Aiddon said:
JarinArenos said:
Shadow-Phoenix said:
I love his show, what I don't like are bloody parrots that end up doing the whole "PC master race" joke he'd made and turned into something worse.
The fact that people don't realize that it was a satirical joke is just kinda depressing...
Fan bases always DO have a tendency to misinterpret things. Heck, even using the term "Master Race" was meant to be an insult as that term is the kind of thing used solely by idiots who like to believe a Master Race exists in the first place.
Everyone knew it was satirical - but the "PC Gaming Master Race" adopted it as a title because it was very fitting to their mindset. They way they view console wars - petty gripes between two inferior opponents - reinforces this belief (right or not) that they're a step above them. But it was, at the time, mostly a joke; consoles were still competing with PCs, largely because they had a reason to exist.
Times have changed, though. As much as this review is made to amuse, its underlying point is quite correct; consoles these days are watered down PCs on lockdown by the manufacturer in order to gouge as much money from consumers as possible. There's no competition, there's no reason to give good deals. Everything is run by a single company, and what that company says, goes. PC had always gotten around that, but today does an even greater job, offering unbeatable discounts from myriad sites all competing with one another, which, in the end, means the consumers get a better deal.
In the era when consoles could boast superior graphical fidelity, that was a +1 to them, but now they're worse graphically (by far, it's not even comparable really) and the gen has barely started. In a few short years PCs will be lightyears ahead, instead of just the few miles it's ahead already. Consoles are playing catch-up to a market that passed them by in 2008, and they're only hampered by the inability to upgrade individual components (a problem the steambox is attempting to fix, if all the hype is true... but I'm not holding out a ton of hope, despite being a valve "fanboi," I don't think their first attempt at a console will be terribly amazing, even if it's got revolutionary ideas).
When consoles were plug-and-play, where popping a disc in and turning the power on was all you needed to do, that was a huge leg up over the amount of preparation needed to game on PC. Installation, patching, etc all required a not-ignorable amount of time, and (in the 90s) serial codes got popular, and sometimes were buggy so you had to contact support and get issues fixed... etc. But now, consoles have lost this point, too. Consoles themselves have to be connected to the 'net for firmware updates for the system and accoutrements (like kinect, for example, which often takes ~10-15 minutes alone to update) and patches for various games, in addition to often required-pay services for simple things like online multiplayer. XBL was a neat service, but $50 for a year? $50 plus the ads that get shoved down your throat on an online service you're already paying to access? That just shows precisely what the company cares about; money over consumer comfort. Expect more of that this gen, it's not going away because console players don't seem to mind getting fucked in the ass and having their wallets raped.
As it stands, consoles have lost all "point" to existing. They are flat inferior gaming platforms to PCs from every objective viewpoint - smaller library, lack of backwards compatibility, worse hardware that only gets more and more dated as time goes on, being locked into a paid service to access any online features and being at the mercy of the company because of it. Exclusive games used to be a way for companies to attempt to compete; "oh hey, I'll release this thing for PS2, in addition to all the other reasons to buy a PS2, please buy a PS2 and my game!" But now, "all the other reasons" have evaporated. What was once icing on the cake of console gaming has become the bread, meat, cheese and lettuce all at once. The only reason to continue existing. And, as Yahtzee put it, that's not a feature anymore. It's not enticing. It's holding a title hostage, because the equation has become "hrm... is that single game worth the price of the game and the price of the whole console?"
The answer, obviously, is no. No single game is worth $460 or more.
I'd love to return to a time when consoles are the superior option for gaming; or, at least, a time when consoles had multiple strengths, simplicity of use and no bullshit patching. When 4 people could take an N64 and play goldeneye without logging into XBL or even being online at all. But because the companies holding the leash on each console are only interested in gouging as much money as possible from anyone still silly enough to hang around the console town, those companies have no interest in going back to those times. They have no incentive; if they can pillage the wallets of devoted followers, why stop?
Because of that, what was once merely a joke, a satirical jab at PC gamers and their often elitist attitude, has become reality. PCs truly are the best consoles right now; nothing else can come even close. Consoles have lost their way, and until they find it again, they will be playing the catch-up game with a competitor that left them in the dust halfway through last gen.
That, in a nutshell, is Yahtzee's point.
