[kbenson]

> From here on out, expect new hardware every couple years that will be compatible with your existing library

So, basically a computer, but limited, and a lower bar to entry.

I understand the use case for those that might not have a traditional computer or a very old one, but presumably everyone here would be better served by either shelling out an extra $100-$200 every couple years for a better video card in their laptop (if that's the only system them have), or dropping that on a discrete video card and sticking it in their current desktop?

I'm having trouble finding a case where I'm not better off buying a cheap Dell desktop and throwing a mid-range video card in there for approximately the same cost. It's a little bulkier, but I imagine Steam's Big Picture mode probably does a good job of the interface.

[snuxoll]

You're not exactly wrong, but you're not 100% right either.

Consoles have one thing that PC's don't, a streamlined experience tailor made for your TV. People do more than just play games on a console, they stream Netflix, interact with their friends through sharing videos and clips, listen to music on their home entertainment system that's already connected to the TV.

Valve has been trying REALLY hard to get to this point, but every time they add something new to the Steam platform it feels half baked in comparison to Microsoft's offering in particular.

Personally, I'm a PC gamer first - the lack of an integrated experience doesn't bother me when I just want to play games. My friends all use Discord for voice/text communication, I can use AMD's software to handle recording video and share it wherever I please, or use OBS to stream to twitch. But, I'm also a professional who uses computers all day and know how to put pieces together to fit my workflow - my friends are at least competent enough to do the same, but my wife or other groups of friends may not be.

Some people just want to buy a box, plug it in and have everything they want. That's the selling point, and unless Valve pulls some huge overhaul out of their butt's that is an advantage that consoles are going to retain.

[kbenson]

Yeah, I understand for the general public, and I wasn't trying to imply there's no place for the new consoles, just that I figure most the people reading HN could probably get away with putting that money towards their main computer platform more effectively. That does, of course, assume mostly single use, and that's a rather large caveat I didn't cover. I have three kids, and for a set-top box, ease of use is extremely important, since it's not just me using it.

[simonswords82]

I'm a typical HN user I suppose. Own/run a software company, we even code in Microsoft's tools! However, I do 99.9% of my work on a Mac laptop.

I've installed Steam on said laptop but it's just not the same as having a console.

I love my XB1, it just works. I buy a game, pop the disc in, download a metric shit tonne of updates for a couple of hours (a rant for another time) and I'm good to go.

I don't care about 60FPS or 4k resolution. I care about being able to use my minimal spare time to shoot teenagers on COD. I'll sacrifice an optimal gaming experience, for ease of access.

Just another thought.

[kbenson]

> I've installed Steam on said laptop but it's just not the same as having a console.

So, assuming the games you want to play are available on Steam for the Mac (a big if, likely), how bad is an Xbox USB controller, HDMI out to your TV, and Steam Big Picture mode? Is it sub-par, or have you never bothered because you have the xbone (or because it doesn't have what you want to play)? I have neither, so I honestly don't have any data on this, and I don't use Big Picture because I do my gaming on a desktop.

[__david__]

Big picture mode is OK, but plugging my laptop into the TV and launching steam is a multi-step process, esp. compared to just pressing the playstation button on the playstation controller (everything's already hooked up, it just comes on).

I also have a gaming PC hooked to my TV and I run big picture mode on that. It's slick, but it's not as smooth as a console. The controller will wake up the computer, but I have to hit the button twice (once to initiate the wake-up and once to connect the controller, which fails to connect on the first press because the computer isn't awake yet) and then there's a 50/50 chance that the controller won't let me get past the windows 10 login screen.

The console is an appliance made for running games, and the whole experience is so much smoother.

[cwyers]

I tried using the Steam Link, and it's not user-friendly at all. I have a dual monitor setup with a USB KVM switch, and I cannot manage to get the Steam Link going to the TV with sound on and switch to the non-Steam computer with my KVM. Steam Big Picture works fine until there's a single problem and then all bets are off. Games not written with it in mind will pop out to situations where you need a keyboard and mouse at the strangest times.

[simonswords82]

Yeah so that's a good point about game availability. I only installed Steam on the Mac to play Kerbal Space Program! Every now and then I'll have a flick through the titles available but nothing there grabs me. As a result, I've never bothered plugging it in to the TV to have a play in Big Pic mode.

[izacus]

I have a PC hooked up to my PC and a PS4 as well. And I'm sorry to say that unfortunately the PC experience is still subpar and way behind the consoles (even though both Sony and Microsoft are working hard to make this experience terrible as well). Biggest issues:

- Big Picture mode is pretty buggy - it tends to freeze after sleep, sometimes won't recognise controller after waking up, it won't properly gain focus after boot, etc. etc.

- Windows is annoying to get into proper "TV/BigPicture" mode. It'll lock screen (forcing you to type in password), show popups and steal focus from BigPicture (again forcing you to look for keyboard/mouse), install updates and demand reboot, etc.

- A lot of games have launchers which don't support a controller so you need to hunt for keyboard/mouse again to start them.

- A lot of games aren't available via Steam and you need to use Origin/Uplay/whatever. Those don't support controllers or a TV mode making experience a hassle.

- Getting 5.1 sound over optical to work properly it a pain in the neck. On PS4 you just enable DTS bitstream. On PC you have to install hacked drivers (if your MB manufacturer didn't pay for license) and then hack XAudio DLLs to get 5.1 sound. And even then it might not work with some games.

- Some games tend to show smaller fonts and/or not support controllers properly in their PC versions.

- Some games won't run as well as on console if you don't have top of the line hardware - even though the PC is faster.

- Multiprofile support is utterly atrocious. On PS4 my GF just chooses another profile and can play same games as I do isolated with different achiements/savegames/settings/etc. On PC it's an utter pain - Steam doesn't behave well if you PC has multiple usernames (!), switching users on Windows isn't possible with a controller, you need to install things twice or just not be able to play same game in parallel.

