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Are early console adopters being screwed over?


cartman

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I think it's unfair when you buy a console and then 1-2 years later they release an updated version that's more silent/better graphics/less loud/smaller/larger or whatever it is. Without the early buyers there'd be no fucking console to speak of because nobody is buying anything and yet those people get the shortest stick. Not only did they make the console float by the actual buys but also paid the most for getting it so only. It's not even that an improvement happens organically but the companies have actively put in practise pulling this shit over and over again.

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I got caught up in this with the current gen.  Bought a PS4 and sold it for the pro.  The pro was very loud so I sold it to buy an updated vision with quieter cooling.  Went from Xbox one, to S, to the X. 

I won't be doing that this time around.  Plan on waiting a good 2-3 years to see if Playstation releases any exclusives I want.  Only played Horizon Zero Dawn this gen so it will be a tougher sell.  Xbox is putting everything on PC so I will run my One X until all the apps lose support.

Something better has come along multiple times this generation.  Anymore it seems like generations are over and the consoles will be like phones/PCs.  Upgrade when your current console stops doing what you need it to do.

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4 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

That's how it is with ALL technology.  The early adopters are NOT getting screwed over because they know exactly what they are signing up for and they choose to do it because they get to do it first.  

It's not unfair.  No one is getting screwed over.  

It's semantics. You get less out of your buy and your support that is the bottom line here.

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I don't think they're getting screwed, they're paying to get it right now. No doubt tech gets better and cheaper over time. Look at how many people bought clunky VR dev kits because they wanted the VR experience right now and now we've got these super powerful Valve Index and super slim Oculus Quest things. Unless there's a must have game, you can wait it out. A year or two is a long ass time.

If consoles become more like PCs where there's more significant hardware upgrades over time (which is where we seem to be trending?), but the games all have to run on the same platform, older consoles will probably get more screwed by performance than ever. If you're screwed by Microsoft and Sony, feel free to come over to the PC side and build something to your own specs and not worry about the Xbox Series-X SX Model X Slimline Pro.

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40 minutes ago, cartman said:

You get less out of your buy and your support that is the bottom line here.

That's your opinion.  Some early adopters would disagree.  

For the record, I'm typically not an early adapter of anything because FOR ME, I feel that you do in fact get less by buying early.  But again, that's an opinion, not a fact.

Anyone who buys something on day 1 makes that choice knowing full and well that what they are buying will be out of date in the near future.  It's not unfair if they make that choice and they certainly aren't getting screwed since they knew about it in advance.  

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No one is forced to buy any console. And sometimes there isn't a really big improvement later down the road. Did the Wii ever get an improvement? Or the Wii u? GameCube didn't, at least I don't recall it getting one. 

I usually wait a year to buy a new system so that they can work out all the bugs, and so that I know there will be enough games I want to justify purchasing said system. This method helped me avoid the bust that was the Wii u. It also helps me save money since console prices and game prices go down over time. And it still allows me to keep up with the times and be in the moment so to speak. I'm not missing out on the experience like I would if I waited like 3-4 years after a console came out to buy it.

People will always buy stuff when it first comes out though because they want to experience the new tech first and they want to have that fresh experience asap. You could charge a grand for a new gen system when it first comes out and people would still buy it.

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Not a chance, except in rare cases the thing doesn't turn out so well due to itself or the price, and the thing has a big dip in price to create the needed correction to hopefully survive. Then  you are kind of getting hosed unless the company does some gesture short of a refund.

If anyone is getting screwed it would be the early buyers of games.  Ever since MS shoved hard drive tech on us with consoles which opened the door to a realm of unfinished game releases, dlc/micro transactions, digital so you can't recoup funds when finished/fed up, etc that would be here where the hosing has potential.  But even then, it still is a choice to jump in.  You never know if maybe someone will be honest and release a working game that just has quality of life updates or not.  You never know if the game and DLC that comes is so damn good, that they'll do a finished copy GOTY release a half year or so after the point for like 2/3 the price of the base game alone.  It's all a shell and guessing game.  But with consoles, not really but maybe rarely, but with games it has become more of a problem.

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6 hours ago, cartman said:

I think it's unfair when you buy a console and then 1-2 years later they release an updated version that's more silent/better graphics/less loud/smaller/larger or whatever it is. Without the early buyers there'd be no fucking console to speak of because nobody is buying anything and yet those people get the shortest stick. Not only did they make the console float by the actual buys but also paid the most for getting it so only. It's not even that an improvement happens organically but the companies have actively put in practise pulling this shit over and over again.

