Discussion Might go PS5 rather than upgrade PC?

[mildewman]

TLDR - Changing from PC to PS5 for 9th gen gaming - pros and cons for a mouse / keyboard pc gamer?

My current PC rig is really good for 1080p non RT based gaming. (3570k @ 4.8Ghz, 1070TI @ 2 Ghz, 16GB DDR3 @ 2.2Ghz, 860EVO ssd). But to get 9th gen features (modern 8 core 16thread, ray tracing, fast ram, ultrafast ssd etc) i would have to completely replace the box - hardly unreasonable considering its age, but expensive hardware wise.

Or i could buy a PS5 and instantly go into 9th gen tech, for not much cash. Background - ive been gaming since 8 bit days, moved to PC in late 90's. In 2014 tried PS4 then PRO, but in the end sold them because i could not stand using a thumbstick to aim, and the framerates were utterly shocking compared to PC. 20-25 FPS in PSPRO games where i got 60-100FPS on my Ivy Bridge computer! (Skyrim, Dishonoureds, Evil withins, etc)

Apart from technical and price issues, there is gaming ecosystem. In NZ there is no second hand market for PC games and few physical gamestores still running, so only options are full price digital games or piracy. Piracy has many many limitations - long waits for cracks, no cracked updates, no online play, illegal / immoral.
Console gaming on the other hand has a very healthy 2nd hand market. Buying a 2nd hand game, finishing it, then selling it is my preferred way to get games. PC online gaming is a constant battle with cheats, with the majority of online games eventually ruined. PS4 online gaming is AFAIK cheat free, and this should be maintained in the 9th gen. BIG win for console in gaming ecosystem comparision.

A huge downside for console is aiming and control customization. I gave thumbsticks a good 3 years before giving up - just horrible for games where you need to aim. Real support for mousekeyboard is mandatory. Also for some bizzare reason console games have almost no control customization. If you play 3 different games that have a jump button, you can guarantee that you will be forced to learn a different button for each game. And same for crouch, sprint, reload, etc. Its beyond reason that console games do not let you fully redefine the controls - i know that there are innately different issues between PC and console controller install bases, but as an example AC : Odyssey offers full customization when using an Xbox controller on PC, so it can be done.
Lack of mousekeyboard and the ability to truly remap controls are deal breakers for me, but im hoping that Sony will realize that for the first time they have a console that is actually desirable from a technical standpoint to PC gamers, and include these features to help tempt us over.

If i try PS5 i will miss the overclocking part of computing (im a conductonaut everywhere cooling nerd), but now that the AMD's self overclock better than you can do manually, thats kinda over anyway.

So what have i missed in my ponderings about going all new PC box or giving PS5 a go ?

 

[piokos]

The basic "con" is when you can't play a game you'd want, because it's PC-only. Seriously look into that, i.e. games you enjoyed most over the last few years.
The few titles you've mentioned are available on Windows and PS (and some). But you may be into older titles.

Also, people who want to migrate often forget about the cost of replacing their game stack (things they plan to play in the future).

As for keyboard/mouse support - it's fairly bad and probably won't get better anytime soon.
The thing to notice here is that Sony announced PS5 showing a glowing render of all the nice shiny things they'll try to sell you: headphones, video remote, a 3D camera... a keyboard just wasn't there. So they aren't going to give us an official accessory even for UI control - let alone for actual gaming.

 

[quikah]

you could always go the Xim route, but MANY people consider that cheating. Some games support keyboard/mouse natively, I believe the latest COD does, so just do some research. You get matched with pc players I think when using it.

 

[purbeast0]

I'll never understand the whole "moved to PC from console" mentality. Or that just means you don't care about console exclusives, which is okay. But "moving on" and missing out on stuff you want to play for some arbitrary reason just makes no sense to me.

The only thing that matters is the games.

If the PS5 has games you want to play and they are also on PC, then get a PS5.

If the PC has games you want to play and they are also on PS5, then stick with PC.

Or get both so you don't miss out on stuff you want to play.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

If you can't enjoy using controllers then you shouldn't buy a console. That seems like a complete deal breaker to me.

