What would happen if consoles disappeared and PC gaming was the only available option?

This is something I ask myself whenever someone says that consoles are basically holding gaming back and such (which might be somewhat true).

So, let's consider the following hypothetical situation:

• All consoles disappear, puff, gone. Sony, Nintendo and the Xbox branch dedicate to something else and no other company releases a home console ever again.
• You're given back some of the money you spent to buy the consoles and physical games that you own, but not what you've spent on subscriptions and such (think of it as selling your console collection to go full PC gaming).
• Streaming services such as Stadia are cancelled. Gamepass and PS Now disappear. No new ones can be announced for a while (think of this as gaming some years ago).
• First party studios magically go independent or close, with the option to be bought by EA, Ubi, etc.
• No pre-built low-cost "console like" PCs are allowed.
• All current first party console exclusives disappear. 3rd party console exclusives are released on PC.

What do you think current console owners would do? Would most people move to PC or just quit gaming altogether? Would gaming grow faster? Slower? Die? Would games look a lot better than they do now? Worse? Would some studios close? Would more open?

Also, consider the following:

• United gaming community.
• You get everything, always.
• Piracy.
• Everything gaming related is obviously centered on PC and not mobile.
• Ex-first party studios games' quality drops considerably, since there is no more incentive or money invested in selling hardware (only the game itself).
• No fixed specs studios can work on.
• Less people.

Thoughts?

Well having fewer options to game would mean that there would be fewer people gaming on the whole. Sure some would of course just move to PC for gaming but there would no doubt be others who would not either by choice or not.

I think alot of the casual console gamers would move to mobile gaming and the die hards would eventually move to PC.

Hard to say. If you don't know how to build your own PC it will be crazy expensive and a lot of folk would either not want to learn or would find it too daunting and time consuming to do so.

Looks at thread question.

Thinks of nonasshole type of answer.

If PC gaming was the only way to game Coolyfett would retire.

Here is a question. Are PC players lonely? Why is there a desire for everyone to move off of consoles & be one with the PC community?

And then some company would be like "Hmmm there's a market for mid tier gaming machines that are simple to use and affordable to own"

And you would have consoles again.

Someone would try to make an always online gaming OS. And there would be... OS wars.

I tried to make a neutral post. I do most of my gaming on consoles, and play some games on my laptop every now and then.

What would? That's going to happen. Mobile is the ultimate future but PCs will hold out much longer.

Nothing personal bro, but if you know you know. There is a segment of the community that overall wishes PlayStation, Nintendo & Xbox would fall by the way side simple because they want more players on PC.

@Arkhalipso:

I would literally give up on gaming altogether.

I know. The point is for people to realise that gaming as a whole would be worse without consoles. Less people, less money, less interest, worse and less games, etc.

Reread the post.

Imagine a game made exclusively on a 2080TI, all you have to recognise is the godly efforts PS developers do with their exclusives.

I posted the answer based on facts as the positives and negatives you outline doesn't reflect reality.

@Arkhalipso:

"The point is for people to realise that gaming as a whole would be worse without consoles."

I agree. Everything would slowly wither and die and very few people will be left in the community. The best of the best AAA games will be no more because there's no more incentive to push console sales. 3rd party games would be the new AAA and gamers would hold onto it for dear life. Until the quality of that lowers due to bad sales.

Basically, the best example of such a scenario would be............the mobile phone game market. A market that shits out mediocre games every day with uninspiring content and microtransactions up the wazoo. An open market full of talentless, greedy hacks looking for cheap, fast gimmicks that can take your money and time. The mobile phone game market slayed the handheld gaming market and like the scenario I mentioned, the quality of those mobile games are 1000× worse than the handheld games. That's not a future for gaming that I would wanna be a part of.

I asked what would happen if console gaming disappeared today or in a hypothetical scenario where gaming were like some years ago, with no subscription services or Stadia on the horizon. Streaming and mobile gaming might take over at some point, but that's not entirely relevant to the topic at hand.

If consoles disappeared, I would go full on Microsoft Windows PC gaming.

I don't think anyone would make such a game. It simply wouldn't sell or be profitable for the dev, unless it was some sort of tech showcase by Nvidia to sell cards. By the way card sales would skyrocket, so I could see some disgustingly good looking games happening (though subpar everything else wise).

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Honestly I don't think I'd notice.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding......

No I'd save a ton of money if that were the case.

lol.

Bring on the small budget crowd-funded games! AAA gaming sucks for the most part anyway. There would be a lot less big publishers taking advantage of gamers and the world would probably be a better place. I have a feeling those predatory tactics work better on casual gamers anyway. Terrible publishers like EA would have to downsize since they lose the casual market. Can't mass market your game if your market loses mass.

Hmm... That's not where I thought I was going with this post. Interesting. I started out thinking the demise of consoles would be a bad thing, but now I'm not so sure.

