All of these platforms look dead compared to steam's community hub. I do not want to see simple stars representing the score of a game. I want to see what other people think about it. I want to try mods, especially if it is an older game. I want more than just a store to buy a game I know little to nothing about. Steam should push even further and lower the developer tax to 10-15%. They can definitely afford it.
Steam now has 50% more users than PlayStation, and Sony's own decisions might be pushing more players there
- Thread starter Alfonso Maruccia
- Start date
Inthenstus
Posts: 344 +476
PS has lost all credibility after suing Microsoft for purchasing Activision. Let them burn to the ground for all I care.
vicsrealms
Posts: 71 +73
Haven't owned a console since the PS3/360 era. After all the problems I had with both those consoles, I went exclusively to the PC. Steam was a huge reason for that decision, and I have no complaints for my choice.
Theinsanegamer
Posts: 8,986 +18,345
I quite liked both. I got a PS4 expecting Sony to continue the trend of awesome first party games like Motorstorm, Killzone, LBP, ratchet and clank, resistance, SOCOM, Twisted metal, Infamous, and so on.
Instead, what some of those got were the now standard watered down sequels with less content and worst writing, others got straight up abandoned. God of war became a hairy dad game, Uncharted did the same, and overall the quality of games was a huge downgrade.
I didnt buy a PS5 because I had no confidence Sony could fix this, especially after moving its headquarters to California. My beliefs were vindicated. PC is so much more flexible and offers so much, especially with emulation giving me what the PS4 and 5 could not, the ability to play my existing library.
ActualViking
Posts: 154 +183
Theinsanegamer
Posts: 8,986 +18,345
You are free to not use them. Most AAA companies have their own launchers for their games that bypass steam, you have the Xbox store, gog, epic, and many indies also publish on the likes of itch or humble.
Yes, valve is dominant, because they offer a great service at a low price. Don't ruin that by crying about success. We don't need crabs in a bucket enshittifying our games anymore then they already are.
I agree. Steam as we know is a digital platform to begin with, so it is essentially the same problem with Sony transitioning to digital. But I do think there are couple of differences,
1. So far, Steam have not pulled any digital purchases from the customers like Sony did. This is the single most disturbing observation with Sony. I've not been impacted so far, but something that will impact buyers' decision.
2. Most games on Steam can become significantly cheaper.
yRaz
Posts: 9,668 +17,074
out of the over 400 games I have on steam, I only paid full price for 4. Skyrim, Fallout 4, CP2077 and Baldurs Gate 3. Most I get on sales or in game packs for ~90% off
- PC games work throughout a lot of hardware generations and now include ARM devices
- Valve's way of doing things is, at least for now, very different from Sony's.
That's why people trust Valve but not Sony's predator engine.
You have a big lack of information: SteamOS and similar distros boot up in console like mode and on Windows/Linux, Steam app has the big screen mode. Zero learning. Even Windows has now Xbox mode (or how it's called) that boots up in console like environment.
You can just buy a steam machine and enjoy PC games effortless.
ActualViking
Posts: 154 +183
The thing is, that Steam takes a big chunk of what the game companies get when we buy on Steam. And while those AAA titles are visible even if not on Steam, the smaller titles are often all but invisible if they don't appear on Steam - simply because many only ever find games on Steam.
It has reached a point where Steam is all but dominant. And oddly there is even Steam fanbois praising Steam as if it was some community driven entity for the good of man, when clearly Steam is about making money - else owners would not be collecting super yachts and instead focusing on making everything better for games and developers alike.
Theinsanegamer
Posts: 8,986 +18,345
Yes, that is how ALL Platform work son. Sony store, MS store, Steam, GoG, literally every single third party platform, unless you are Epic, who is burning billions trying to compete.
This is not a problem with Steam, this is a marketing problem all small games face. There are games that do guerilla marketing and find success outside Steam, you just have to put the effort in, and there are plenty of small games that get on steam and barely sell. If most people abandoned Steam for multiple launchers....you would have the exact same problem.
See, this is where the disconnect is. Nobody is arguing Steam is not about making money. What steam is PRAISED for is its EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SUPPORT, and its regular deep discounts on popular products. But attacking that makes you look like a prick, so instead you create a strawman argument and attack that instead (oh steam is about making money, oh no!). It's also wrong, because anybody who played on PC in the B.S. (before steam) era knows how AWFUL it was, between DRM and various scattered launchers. There is a REASON steam became so successful, and it would do you good to research why that is.
This is the "crabs in a bucket" mentality. That because someone is successful, they are now bad people, who are not working on making everything better for everyone, and must be drug back down. Pro tip: this does not work. If you got your dream of Steam being forced down in marketshare, forced to give up their margins and profits, your games would not get better, your developers would not be doing better, and your indie would not sell better. All you would do is torpedo the platform and make it less likely they would try to provide good service, because the reward for this success is being attacked. Now your platform offers poor, bare minimum support and you have ruined it for everyone.