 

[sdifox]

I suck at fps

If you can't enjoy using controllers then you shouldn't buy a console. That seems like a complete deal breaker to me.

I can't play fps on console. I am bad enough with keyboard and mouse.

 

[Midwayman]

Every time a new console comes out I vainly hope that they'll support mouse control natively.

 

[JPB]

While I am pretty good with thumbsticks on a controller for shooters on a console....I am better on a PC. But not night and day. Ya know what I do ? I play everything on console....but for the "few" shooters I play....Which is never anything but rehashes...I play shooters on PC. Everything else. Playstation. And Xbox can die a fiery death for all I care.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I have a decent PC. Wasnt willing to pay $1200 for a GPU so I never upgraded past my 1080ti which isn't slow anyway. Long story short I'm super excited to get a PS5 on launch day. Why? Simply because of the exclusives and all the PS4 titles I did not play that I can play on the PS5 as well (Last of us 2 for example). I'll use my PC to play all the games that are shooters and the titles from Microsoft since they don't have any 1st party Xbox exclusives any longer.

 

[Aikouka]

To be honest, the increased speed might be a larger draw for me when it comes to the new consoles. Having dealt with console load times in the past (even when installed to the hard drive) and also played games on a console and a PC (with an SSD), it's grueling to wait through those load times when you know it could be so much better. It reminds me of when I was playing Warframe with someone on Xbox after having already played it on PC. Loading Fortuna (an open-world area) could take 15-20 seconds (or more) on Xbox, but it would only take about 5 seconds on PC. I let the person borrow one of my computers so we could play it on there instead, and they were quite surprised how much faster it was.

When it comes to PlayStation or Xbox, I'm a bit mixed there. I think both consoles currently have aspects that I'm not a huge fan of. Sony's biggest strength is its host of exclusive titles; however, I can't help but see Microsoft as far more aligned to trying to create a better overall user experience. While user experience (UX) is a specific term in software, I don't mean just the UI, but aspects like the upcoming Smart Delivery. Although, in the end, it is hard to ignore that the Xbox doesn't really provide distinct advantages if you already have a good gaming PC.

Every time a new console comes out I vainly hope that they'll support mouse control natively.

The Xbox One supports keyboard and mouse natively. However, developers have to explicitly allow it in the game. For example, back when I was playing Warframe with someone on Xbox, I would use a mouse and keyboard to play. Although, an inadvertent downside to this is that the Xbox uses a custom wireless codec for... well, everything. This means that any wireless headset must either support the Xbox's wireless audio standard or use a base station that effectively serves as a wired headset stand-in. (To note, the S and X models do support the newer Xbox One Bluetooth controllers, but that's it.)

 

[eikelbijter]

I've been PC all the way for many years; went to see Last Of Us 2 at a neighbors house running on a PS4 Pro. I COULD NOT BELIEVE how loud this console was! Anytime the graphics kicked up it sounded like a damn jet engine, truly ruining the game in my opinion, and that was sitting 15 feet away from the damn thing. I simply cannot believe ANYONE would be ok with that...

 

[purbeast0]

I've been PC all the way for many years; went to see Last Of Us 2 at a neighbors house running on a PS4 Pro. I COULD NOT BELIEVE how loud this console was! Anytime the graphics kicked up it sounded like a damn jet engine, truly ruining the game in my opinion, and that was sitting 15 feet away from the damn thing. I simply cannot believe ANYONE would be ok with that...

Considering I can't hear my PS4 Pro at all while playing it, I'm perfectly fine with it.

Not everyone has their consoles right next to their TV speakers and play games at minimum volumes.

So now you can believe why someone could be okay with it.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I've been PC all the way for many years; went to see Last Of Us 2 at a neighbors house running on a PS4 Pro. I COULD NOT BELIEVE how loud this console was! Anytime the graphics kicked up it sounded like a damn jet engine, truly ruining the game in my opinion, and that was sitting 15 feet away from the damn thing. I simply cannot believe ANYONE would be ok with that...