I have two counterarguments to this: 

  1. If you want to upgrade two years later to an improved model, you can still sell your old model for a decent price. 
  2. If you want to experience the games that come with that console generation, including getting to enjoy games that have online multiplayer which are best experienced from the get-go (like SSB Ultimate or Splatoon 2), then you gotta buy the thing. 

Aside from that, what's your suggestion? Wait for a better model to come along? I guess if you are patient, then sure. But it's not like console manufacturers are trying to make bad launch models with all those problems. They actually try to make something that is reliable and worth buying. 

12 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

You never know if the game and DLC that comes is so damn good, that they'll do a finished copy GOTY release a half year or so after the point for like 2/3 the price of the base game alone.  It's all a shell and guessing game.  But with consoles, not really but maybe rarely, but with games it has become more of a problem.

Ha, I've already waited on two games long enough to take advantage of this: Dead Cells Action Game of the Year Edition, and GRIP Combat Racing Airblades vs Rollers Ultimate Edition (whew, long titles). But the flipside is I could have bought those games at launch, gotten my $30 of enjoyment out of them, and a year later I could have paid $10 or whatever for DLC or bonus content if I like the games enough. 

We're talking trading money for enjoyment - each person values that differently. We all know you can wait and buy games or consoles for cheaper, but some people want to enjoy something as soon as possible, hence why they pay $60 at launch . 

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12 hours ago, MiamiSlice said:

I have two counterarguments to this: 

  1. If you want to upgrade two years later to an improved model, you can still sell your old model for a decent price. 
  2. If you want to experience the games that come with that console generation, including getting to enjoy games that have online multiplayer which are best experienced from the get-go (like SSB Ultimate or Splatoon 2), then you gotta buy the thing. 

Aside from that, what's your suggestion? Wait for a better model to come along? I guess if you are patient, then sure. But it's not like console manufacturers are trying to make bad launch models with all those problems. They actually try to make something that is reliable and worth buying. 

Ha, I've already waited on two games long enough to take advantage of this: Dead Cells Action Game of the Year Edition, and GRIP Combat Racing Airblades vs Rollers Ultimate Edition (whew, long titles). But the flipside is I could have bought those games at launch, gotten my $30 of enjoyment out of them, and a year later I could have paid $10 or whatever for DLC or bonus content if I like the games enough. 

We're talking trading money for enjoyment - each person values that differently. We all know you can wait and buy games or consoles for cheaper, but some people want to enjoy something as soon as possible, hence why they pay $60 at launch . 

1. That's not a valid argument. That's a person-to-person transaction mitigating the loss rather then the company not having created it - they still have. Regardless of what you do with it.

2. This also is not related to the company itself but the audience. The company peactise has remained the same either way.

My suggestion is that they stop fucking around and release the system that should be IT immediately. They don't really have a reason not to. They know very well at this point that they'll be able to improve the system and what those improvements will be but they deliberatrly hold back so as to syphoon cash out of the customers. 

 

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21 minutes ago, cartman said:

My suggestion is that they stop fucking around and release the system that should be IT immediately. They don't really have a reason not to. They know very well at this point that they'll be able to improve the system and what those improvements will be but they deliberatrly hold back so as to syphoon cash out of the customers. 

 

Except for the fact that such a thing is impossible to do.  Technology will ALWAYS improve.  It's impossible to release something that won't be improved on in the future.  Otherwise nothing would ever be released. 

If I said that people who bought an NES were dumb because if they had waited 30 years, they could have bought a Switch instead, I would sound crazy.  But that would essentially be no different than what you are suggesting.

Your argument they some companies are deliberately holding back doesn't hold water either.  If the launch model PS4 had the power of the Pro model when it was first released, it would have probably cost close to $1,000.

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14 hours ago, MiamiSlice said:

Ha, I've already waited on two games long enough to take advantage of this: Dead Cells Action Game of the Year Edition, and GRIP Combat Racing Airblades vs Rollers Ultimate Edition (whew, long titles). But the flipside is I could have bought those games at launch, gotten my $30 of enjoyment out of them, and a year later I could have paid $10 or whatever for DLC or bonus content if I like the games enough. 

We're talking trading money for enjoyment - each person values that differently. We all know you can wait and buy games or consoles for cheaper, but some people want to enjoy something as soon as possible, hence why they pay $60 at launch . 

Fair enough, but if you have nothing on your plate at all and in the mood, that makes sense.  But really, and especially for single player stuff that won't get some group think going online as part of it, it makes more sense to wait.

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1 hour ago, cartman said:

My suggestion is that they stop fucking around and release the system that should be IT immediately. They don't really have a reason not to. They know very well at this point that they'll be able to improve the system and what those improvements will be but they deliberatrly hold back so as to syphoon cash out of the customers. 

