Are Newer Consoles Even Worth The Money?

As gamers, we rely on a surplus of technology at our fingertips in order to sustain our habits. Habits that have our hands lusting for a game, fingers twitching in anticipation of the next device that might allow us to explode some candies or shoot Nazis or evade a zombie apocalypse. And these devices are not in short supply.

Our games are starting to cross devices which makes choosing a device a lot simpler… or does it?

I can play Candy Crush Saga on my PC or my android phone. I can play it on Facebook or on king.com. I can play it on a Kindle, iPad, any iPod that has internet access or can support apps. Basically I can play it on just about anything. The only thing that I can’t play it on is, well, consoles. But if we really think about it, that isn’t actually true. In reality, I can’t play it on old consoles. The newer consoles are basically tricked out with similar functions to a PC. I mean, if I can stream Netflix, why can’t I play online games on my console?

But if all these different devices support the same game, how am I supposed to choose which one to spend my money on? They aren’t exactly cheap. And as a broke college student, I 100% cannot afford more than one new device… well, at least not if I want to afford games.

But if our consoles are basically turning into computers, why are we still spending the money to buy multiple devices?

At this point, a buyer isn’t really losing too much by just saving the money on a console and buying a PC. These new consoles are costing gamers hundreds of dollars. Honestly, it isn’t worth it. You can save the money and buy a fancy-shmancy computer with equivalent graphics and more options… especially when you consider that a lot of newer consoles are shying away from backwards compatibility and most newer games are available for PC.

And I’m not even going to get into the absurdity known as the Xbox One.

In my mind, consoles have always had one big advantage that made them stand out.

Completely internet free.

Living basically in the middle of nowhere, if the internet crashed, it wasn’t a simple matter of restarting the modem. No. If the internet was out in my house, it meant it was most likely out for my entire area. Seriously, it’s been years and nothing has changed. The lovely company (whose name I will not slander in this post) still drops the internet every couple of weeks for a day or so. So basically, none of my darling internet supported games work.

And when I’m at college, it is just as bad. Anytime too many people decide to get on the WiFi at once, it crashes. Plus it likes to be a jerk and ask me to “authenticate” my internet every couple of hours. Of course, I never have to authenticate when I’m doing boring research or filling out job apps. No, I have to authenticate in the middle of a show or a YouTube video or, you guessed it, a game. 

If I’m looking for a gaming fix, I turn to my PS2.

Ancient, I know, but it gets the job done. And I’m not the only one with internet capability issues. Anyone in the military is going to struggle with the next generation of consoles. When you get shipped out to the middle of third world countries or a vast ocean, an internet-free console might just be your only luxury. But apparently this is a luxury that is fading fast. 

And let’s just consider that when I say I’m in the middle of nowhere, I’m defining nowhere as located in a small town with neighbors I can see and even walk to in under a minute. Plus my town is the county seat. We have courthouses and jails and government offices. All on the smaller side, but still. They exist in my town.

Now let’s think of those poor gamers stuck out in the woods or back-country where their neighbors are over a hill and around a bend and they could visit them if they were willing to walk for about two hours on a skinny dirt road or cut through some cow-pie infested fields. I’m sure their internet is just dandy!

Basically, newer consoles are going to start losing their appeal.

If consoles continue to model themselves after PCs, they are going to slowly lose the market. Pretty soon game developers will see that most of their sales are for PCs because people have stopped wasting money on embellished consoles and the games will get marketed for computers instead of other devices. If consoles start forcing their users onto the internet (like the Xbox One) then the users are going to get fed up and realize that new computers are the better alternative. Seriously, even computers are more universal at this point than the Xbox One.

This isn’t to say that consoles will disappear. There will always be those gamers who go out and buy the latest and the greatest even if it is a complete waste of money. 

But what do you think? Are consoles still worth your money? And if they head down the path of the Xbox One, will you continue to go out and buy them?

 Let me know in the comments below!