When I had a PS4 pro, it wasn’t loud to me. It was drowned out by my surround sound system. I don’t play my games quiet, especially last of us which has a huge dynamic range in the audio. I didn’t think it was loud at all though, even during quiet moments.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

The way I see it, with PCs you spend more on hardware but end up saving on software + a truly absurd backward compatible catalog of games that are often dirt cheap or thanks to the numerous storefront battles recently, free.

I also have an enormous backlog of games on the PC.

With the exception of some Playstation exclusives, everything ends up on PC anyhow (and even that boundary is starting to deteriorate with games like HZD coming to PC).

I tend to keep things like HSF/PSU/SSD/Case for extremely long periods of time and only do a core system upgrade (CPU/MB/GPU/RAM) once every long while (current system is going on 4+ years) which contains the cost quite a bit. Current sig system cost me $700 for the core upgrade, with other parts being anywhere from 6-10 years old, and it handles everything I throw at it way better than current gen consoles do.

I expect the same with the next gen shortly after its release.

 

[Aikouka]

The way I see it, with PCs you spend more on hardware but end up saving on software + a truly absurd backward compatible catalog of games that are often dirt cheap or thanks to the numerous storefront battles recently, free.

To be frank, lately, I've been wondering if the whole "PC games are cheaper" is just a myth. Now, to be clear, if we're talking about digital sales, then I wouldn't be surprised if the PC tends to be a little cheaper. However, console games have one HUGE advantage... there's still a significant physical market in most areas. How does this provide an advantage in pricing? Well, it's not only in resale of games, but also from stores discounting titles because physical games take up physical space, and if the game isn't selling enough, they'd rather use that valuable space for something more lucrative.

What really started my mulling over this was two different things. Lately, I've been seeing a lot of good gaming deals on various sites, but they're typically only for console and only for physical releases. (PC does tend to get deals IF the game has a physical release.) Also, I was purchasing a copy of Skyrim on the Xbox 360 for someone, and GameStop had a deal where if you purchased... I think it was two used games for $9.99 (each), you got two free. I ended up getting Monster Hunter Worlds for the Xbox One as part of that deal, and if we consider the PC release, it was still about $20 during the Steam sale that ended earlier today.

I do consider myself to be a predominantly PC gamer, but I do struggle to still consider it to be always cheap. I think the real benefit has been one of the other things that you mentioned... how games tend to run on hardware for quite a while without issues. Most re-releases that we see on PC are only required due to being games that were developed for DOS or a Win9x-based OS. I think that we should also note how the modding scene can be quite a boon for replayability. For example, I posted about Slay the Spire not too long ago, and it has quite a healthy modding scene that has added quite a lot to the game.

Although, I'm going to deviate a little bit from the quoted topic-at-hand here, but there's something related that I wanted to rant about for a bit. I really think that Valve needs to work on the user experience (UX) of Steam... a lot. For example, I've been playing some games lately that I've been bouncing between my desktop and HTPC. These games support Steam Cloud; however, Steam Cloud is notoriously bad at updating other machines that are already logged in. So, if I play Monster Train on my HTPC and go to my desktop, I have to exit Steam and reopen it to force it to sync my Monster Train save file. Steam does not have a manual sync option. Also, I was adding games from the Humble Choice the other day, and to do so, I had to click on the "Add Games" button twice, because if I tried to use the pop-up menu the first time, the menu was visible but your clicks went through it to the game list behind it.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

To be frank, lately, I've been wondering if the whole "PC games are cheaper" is just a myth. Now, to be clear, if we're talking about digital sales, then I wouldn't be surprised if the PC tends to be a little cheaper. However, console games have one HUGE advantage... there's still a significant physical market in most areas. How does this provide an advantage in pricing? Well, it's not only in resale of games, but also from stores discounting titles because physical games take up physical space, and if the game isn't selling enough, they'd rather use that valuable space for something more lucrative.

- While I don't game on consoles anymore (not since the OG Xbox) I have purchased batches of used games for friends who do (PS3) and I honestly do not see the savings. Ancient PS3 games still run about $5.00-$10.00 used (if not more, sometimes), and frankly the physical market is always going to run into issues of supply and demand that digital distribution never will (outside of server load).

