way.
You’re misinterpreting my point. We can make a device with precise inputs that isn’t a flat slab of buttons, we just haven’t yet. This is not a gamepad vs. KBM argument.
As you mentioned, it’s still a slab, that is only good for a few genres of games. Basically, a flat controller without the analog sticks, which is opposite of ergonomic, and you don’t use that with a mouse.
Nah, mouse and keyboard is great for a lot of things. Strategy games, most MMORPGs. Heck even fighting games are actually really nice on a keyboard if you can get used to it, you can do very complicated movements by just pressing a few buttons, the actual analog input is actually completely unutilized in most fighting games anyway.
Having such a precise control over the buttons you press as well as having such a large amount of them is really important to a lot of games. And honestly even if we made a unique controller to replicate this precise input, we would still end up using a keyboard anyway because you can actually type messages on it, too.
I specifically mentioned those special cases. It’s obviously nearly impossible to play RTS and MMORPGs with a controller effectively. And of course another reason we use keyboards is that some games are just text input/typing-heavy, it would be mighty inconvenient switching to and from another input method very often.
But I also think that it’s easy to argue the point that the device designed with the sole purpose of entering text is not optimal for navigating characters in 2D/3D space. Something better just hasn’t come along yet or it hasn’t been popularized enough. An improved mouse design could also offload a lot of inputs from the kb hand, like those MMORPG mice with macro buttons. There’s definitely room for improvement.
Idk, anything that does what a keyboard does for gaming will basically just end up being a keyboard honestly. If you want a set of easily accessible, customizable buttons for a videogame, what better than just a whole board filled with them really. I think that KBM has stuck around so long is that it is just a great way to play a lot of games.
My main point is just that I don’t think a lot of people are “tolerating” keyboard controls like you initially said.
I think it stuck around because the primary purpose of a computer is still information handling, and thus almost all of them require a keyboard. And since keyboard is always included and is “good enough” people just kept using what was available. History is littered with cases where something stuck merely because it was good enough and easily available. The QWERTY layout itself is a good example. There are layouts that are much better, yet 99% of the keyboards still use it. Because alt layout keyboards are scarce and using them requires relearning. All while QWERTY is good enough.
Azeron cyborg is really nice but takes a bit to setup you keybinds for each game since even between fps games they can’t decide what key opens a door.
On the azeron your thumb has a joystick which is w a s d then that leaves all your other fingers with multiple keys each so you don’t really have to move your hand around that much. Still need a keyboard around for typing though in chat or a game where you name stuff
I used to play with a guy who was awesome with a mouse in his right hand and a controller in his left. Pretty cool setup. I tried it out and it wasn’t for me
My wife does this because shes purely a M+K player and one game, she was sucking st. So she plugged in one of my controllers and moved with the controller, but looked with the mouse.
I’m almost entirely mouse/keyboard but some games are just better with controllers…Rocket League, MGS, Yakuza…couldn’t imagine enjoying them without it.
I’ve been thinking of a mouse / controller hybrid solution being the ultimate gaming peripheral. Joystick to walk and drive, mouse to aim. Should easily hold its own in PC shooters and console racers.
As I get older I’ve grown to just appreciate comfort over precision. I don’t play competitive multiplayer, in fact the only multiplayer I play is COD zombies with some buddies once a week. And we all suck anyways so we’re just having a laugh. I’d much rather just lean back in my chair with a controller.
As a longtime PC gamer, Games like Dark Souls was impossible for me to play with a keyboard. But I kept watching my friends play it and really liked it a lot. Got one of those discount Xbox controller knockoffs and got pretty good with the game using a controller.
When the Steamdeck came around, I felt right at home with a controller.
It’s shifted dramatically where 90% of games, I’m playing controller. But still can’t play FPSes with one. (Even though I got pretty good with Halo back in the day)
I’m one of the very few people who loves the Steam Controller. If given an option between KBM and Steam Controller, I generally do the latter. The right pad as mouse isn’t as accurate as a mouse, but damned if it isn’t way more comfy from the couch.
I guess what I’m saying is: I’d suggest it is less about KBM and more about what games you play, where you play them, and probably whether or not you play multiplayer.
I’m not sure I agree with “tolerating” keyboard. I quite like it over a joystick! The benefit in complex games (like RTS, as you mention) is obvious, but even in most 3D games I prefer the instant reaction and definite axis of WASD over the 360° analog inputs of a joystick. There are not many times I would rather move at 2° forwards-right at a ramping 95% speed instead of simply moving forwards at 100% instantly. As for racing or other games that require precise analog inputs, I would generally prefer something that is bigger than my thumb i.e a racing wheel.
That isn’t to say I completely disagree, though! The ergonomics are a clear disadvantage. Most keyboards are not ergonomic for typing, let alone gaming. It would be fantastic to see more gaming-specialised keypad devices other than that one Razor one and whatever Chinese Amazon specials are kicking around. But the keypad format is not something I would want to forego as any FPS I play for more than 20 hours I usually have the entire left half of the keyboard bound to something for quick access.
