I don't think a lot of people are going to double dip this time. This game will sell consoles, but it's not going to make up for the deficit the console market has compared to how many PS3s and Xbox 360s were out there in 2013.
Back in 2013, I bought an old PS3 + GTA5 for £150 or so just to play the game, then once I had it, picked up two more exclusives, before never touching it again pretty quickly.
Getting a console for GTA6, plus the game, this time may set me back more than my expendable income after rent and bills. It will absolutely sell consoles but I'd wager people are actually able to buy a console much less than in 2013.
I really hope this is true. The only thing that will stop Rockstar from the delayed PC release nonsense in the future is actually stopping the double dip.
I ended up with a PS4 just for Red Dead 2. But I still haven't bought it on PC and have no plans to do so.
The thing is, the PS4 kind of made sense because I also wanted a Blu-Ray player. I still have it for that, so a PS5 would be an impossible sell to me. It's like Rockstar tries to sell consoles but this time around is one of the worst ever console eras.
I'm with them; my 1080p TV still gets the job done and looks great to me. Maybe I'd be more invested in cinema if cinema cared more about what I want. I can't even walk into brick and mortar and buy a movie anymore, and it's not like there's a GOG for movies.
There's a time and place for 4k. It is not all the time. But some things are treats with high resolution and pixels-per-fov of your vision. Also oled looks so, so good.
That being said, 1080p for older stuff looks perfectly fine, and I'd argue audio quality, audio stereo image, and accurate frequency spectrum resolution is game changing, and arguably more important.
RE: gog for movies: that is a fascinating idea. What would that look like, to you? I'm very curious.
I just need to be able to buy and download DRM-free movies. Outside of that, I don't care what it looks like. Movie studios put so much DRM on my Blu Rays that they're a pain to rip (but notably, not impossible to rip), and "digital copies" of movies are just long term rentals. Meanwhile the movie industry is on fire while their old revenue streams dry up, and they're scratching their heads as to where they went wrong.
My tv is 4k, but I exclusively watch 1080p movies and series on it. I'm not going to double my subscription costs just to get 4k streaming, and most piratable files are 1080p.
Piracy has been on 4K for longer than streaming has been charging extra for it. New releases on the scene have actually started skipping FHD unless explicitly requested.
Yeah if you care about cinema you definely want a better resolution and considering to buy your UHD versions whenever available, but I could say the same for some modern videogames.
I'm watching things in 4K and playing in 1080p. It's exactly four times the pixels, so it's pixel-perfect scaling and it looks fine. (58" TV and the sofa is about 3 metres far, so a bit on the smallish side. I'm sure a 65" would look just as good.)
Woah 3 meters is really far for a 60 inch. I have a 60 inch at about 1-1.4 meters and it's great. Perfect for two people on a couch with some nice bookshelf speakers heavily toe'd in. It's not great for entertaining, but for watching things it's honestly better than some theaters.
It's all about how much it fills up your field of vision and how closely your retina's resolution matches the display's resolution. I don't want to have to turn my head at all to see things, and still be able to use my peripheral vision to have good awareness of the entire scene, and not see individual pixels if I can help it. But, still have it fill as much of my vision as possible while within those constraints.
Been wanting to upgrade to a 70-80 inch screen, too, at the same distance.
Another big variable is height placement of the tv in relation to one's head height and angle while comfortably sitting where you'll sit. Sit, close your eyes, sit comfortably, play with tilting your head forwards and back until you find a comfortable and sustainable pitch angle, with your eyes still closed look directly out from your skull, open your eyes, and that location is where the middle of your tv should be (it's usually about 10-20degrees down from directly ahead, but is different for everybody and your seating position and body). So if your tv is 3meters away, your optimum tv height might be on the literal floor. (And also speaker woofer and cabinet size for the volume of the room (bigger speakers for bigger rooms), and placement, depending on viewership location and count, go for an equilateral triangle between your seating position and the two speakers and default to having the tweeters at ear height with no obstructions and pointing at your ears for the most accurate imaging and least amount of comb filtering, and keep the woofers and tweeters vertically aligned to minimize time variance, which is good for stereo image, and try not to have you or speakers too close to walls or especially corners).
I've been a PC player for 2 decades now, but it's getting so expensive! I can't go back to consoles after being so free, but high end PC gaming is probably over for me. I feel one of my biggest mistakes was buying my first 1440p monitor, everything gets more expensive and I put myself in that position.
Just play at 1080p on your 1440p monitor. Also take solace knowing that everybody is in the same boat and complaining that studios are putting too much time into making things look real rather than good or be fun. So we're in a sort of pre-renaissance with socioeconomics and tech business. Something's got to give, and it ain't Valve, hopefully. That would be a disaster, as they're a lot more important than any of us know. They lead the gaming sector and business in the gaming sector, which leads the tech and entertainment sectors, which ultimately translate to the rest of society. And they lead with.... Integrity and consumer friendly practices.
Also, tell AAA to fuck off until they get their acts together. Stop playing live service games, and just play other, better games high-endedly. They don't have to be brand new, either. Look for independent studios, smaller studios, and/or non-American studios. It's okay to play big titles when they're good, but the actual good games haven't been in AAA or big American published studios now for like ten years. Every once in a while in that space, an anomaly appears, but those are the exceptions to the rule.
If you want, you can focus on peripherals like nice headphones or steering wheel or a good controller for your pc. Those, combined with playing more genres and exploring different things (keep an eye on humble bundle, too! And epic store free games!) can really keep your libraries full and feeling fresh.
The lucrative and naive kids stay the same age for studios, but we all grow up eventually, and if we still love gaming, we need to demand better from studios by speaking up and not buying garbage. The older, experienced demographic that has realized the bullshit is just going to grow bigger, we aren't going away, and we WANT to buy games. It's only a matter of time before more studios realize this and cater to us rather than make the same garbage that only the inexperienced can play, just slightly shinier each year.
I've always been a midrange gamer. It is getting expensive. But a mid range PC is still as powerful as a console for a roughly similar price. I'm in for the gameplay, not so much the ultra high graphics.
I've always enjoyed trying new technologies such as Ray Tracing or HDR, but all in all I agree with you, gameplay comes first. That's why I've been falling in love with indie games more and more.
As a "game purist" I've a 1080p desktop setup for PC and retro, I'm planning to build a full 4k space in the future for this/next gen; 2k is a particular spot, more work oriented, but it can be used to play better well-optimized PC games that don't need a 4k gamepad experience (I think it hardly depends on the screen size and how it's placed). I would also really like to buy a real CRT in the future!
I own a NEC CRT and I use it even for modern games every now and then. I beat Silent Hill 2 Remake on it last year and it looks great. I can't remember which resolution it was, but I only lost a bit of screen on top and bottom so it was playable even if the game didn't come with 4:3 support.