My whole ethos with gaming now has shifted into a patient gaming perspective where I tend to buy the best stuff for the prior generation on firesale, then buy older games for cheap on sale and play them. I have the same fun for way less, and now I have (more) money to put toward other things. The act of finding good deals on hardware and software is a bit of a meta game itself.

If I was a console gamer, I'd wait till next gen was out, then pick up those insane Console + 4 Controllers + 20 game used bundles you find on ebay for a song and have a blast as the current gen ages, gets refreshed, then replaced.

Maybe my whole mindset is anathema with the "Must play new releases on day 1" crowd and I'll just never get them (outside of folks that are deeply invested in the MP experience).

 

[purbeast0]

I don't understand how you can't understand that someone would want to experience a game as soon as possible.

 

[JujuFish]

"Must play new releases on day 1" crowd

On a slightly related note (to both this and the earlier topic of cheaper games on PC), it seems that new prices for the next gen are going up $10. I honestly can't think of a single example where I paid a full $60 on a game. First, it took years before PC games were saddled with the same $60 price tag as consoles. Second, even in the rare occasion where I did want to play a game at release, there are so many (perfectly legitimate, not talking about shady like G2A) digital storefronts online, that I've always been able to find a discount.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I don't understand how you can't understand that someone would want to experience a game as soon as possible.

- Frankly I see it no differently than gambling, which I also do not understand why people do (by that I mean I *understand* the dopamine rush and all that, just the why gambling part).

You're putting down boucoup bucks for a product that you don't know if you like and is at a minimum 4-5 patches out from being finished.

I've read legions of "got burned" reviews on new games at this point.

Why take that bet when there are so many other things competing for your attention?

Last game I bought at full price was mass effect 3. Great game, but after that ending and then Bioware literally patching in a modified ending I thought to myself "what the hell am I doing?"

 

[purbeast0]

- Frankly I see it no differently than gambling

Well there's the problem.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

If I was a console gamer, I'd wait till next gen was out, then pick up those insane Console + 4 Controllers + 20 game used bundles you find on ebay for a song and have a blast as the current gen ages, gets refreshed, then replaced.

Maybe my whole mindset is anathema with the "Must play new releases on day 1" crowd and I'll just never get them (outside of folks that are deeply invested in the MP experience).

That's way too long a wait for me. I got my PS4 midway through the gen (December 2016) when they were going $220 new right after a die shrink vs the old $400 price. And all the stuff I wanted to play was $20 or less (The Last of Us, Uncharted 1-3 combo pack, Uncharted 4 [free with the system], God of War III, and Bloodborne). You can strike a good balance between new vs patient gaming usually by waiting 3-6 months; most of the top PS4 games will drop into the $20 to $30 range by then if you pay attention to sales (Reddit's r/ps4deals is great for that). Still every once in a while there will be a game like Persona 5 Royal that I want so bad I buy it the second it launches for the full $60.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

That's way too long a wait for me. I got my PS4 midway through the gen (December 2016) when they were going $220 new right after a die shrink vs the old $400 price. And all the stuff I wanted to play was $20 or less (The Last of Us, Uncharted 1-3 combo pack, Uncharted 4 [free with the system], God of War III, and Bloodborne). You can strike a good balance between new vs patient gaming usually by waiting 3-6 months; most of the top PS4 games will drop into the $20 to $30 range by then if you pay attention to sales (Reddit's r/ps4deals is great for that). Still every once in a while there will be a game like Persona 5 Royal that I want so bad I buy it the second it launches for the full $60.

-Well there is a huge perk of the PC right there: no/extremely blured generations.

Ability to scale down image quality for performance.

I'd bet my left nut this first round of games on the PS5/Xsex will work just fine with dual RT/Raster and HDD solutions on all current gen PC hardware.

Hell most of them will probably run OK on my now quite old sig rig with the right mix of settings.

By the time you get the ground up, won't work without it engines that need those features, you'll have PC hardware to boot in reasonable price ranges.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Don’t forget the buy 2 get 1 free deals on physical games too from Target and other retailers.

 

[logan s]

any guesses on the cost of the ps5 based on release prices from ps3 and ps4?

 

[purbeast0]

any guesses on the cost of the ps5 based on release prices from ps3 and ps4?

$500 and $400 would be my guess.