I upvoted you because this is a great discussion point. :)
Yeah, I’m not strictly comparing KBM vs. gamepad. As you mentioned, keyboards are just not ergonomic, and that’s what I was basically saying. So you understood my point precisely, I, too, want to see more options.
You could configure a thumbstick to operate how you want whereas with a board you can never have fully porpotional control.
On top of that, most controllers have directional pads.
So true. I distinctly remember instances while playing GTAV with controller in the left hand and mouse in the right. lol
Would love to find a dedicated peripheral that i liked to be used similarly.
Game pads that use keyboard keys with custom switches and unique form factors are where I think we’re heading. Like the razer tartarus v2, which I have. It is great for gaming, better than a standard keyboard that uses identical switches, but still not ideal. It is similar enough to the layout of a keyboard that finger positioning can be the same and the learning curve is smooth.
It’s closer to your “ideal” but not there yet. And I completely agree that we need to go in that direction.
There are some exceptions but I generally agree. The keyboard isn’t anywhere as precise as an analogue stick. Ideally I would use something like HOTAS for movement and mouse for aiming.
The irony is, the top world record runs on Trackmania (a not-a-hot-wheels track time trial driving game) tracks are done by keyboard drivers. Driving a high performance car on a crazy, loop-de-loopy jumps and bumps and speed boosters tracks is quickest with … WASD controls.
It’s not really that ironic. Something more ergonomic with the same tactile short travel buttons would’ve worked even better, you can just also do it with a keyboard, albeit not as comfortably.
Nice one! It’s honestly too bad they didn’t actually call it Putastation or Putabox! Putabox would have been even better IMO. That would have been so hilarious!
Regardless, given the performance impact and how few games actually have ray tracing (implemented correctly), it makes more sense to just disregard ray tracing altoghether.
It’s an undercooked technology used to push more expensive products, nothing more.
Regarding dlss vs fsr and xess, yes dlss has better quality but it’s also proprietary so I honestly do not care about it. Just like gsync died, dlss will eventually die as well.
(true) gsync isn’t dead, it’s only in the highest end of monitors which is basically where it’s always been. It only “died” because it requires an expensive module vs adaptive sync being built into basically every modern display controller so it’s basically free.
The proprietary gsync approach with a dedicated hw module is indeed dead and most “g-sync” monitors just use the now pretty common vesa’s vrr (aka freesync).
However I did research a bit and found some “gsync pulsar” monitors but none have been released yet, I believe. They do sound like unnecessary overpriced products though. That’s Nvidia for ya.
When I went team red for the first time earlier this year, I really scrutinized zoomed in screenshots to compare the upscaling for FSR and DLSS. With FSR 3, I couldn’t see any difference compared to DLSS. Older FSR versions yeah, but at least for me not a problem any more.
I thought I was happy I went AMD until my card started overrunning its fans for no reason a month after the warranty ran out. I manually had to reseat the card on the PCIe for it to stop because nothing else would, not even restarting the PC. And then one day it heated up so bad it stopped working. I think they gave me a defective card on purpose because people are less likely to return the items when they’re buying from outside the US.
I’ve since gone back to Nvidia and my current card hasn’t given me any issues. What a nightmare that was.
I swear that in my 20+ years of computer work that everyone has a story like this for every brand out there. It seems to literally be bad luck. That being said some companies just have abysmal and evil support ethics. And these days it seems all of them are trying to dial in the device failure to happen after the warranty expires.
I think that can be true in many situations. I have had sincere failures that on the surface sound like incompetence. It is possible for things to fail so spectacularly it sounds like fiction.
Because the largest gaming GPU manufacturer in the world says so. Unfortunately they have the clout to drive this narrative to devs who will accommodate them because devs dont want their game to look like shit on an Nvidia gpu.
I think that these technologies are still very new. Nvidia arent going to let us know what their skunkworks is up to and what the next generation of the tech is going to look like.
It’s Nintendo. I’m not shocked it happened… just that it took this long. Its fairly common hear about some fangame or mod via gaming news, and then two weeks later see the headline, “Legend of Mariotroid has been DMCA’d”
It gives error only when you try to login, the inspector would need to create an account and login. Possible but they barely do “it turns on, it works, can be resold”, it takes too much time, Amazon many times just disposes perfectly fine stuff just because they don’t want to pay $5 for someone to check it
I had this pop up on my feed this morning. They are doing the same thing they did on hacked Switch 1 consoles and basically revoking their certificate, so it can’t connect to Nintendo servers any longer. youtu.be/ExgYTA18_vo
That’s interesting and all, but I still don’t see a reason to upgrade my PS5 to a Pro, and frankly it wouldn’t even be that interesting for the price as a new player either.