Here's an idea: instead of attacking the one customer platform that respects its customers, if you want all these small titles to succeed, why dont YOU put in the effort to make that happen? Sounds like there is a bustling marketing opportunity! You should make a web service that informs people of these incredible games! Of course, you shouldnt do this for any sort of cut of the games profits, since that is a bad thing according to you, but I'm sure you could find other ways of making money from it.
This is how you break the cycle. Instead of tearing down those who are successful, put in the effort to make things better.
Theinsanegamer
Posts: 8,986 +18,345
There is a third point.
3. you have full access to the games files, so if the game WAS delisted and dropped from online DRM support making it unplayable, you can still make a backup, potentially someone can work on a patch to re enable the game and strip its DRM, and you can keep playing.
See: The Crew by ubisoft.
My average purchase price on Steam is like $9. I cant remember paying full price for anything, I'm sure I did eons ago, but I couldnt tell you what they were.
magisys
Posts: 68 +46
The logic is simply money talk. Consumers on PS have always had the option to search and buy cheap disks. They have the option to sell those disks when not interested in collecting them. They have also been taught that digital prices on PS store remain high even when game disks are found with big discount in online stores or in megastore big basket at huge discounted price.
Add to this that people that primarly game on PS but who already knows how PC gaming works known that even with dayone releases you can find digital game keys with price reduction, a thing that on PS digital market is impossibile.
Ending this with the free multiplayer, free cloud savegame backup and sync and many other services included, the costs-benefit analysis for many people is leaning them into Steam, even with the current bad hardware market situation.
ActualViking
Posts: 154 +183
Oh boy. I'm opposed the de-facto monopoly that Steam has become and criticize them for taking in absurd amounts of money, money that comes from us gamers and you call me a prick. Nice.
As for the Steam customer support, with what they are taking in it better be good. Only excellent - how is it excellent when you're not allowed to transfer your games, in fact you can't even pass you collection on when you die.
Not sure why you think Steam deserves your defense, it is like you haven't grasped what they are and have not read the fine print.
fadingfool
Posts: 482 +637
A maximum of 30% compares extremely favourably with the distribution costs of physical media prior to Steam existing. Steam sales have always been pretty damn good for the consumer (taking 30% of a discounted game that has had a 90% price drop isn't a lot for the consumer to bear) so I fail to see how Steam is harming consumers? A monopoly is only a problem if that position is being abused - from my experience of steam since 2009 I certainly don't feel abused by them. EA and Origin - yes I have been abused (they banned my account for supposedly doing something wrong in FIFA 13 - a game I have never owned) - took 3 months before I had my account reinstated without even an apology from them.
GoldenGoat
Posts: 420 +380
I travel a lot so a gaming laptop works best for me. The graphics performance is way better than any console too. I’m not exclusively steam, but Steam is my favorite. I want to play sony games, but unless they run on my laptop then I’m not going to.
Im not so sure about that. You can get decent performance for less than that, and I attribute that to the upscaling options we have. You no longer need the latest and greatest. You can simply buy a previous generation, like the 7000 series AMD, and get the latest upscaling features that can hold you over until the next gen of consoles and possibly even beyond that.
Take into account having to pay for online play, less sales in comparison to steam, and now no discs. I do not see the point in a console other than it being portable, but then you can just build an ITX build and bring it around.
I just want to point out that for PC, the death of physical media happened naturally. No single force declared it was going to stop. Demand fell, people who cared about that moved to consoles. No one had the power over the market to just switch it off the way Sony is doing.
People may not be going out to replace their PlayStation with a PC today, but if PS6 launches for ~$1000 and there are PC options at similar price/performance costs, then Sony has no real advantage or strong argument for buyers that would prevent them from moving to PC with the understanding that if they are going to be forced to go digital they might as well go with the most reliable digital platform they can.
People may not be going out to replace their PlayStation with a PC today, but if PS6 launches for ~$1000 and there are PC options at similar price/performance costs, then Sony has no real advantage or strong argument for buyers that would prevent them from moving to PC with the understanding that if they are going to be forced to go digital they might as well go with the most reliable digital platform they can.
Northy
Posts: 630 +295
Disks were always worth it for me because I have a transferable license I can sell if I don't like the title, and that there are sales. Always having to pay full price for every game and not being able to sell my games changes the dynamic for me completely and I can see myself moving to SteamOS on a custom built box in the future when my PS5 gets old.
I'm sure I won't be alone.
I'm sure I won't be alone.
