Apparently some lawsuits have started on Sony’s potential price-fixing of all games on their platform since they’re now the only retailer. Before anyone gets excited, these are probably going nowhere, but it’s neat that something is happening. The idea seems similar to the Epic vs Apple/Google lawsuits.
The console market has ceded market share to PC over the past few decades specifically because a growing portion of the market sees that it’s cheaper over time. Everyone knows about Steam sales being better than the equivalent on consoles, whether they know it’s because of increased market competition or not. More and more people have shown that they’re doing the math on subscriptions to play online and realizing that it’s not a good deal. When you cut out the physical market and its own methods of keeping purchase prices down, more people still will do the math and decide not to engage.
The actual data does not support your conclusion.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/11/gaming-games-consels-xbox-play-station-fun/
Even in that chart it does. In 2003 (Steam rolls out for the first time), the blue PC portion of the chart is clearly smaller than the green console portion. In 2020, at the end of that graph, PC is bigger than all consoles combined. That’s not shared equally, and there are outliers aplenty, like League of Legends probably making a disproportionate amount of money compared to the rest of PC for several years, but we’ve seen traditional console publishers like Ubisoft and Capcom show that PC is now more often than not the lead platform. In 2011, there had to be a petition to bring Dark Souls to PC when it wasn’t even considered before, and then about 10 years later, Elden Ring on PC outsold both PlayStation versions combined.
It’s very clear that PC and Console have remained relatively flat and comparable, while Mobile eats BOTH their lunch. PC has not experienced the runaway capture your intentionally vague wording implies it has…
From 2006 to 2026:
I can’t help what you infer from what I said, but I didn’t say runaway. I said it’s been ceding ground over decades, which it has. For another thing that’s not captured in that broad graph, something like half of all playtime on consoles is only a few of the biggest live service games, which does skew things like dollars earned for those platforms while not reflecting the situation for the likes of companies that are putting out new video games every couple of years. No surprise that subscriptions haven’t affected playing Fortnite on PS5, because free to play games don’t require that subscription fee like Elden Ring does.
Again…
From 2006 to 2026:
PC isn’t “cannibalizing” shit… They are both losing to Mobile.
You can’t just ignore data that doesn’t agree with your argument…
You put “cannibalize” in quotes as though I said it. I did not. Please don’t invent an argument that I didn’t make.
That statement is untrue; both have lost market share to mobile.
Fair points… Guess we will see when the new PS/Xbox hit the market. I hope you’re right…