Since it's all hypothetical (and would never happen because it would create a hole in the market that would be filled as quick as you can say 'digital distribution'), I'd say give it a shot. I'd love to see what a much smaller, modern gaming market looks like.

Seriously though - it's become harder and harder to see the value in consoles from my perspective as they have become locked down PCs. And the number of decent games I get thanks to consoles has gotten smaller with each gen.

/ramblings

Couldn't agree more with the last part. Remember my dreamcast collection, several games, PS4 I had HZD, didn't give a shit about the rest.

Consoles are what is driving the AAA industry, while PC supports f2p and webgaming, 71% of its annual revenue!!!

I don' see AAA gaming dying any time soon!!!

So the consoles will remain as long as there is a wide interest in AAA gaming.

I would probably become a "casual" gamer, and just play the odd game on my office PC (which surprisingly has a decent CPU & GPU for an office PC).

But I highly doubt I'd go all out and buy a gaming PC. I'm just not into it.

A universal platform like PC would be ideal. No more proprietary bullshit and exclusives. It would just be the best games competing against each other for people's time and money. For simplicity, you could still have console-like PCs with set specs that developers could target for system requirements. You could use that as a baseline and have different tiers for people's needs. Of course you could still build your own as well.

Everyone united under one ecosystem. It would be great. :)

Piracy rates would shoot up and we'd move faster towards streaming as the norm.

What would poor people do? I dont think it would be fair to deny poor people gaming, that is why consoles were devised and why they have a role in gaming.

If consoles disappeared..gaming would slowly die period. Consoles are the life blood of gaming, without them we'd probably only have mobile games, what a disgusting thought.

Not question of being poor, most of the people with consoles already have pcs!!!

It's the gaming segments aren't quite the same :

One favors f2p and webgaming, the other aaa gaming!!!

different flavors, different tastes.

I would quit gaming because PC gaming sucks.

Ya both need to prove these laughable points.

Really? I don't like PC gaming very much but if there was no other choice I would definitely go all-in.

And while I do agree with some of the things you said (mainly the "everyone united" part) I don't think you're taking into account all the disadvantages. You would hardly be getting any first party quality games like the ones you see on consoles.

As an avi PC gamer that I am, I could tell anyone building a PC is fun to do and most importantly, very cheap and viable to do for only $600 that will send you to Heaven itself. But sadly, PC is not for everyone and that's understandable. Let's look at the big picture, Nintendo would never stop making consoles, so there's still Nintendo to take into consideration while both Sony/MS ditch consoles all together but should Nintendo stop making consoles, well. It's up to the console gamer if they either:

• A-Go Retro gaming and play their old consoles
• B-Just straight up quitting gaming all together if PC becomes the only way to play games

The choice is yours to make console gamers. And I don't believe none of you are going to stream games anyways.

@lundy86_4:

Ask around you'll see if my point is that laughable!!!

@sovkhan: Or... Prove your point. Burden of Proof is a thing. Otherwise, you could do one.

The market will just fill the gap with console like PC's that are just as affordable. I mean they exist now but are not competitive to consoles nor marketed and sold alike. But in reality if the big 3 stopped then someone else would just move in with their own console. I mean a console is nothing but a proprietary software platform in a specified low end hardware tailored for use within a specific market set within rigid policy licenses.

@lundy86_4:

It's obvious, in almost every home there's a pc now!!!

Maybe not the top of the line one, but still good enough to play lotta games.

@sovkhan: Jesus, your first post may have been laughed off as a troll, but you doubled down. Provide proof or simply **** off.

Once again:

So basically you have to build your own PC and manually upgrade it as more demanding games release. It can be a cheap one or a laptop, but nothing console-like. I mean someone would obviously just make a new console because of that massive gap in the market, but let's pretend that can't happen.

@lundy86_4:

About the 71% income???

@sovkhan: Read above. Keep your argument straight, or just don't bother arguing.

I was just stating my opinion in general for a universal platform and how it could work. I wasn't going by your restrictions.

As for the quality of games... There aren't many first party AAA titles anyways. Those studios could continue to make high quality games on the universal platform. There are already AAA games outside of first party that meet or exceed the quality of first party offerings. Games like The Witcher 3, AC Odyssey, Red Dead Redemption 2, etc..

And more importantly, Indie games that are starting to replace top-notch AAA games. Indie games have come a long way and like Bassman said, games like Witcher 3 AC Odyssey and even games like Divinity Original Sin 2 have proven from time to time you don't need a single AAA 1st-party to be the all end type of thing. Truth be told, I'm enjoying 3rd-party/Indie games more so then the single AAA games on consoles other then Nintendo's offerings.

Edit: It's more the reasons why I'm not gonna bother getting PS5 launch but rather 3/4 down the line when more games become available and cheaper to buy. PC has everything I want.

If PC was the only platform those gamers would be playing all the AAA games they already play but on PC. Same revenue.

I'd quit gaming and put more time into my other hobbies.

If the poor or really poor, can they really afford to spend on non-essentials like gaming?

People that profess to love games would play on PC