This means you can't pass the game around to your friends or sell it afterwards, which completely ruins the purpose of physical media imo. I mostly play PC these days so this doesn't affect me, but it's a disappointing direction for console games. At least they could've used an empty disc that has proof of ownership.
What's the point of even having a console at this point? I understood when they were easier to set up then computers and cheaper than computers, but now they are just as hard and just as pricy. They had the benefit of being able to share and resell games, but even that's gone away. What's left other than exclusives and momentum?
Now that I have a Steam Deck I just don't see me ever owning another console or even gaming PC. It has one of the main advantages of consoles (a single hardware profile to support) and it's light years ahead. I have yet to find anything I want to play that I can't play.
It does. But any decent USB C hub will work too. It's a PC! The main downside compared to the Switch, is that the transition between handheld and TV isn't as smooth, due to the different screen aspect ratio (Steam Deck is 16:10, most TVs are 16:9). From my own experience, I usually have to restart the game for it to fill the screen properly.
Gamepass on my Series X plus easier couch gaming are reasons that I’ll play some games on it over my PC. Plugging a computer into a TV isn’t great because something tends to come up that requires mouse and keyboard. There are ways around it but it’s not as seamless as just plugging in a console. A Series X is still cheaper than a comparable PC now that they’re starting to stay on shelves. It’s less free as in freedom but you’ll play 4K games unlike a $500 PC (especially if you have to budget for a monitor mouse and keyboard). Discord on Xbox also slaps right now and cross play is in a significant amount of games, so you aren’t trapped to only playing games with people who own your console.
Not a defense of the starfield physical stuff, just showing that owning a console isn’t just some dumb thing normies do. I love both my computer and my console and both serve different purposes for different games.
You can’t build an equivalent PC for the price of a PS5. That’s the benefit of consoles. They’re a singular spec that developers can optimize for. So they’re always going to run better than a PC that costs hundreds more.