This seems to be a point across all media at the moment, people watching/listening on sub-par equipment then complaining because the content is designed for higher quality gear.
“This film was too dark on my laptop screen” when it’s designed for a HDR enabled screen, “Nolan’s sound was mangled though my TV speakers” when it’s designed for at least a decent DTS set up. Etc. The same thing now seems to have infected games, “why is this 2023 game not designed for my 2018 rig and it’s limitations”.
Isn’t the size of your PC storage entirely user controlable? If you want 6x the memory you had in 2008 when F3 came out you could have it. The Xbox model at the time came with a 20gb hard drive on the standard model and 120gb for an Elite. So they’ve definitely exponentially grown to 512gb/1tb this gen.
None of which changes the fact that the console market is driven by platform holders selling consoles for low profit or even a loss and making it up on the back end with their cut of all games, accessories, etc released for the format.
The Steam Deck is a PC at the end of the day though which has always been a different model. They still lock the main OS to their store despite it being more open if you want to dig deeper.
I’m not an achievement/trophy hunter personally but I can see some people’s issue there. The whole point of them is to indicate you’ve done something particular in game. If it’s just reaching a point in a story or whatever no big deal, but if it’s something that requires some skill, having it available when you can turn off the need for all those skills does undermine the system a bit.
I’m amazed everyone seems to have forgotten the open nature was an Achilles heel for the 3DO model, then it occured to me that the console is 30 years old and I’m even older lol.
The fact is that the console market works how it does, advanced tach at reasonable prices, because the platform holders make money on an ongoing basis from each user. Getting rid of that model will mean consoles selling for the same price as equivilent specced PCs at launch.
It’s a different model entirely, most copies of windows sold will never have a game installed on them bar the pack-ins. No one is buying a console to do spreadsheets.
Then who gets the licensing costs for the Dev kits? Who gets the 30% cut of the digital store? Who gets the cut of accessories sold? Each game sold? Who’s responsible for updating the OS?
The console market works how it does because they sell the tech at a loss and make up money on the ongoing sales. The 3DO tried the open source model in the early 90s and ended up with ridiculously pricey consoles as all the manufacturers needed to make their profit upfront. Eventually, there will be no price difference between a console and a PC if equivilent specs.
That model has been tried in the past and it didn’t work because no one was making any licensing costs from the games produced to pump into R&D to progress the platform. Remember the 3D0?
The reason a PS can’t play an Xbox game is because Sony don’t have access or the legal right to implement the hardware or software environment that MS have patented for the Xbox.