These are some pretty serious allegations with I presume zero evidence. Are you imagining the execs and engineers at these companies are rubbing their hands together like fiends, cackling about how to best screw over consumers by making products guaranteed to be obsolete in 2 years or less? And if they are so evil, do you imagine they start out evil before they get hired into these companies, or do you think they are all innocent and good and somehow after getting hired they get indoctrinated to be this way? 

I'll give you an example that might help - the recent Switch upgrade that improved the battery life by making the processor more efficient was due to Nintendo taking a hardware upgrade that had just hit the market (something like moving from a 9nm chip to a 7nm chip, my memory on the details is hazy). It was an improvement that simply did not exist in the market when the Switch launched. 

Another example - PC's are improving at a yearly pace at this point. It used to be that a PC platform was considered the gold standard for a few years, now whatever CPU or GPU you get, there will be something better in 12 months or less. Meanwhile consoles have traditionally been designed to try to be relevant as a platform for multiple years (ideally 4 or more), because it's hard to convince video game publishers to commit to a console platform that's going to be obsolete sooner than that. But if PC's get more and more powerful each year, and consumers are naturally going to compare consoles to PC's when they evaluate gaming platforms, then console manufacturers have no choice but to be more aggressive about upgrading their own platforms within those consoles' life cycles. At least they will attempt to maintain compatibility (because the whole point of any console platform is that all games work on that platform), but we've already seen where this has been tested (with the "new" 3DS, where certain games were only compatible with the "new" 3DS family). 

Anyway, speaking as an engineer and software developer, I can assure you, none of us can predict what computing advantages will exist 2 years from now. Whatever hardware we take off the shelf today to build a device, we know it's going to be obsolete in 6 months or less. There's nothing we can do about that. 

Yes, as you can imagine, if Nintendo comes out with a "Pro" Switch model this year, it will be something that was in development for a while, probably since 2018. But I will bet that whatever goes into this "Pro" model will be stuff that wasn't available on the market when the launch model was in development, or would have been too expensive to use in the launch model when it went to market. 

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1 hour ago, cartman said:

My suggestion is that they stop fucking around and release the system that should be IT immediately. They don't really have a reason not to. They know very well at this point that they'll be able to improve the system and what those improvements will be but they deliberatrly hold back so as to syphoon cash out of the customers. 

 

So you think they magically have an improved console from the get-go, but release a shittier model to begin with?

 

Come on, you know that's not true. They put out the best console they have, then improve that console to put out  a better one down the line. It's always been that way.

And the people that bought the early version? They got a year or two of gaming out of it that everyone else didn't. That's the tradeoff. Always has been since, well, technology existed.

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13 minutes ago, MiamiSlice said:

These are some pretty serious allegations with I presume zero evidence. Are you imagining the execs and engineers at these companies are rubbing their hands together like fiends, cackling about how to best screw over consumers by making products guaranteed to be obsolete in 2 years or less?

Yes, as you can imagine, if Nintendo comes out with a "Pro" Switch model this year, it will be something that was in development for a while, probably since 2018. But I will bet that whatever goes into this "Pro" model will be stuff that wasn't available on the market when the launch model was in development, or would have been too expensive to use in the launch model when it went to market. 

No need to quote all that.  But basically yes, he's angry, paranoid, and militant over something that can't be helped.  A focus group of one angry gamer means nothing.  They look into stuff, and if they know from previous blunders you can not price a system over X without losing more in sales than a thinner or initially no profit at lower values it makes sense to cap yourself.  Sure they had higher ideas, but money, and customer willingness or capability to buy.  It wasn't long ago that Nintendo got plastered for the 3DS and had to drop that a good bit to move it like hotcakes instead of at a trickle, and before that the $600?!?! PS3 are you on crack Sony assault.

You know there's a Pro, it probably evolved as Nvidia did, originally wanting a TegraX2 but now they're into other samey chipsets with far nicer powers at its disposal while still able to process anything of its past as well if not in some way a bit better too.  That lame rumor out this week has the Pro using a new set that can do nice and run the old too, but it's not the Tegrax2.  Sony does it, Sega did it, so did NEC, MS, whatever.  If a system lasts 5+years on the market before being wrecked for something new, that's not just normal it's good, but a pro box, that's newer to console normal to handheld going way back.  Just deal with it, you'll still get to use most the games anyway.

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1 hour ago, Tulpa said:

So you think they magically have an improved console from the get-go, but release a shittier model to begin with?

 

Come on, you know that's not true. They put out the best console they have, then improve that console to put out  a better one down the line. It's always been that way.

And the people that bought the early version? They got a year or two of gaming out of it that everyone else didn't. That's the tradeoff. Always has been since, well, technology existed.

No maybe not like that but they know that in a year they most likely will. 

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