- My PC has wierd issues randomly waking up from sleep, forcing me to shut it down. When shut down you can't power it on via wireless keyboard/controller making it another hassle to deal with. PS4 wakes up with controller without issues.

All in all, while games do run faster on my 970GTX vs. PS4, the UI experience is painful at times and I can see me and my GF go to PS4 just because it boots significantly faster into game and doesn't force us to hunt for mouse/keyboard to deal with the "issue of the day". On the other hand, PS4 in "rest mode" will install OS updates, game patches and other things while sleeping so it's pretty much always ready to go (unless you just bought a game and need to sit through forced installation).

[to3m]

I'd have expected most people to have a laptop at home. Maybe I'm unusual, or maybe the people I know are unusual, but I don't know many who use a desktop PC at home any more.

Desktop work PCs are still common, but you're not going to spend your own money on them.

[kbenson]

I have a home workstation because I do a lot of work from home. Working from a laptop is a sub-par experience because of the form factor. Right now, I'm using a Dell XPS 15 laptop at home, but it's docked to a desktop keyboard and mouse, and a 40" 4K TV I use as a monitor. Prior to the laptop (which I almost never move, bit like that I can if needed take with me), I had a desktop at the same desk. So, right how I'msort of hybrid, but prior to that I had a desktop at home (and a separate, older laptop that I almost never used).

As for "most people", it's important to consider different types of situations, such as families in which there might be a shared computer, or a desktop in the room of one or more children because it's sometimes more economical.

[khedoros1]

I don't know many, either. Even mine has been sitting idle for a while, because it's in my (toddler) son's room, I don't have anywhere else to put it, and it's honestly begging for an upgrade at this point anyhow.

Which is too bad. It's got a nicer keyboard+mouse, sound system, screen, storage, network connection, and graphics than my laptop. There's a dedicated desk and chair. The only place the laptop wins out: Convenience.

[snuxoll]

I'm the only person in my family that owns a desktop myself, but my group of friends is mostly a bunch of desktop users since one of our primary use cases is PC gaming (although mine is also a workstation for software development and some light video editing).

Regardless of their quality, you can get a basic no-frills laptop for $400 and be able to carry it with you - or you can spend that much on an equally no-frills (though still arguably better specification-wise) desktop and have it stuck wherever you put it. More people tend to favor the portability, they can have it at the kitchen table or in front of the TV - some people don't even own a proper computer and rely entirely on smartphones and/or tablets.

Desktop computing outside of the workplace is increasingly a niche, one that isn't going away as long as PC gaming remains but to argue it's not shrinking is delusional.

[gozur88]

I have a desktop at home. I despise tiny laptop screens and tiny laptop keyboards. And touchpads. Desktops have advantages when it comes to performance and cooling, which is a big deal for a gaming system.

[shmed]

You'll never get the same performance for the same cost on PC. They showed forza horizon 3 running at 60 FPS/4k on the scorpio, in a stress test with wheather effect + the maximum amount of cars on screen, while only using 66% of the available GPU power. And that was on a version of forza that was not even yet optimized for the scorpio, all they did was spend 2 day updating the engine to run on scorpio. I'm not sure how much the scorpio will cost, but the NVidia 1070 struggle at running forza horizon 3 at 4k at over 50 fps. Getting anything more than a 1070 will likely cost you close to the price of the scorpio just for the GPU.

Specs to specs, PC would seem like a good deal for the price, but with all the optimization that goes into tweaking consoles to make them perform better on games, its rarely the case for a PC to outperform a console for the same price. For example, they announced a hardware implementation of DX12 into scorpio, which isn't available on PC yet. We don't know how much this will affect performance, but its the kind of things that plays in favor of consoles.

[kbenson]

> You'll never get the same performance for the same cost on PC.

In a direct from-nothing-to-full-system comparison, sure. But if you've got a desktop already, your costs might just be the Nvidia card, and maybe some more RAM if that's lacking. Newegg has Nvidia 1070 cards that advertise DX12 for $370. It looks like a 1080 will cost about the same as I imagine the Xbox refresh will cost for about 15%-20% more power. By the time this is actually released, a good 6+ months from now, I imagine those prices will probably be much better.

That's not the only thing that matters of course, but there are benefits to updating your general purpose machine, in that you might make use of that extra power in other ways (e.g. extra RAM making the system more performant in general, not just for games).

[snuxoll]

> But if you've got a desktop already

Killer right here for an increasing percentage of the population. Fewer households even HAVE a desktop PC these days, laptops, tablets and smartphones are the computing devices of choice for many these days.

Even if you HAVE a desktop, there's no reason to assume the power supply can handle a dedicated graphics card if it wasn't shipped with one. Many OEM's like to skimp on power delivery at the price points the majority of consumer desktop PC's are sold at, since a $400 machine has little profit margin in the first place.

[kbenson]

> Killer right here for an increasing percentage of the population.

Sure, but that's why I specified everyone here, as in the typical HN reader. There are plenty of things that don't make sense for the average person but make sense for particular groups. I wouldn't recommend a Raspberry Pi game/set top/server to the average person, but I might to someone here.

[gozur88]

I would have thought most households (in the US, at least) have a PC for taxes and youtube videos.

[ashark]

Youtube videos? Phones. Tablets. Chromecast, Apple TV, game consoles if you want it on the TV.

Taxes? Possibilities: 1) someone else does it, 2) you do it but all on paper, 3) work device (maybe even at home if it's a laptop), 4) something something public library. I don't think tons of people would miss their personal PC bigly come tax time (some would, surely).

[snuxoll]

TurboTax has an iPad app. Also, it works fine in a laptop as well.