this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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It's not like this is a pc only problem, it's only a matter of time before it hits consoles too. If high costs persist I could see a return of arcades and pc gaming cafes.
The current trend being pushed is cloud gaming like Nvidia Now or whatever.
I'm sure that will be nothing but a positive for consumers.
It's honestly pretty cool and vastly less expensive than chasing rare GPUs.
Stage One of Enshittification in action.
It plays into the "you'll own nothing and be happy" trend being pushed all around the economy.
The ultimate goal of the subscription services is to leave us with nothing if we don't bring an ever increasing heap of cash every month. It is also to empower services to ban us for any reason, not even necessarily legal one, taking away everything we considered "ours".
So, while it's nice to have options, one shouldn't negate the other. Sure, cloud gaming is handy when you're on the go, or if you are a very occasional gamer, but it shouldn't become the solution, even if there's a large corporate interest in making it so.
Yeah while technically correct this is also a gross overstatement of the gravity of the situation. You can maintain a perfectly good gaming hobby for your whole entire life without access to anything more powerful than a GTX 660. Access to high end GPUs is entirely elective, and not having access to it doesn't disqualify you from anything important.
From anything important made before like 2018.
New great games do come out, and you can't enjoy many of them on a 660. Also, graphics does matter to many players, as it helps with immersion.
Sure, there are plenty of gems that your 660 will run just fine, but there are plenty others it will not. And unless retro games are your vibe, you'll always be severely limited by hardware.
Then you can't frame it in the same light as "you'll own nothing and be happy", which refers to rent seeking on essential resources.
If you choose to set the bar for "immersive" at the level where high end GPUs are required, that's on you and you're the one enshittifying yourself. More to the point you're just obediently setting your standards exactly where the industry wants them, so that they can extract maximum value from you.
Why you would make such a choice escapes me, but it's not an unfair situation by any means. You can remove your hand from the fire at any moment.
Glad you're ok with living your entire life as a subscription service. Personally, no thank you.
I just used it for like 2 months to play Cyberpunk. It was cool cause i don't usually play demanding games and it allowed me to play this one for 20 bucks, rather than, you know, buying a GPU that would sit idle all year long while i play isometric 2D indie titles.
It highly depends on what you are playing and at which quality. I play Balatro and Silksong, I don't care about cloud gaming.
Yeah same I'm content playing Minecraft on my old ass GPU, but I used GeForce now for like 2 months to play cyberpunk and it was all in all a good experience which cost me very little
I fully believe that cloud gaming will never be able to lower input delay to a point where I'd be willing to use it
I honestly didn't notice anything of the sort. I have pretty beefy fiber connection at home so that may be why.
Xbox game pass was a pretty good deal as well, for a few years.
Is it less good now ? (not trolling i genuinely don't use this kind of service and have no idea how they have evolved over time)
Just in time for the 100 hour a month cap!
Not just consoles, but phones, tablets, smartwatches, smart televisions, anything "smart" really including things like home automation devices, automobiles of all varieties, e-bikes, network routers and other networking equipment.
This has to get solved somehow or it's really going to cripple a ton of industries.
Stop putting chips into everything?
I never asked for a ''''''smart'''''' future, and I hate that even a fucking toaster asks for a WiFi.
It won't persist. It's just AI hype and massive upscaling of data centres.
Yeah but it could be a few years. That's a long time to wait.
That seems unlikely. The more likely result is game makers targeting machines that have lower hardware specs then they otherwise would've
I hate everything about destroying pcgaming and pumping the generative AI bubble. But this I'll allow it. We need more arcades in Europe and NA so we stop being ass at "Versus fighting" games.
We also need more local gaming because playing online sucks ass between Kernel Anti-cheat, cheaters and trash tier netcode, playing online competitive is dumb.
Hear, hear, all I see nowadays are those stupid crane games and maaaybe a basketball dunking machine. I nearly cried with joy when I saw a LOTR pinball machine in a bar the other day.