Are there like any games that will really make use of the new hardware? Other than perhaps upgraded framerates and better 4K support. The average console player probably isn’t going to care that much, not for the giant price increase over minimal gains.
I feel like all games on this generation will still be limited to the base PS5 anyway, can’t imagine hardware matters much until the next generation consoles.
I know, but I was being impatient before. Ragnarok is already on PC and I kinda forgot about it. I’ll look into it once a sale hits, but even then it’ll be a debate with myself over the psn stuff.
People who don’t have a gaming PC but still want to game would be the next target audience in line, since they wouldn’t have another machine to play third-party games on anyway, so the exclusive would just be a bonus on top.
But I don’t think they’re even interested in paying so much extra for features they don’t even care about. Perhaps a smooth high framerate in casual shooters would be something they’d care for, but that can easily be achieved on base PS5 with at least 60+ FPS. I don’t think they’re the ones that care about true 4K, 120Hz/FPS or slightly better textures.
The only thing I can think of that people are hyped up for is GTA6. I fear that Rockstar might sell out to Sony and deliver a shitty 30FPS locked, low resolution and texture version of the game on older PS5 models on purpose, just to “push the hardware” of the newest model. But then again, they also couldn’t even be arsed to unlock framerate for RDR2 on PS5, not even after so many years.
I’m already decided. I’m not buying GTA 6. And GTA 6 was the whole reason I bought the PS5 to begin with.
Over the past year I’ve seen how rockstar are making moves to make GTA 6 even more of a pay to win multiplayer experience, and less focused on the $60 single player experience. All of this at a $60 or more price point to start with I’m sure.
If you want to be pay to win, you can’t also be AAA pricepoint to buy the game. I personally don’t play pay to win games, but when you charge for the base game it goes from being a sketchy game mechanic, to being an outright scam.
You know what I’m playing right now on PS5? Transportation Fever 2. Fuck off Rockstar. You lost me as a lifelong customer since the first GTA on PS1.
I haven’t read much into GTA 6 so far, only seen the trailer basically.
I do hope the singleplayer will still be as good as previous games, although I definitely would expect them to try and cash in on online even more.
T2 and Rockstar definitely fucked up with GTA 5 too. Originally there were supposed to be singleplayer expansions. Which they of course dropped in favor of how popular online got. And then they even proceeded to ban mods that took multiplayer-only cars to singleplayer, fucking disgusting move.
I’ll wait and see how the singleplayer is. I never bought GTA5 for its multiplayer, it only got less appealing the more they added to it too. The only part that interested me much later on were the RP servers, it genuinely looked fun on some of the moderated ones, so maybe Rockstar will try to get into that, but if online is just a carbon copy of GTA5 I won’t even bother.
I think you can expect about the same as with the PS4 Pro. Maybe finally this time it will be a smooth actual 4k (ok actually, UHD) gaming experience. But that’s kinda what we said last time too, so I don’t know.
Developers would still have to optimize their games to get the most out of the hardware, unless we’re talking about a game that was already performing suboptimal and throwing raw power at it will hide the surface level problems so it looks smoother.
I would love to see all this horsepower being used to actually make the games better by design, like pathfinding and NPC behaviour. The last big breakthrough we had was raytracing, which proved that it wasn’t photorealism that makes it look better, but accurate lighting and shadows. For the consoles it was using an SSD for almost instant loading times.
But I digress. I’m not upgrading my PS5 either, but I can see the value for power users that play competitively or something.
I've just assumed they don't care. They've done scummy shit for years, and it doesn't really matter because they'll still sell massive amounts of their first-party titles. So any bad faith they garner with a subset of their audience or old fans is just dust in the wind since it won't ultimately impact sales.
Oh, it VERY much will hurt their sales, just not this quarter. Though in ten years when Nintendo is wondering why they’re struggling to grow a new fan base, they might remember all the people they pissed off who now are not introducing their children to Nintendo.
Dude for every one of us there are 19 others that will introduce the children.
Same view as those thinking Reddit would die when we all came here.
I like to make the choices I do on moral grounds, not hoping for death to a company, it’s how I sleep at night. Does me never shopping on Amazon affect them? Nope. Do I feel better for not giving them my money. Yes.
All we can do is be the best person we want and nothing more.
Enshittification isn’t because people are not using their services. It’s because the growth isn’t happening at the rates they’re used to so they can either spend more money improving the product, or make it shit for the current customers to make more money.
They are all greedy suits as growth is the only metric they’re interested in.
That aside I’m not entirely sure what point you’re trying to make here fam.
Nintendo first party IP alone can carry them through, not to mention the national pride Japan has towards their success. Western Sales are nice, but I don’t think they put as much attention into them.
There used to be stories (not sure how many were true) of him going to events like E3, Tokyo Game Show, Gamescom, and other developer-centric game conventions.
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