The gaming world has been through some incredible changes in recent years, which is why more and more of those who are passionate about playing video games don’t consider it worth it to buy a console or a gaming laptop anymore. The explanation is quite simple to grasp, although until a few years ago, nobody would have expected such a huge turn of events.
Being a hardcore gamer required some serious financial investments until some years ago. You had to pull out of your bank account a few hundred bucks to buy a console or a powerful gaming laptop. In the best-case scenario, you had to invest a bit less in upgrading your PC’s hardware in order to meet the technical expectations of specific games: the right GPU, more RAM, a better processor, and so on.
Meanwhile, the gaming world started to change drastically, making it possible for just about any person, regardless of their financial status, to run their favorite games from the comfort of their own homes. Let’s find out why spending money on a gaming laptop or console would be a mistake in most cases, in 2023:
Cloud gaming
With the increased popularity of cloud gaming services such as Google Stadia, NVIDIA GeForce, Boosteroid, and many more, long gone are those days when you couldn’t play your favorite games because your PC hardware was just not good enough. The whole charm and beauty of cloud gaming services is that they allow the user to pay for his favorite games on pretty much any device that he can connect to the internet, as it doesn’t matter anymore if the configuration is good enough or not.
The only downside is that in the case of cloud gaming services, you usually need to pay a monthly subscription fee in order to have access to all those titles that might interest you. As you’ve already figured out, the option of cloud gaming is suitable only in the case of hardcore gamers. If, instead, you’re more like the casual type of gamer who runs a video game only from time to time, it’s better to look for other solutions.
The rise of smartphones
Nobody can deny that smartphones nowadays are light-years more powerful than they were 10 or 15 years ago. You basically have a computer in your pocket, and it is just a matter of time until gaming is affected by this change as well. The stats show that mobile gaming has been gaining elevated popularity in recent years and that notoriety is still going up. More and more people, especially teenagers, prefer to use smartphones for their gaming passions to the detriment of consoles and what is known as a gaming laptop/PC.
It’s very easy to understand why the phenomenon happens: smartphones are becoming more and more powerful. Therefore, instead of spending money on a gaming laptop or console, why wouldn’t you buy a high-end smartphone? You need a smartphone anyway, as we can’t imagine our lives nowadays without these gadgets anyway.
You can connect a controller, a physical keyboard, a monitor, and even a mouse on your smartphone if you want to play your games on larger displays. You can do pretty much anything you want with a smartphone nowadays when it comes to gaming. Apart from playing the game, you can also share your progress with others, make live gaming sessions on Twitch or other platforms, and so on. Last but not least, you can use a cloud gaming service such as Google Stadia on your phone, which will allow you to run top games that are usually only available for PCs and consoles.
How can a gaming laptop/console still be beneficial
Each gamer out there is different, and we need to understand that each person has their own reasons behind their decisions. Although buying a gaming laptop/PC or console in 2023 wouldn’t be a smart move for most gamers out there, there are still possible reasons why you could still consider making such a purchase.
For instance, you may not be a fan of the idea of subscription fees. The simple fact that you need to constantly give money for a service each month can be extremely annoying. There could be months out there when you just don’t want to play anything, so would it still be worth it to pay that subscription fee? Of course not.
On the other hand, smartphones can’t run any game, and many of those that are available on consoles and PCs can’t run on a phone. As we’ve already said, you can combine the power of a smartphone with that of a cloud gaming platform, but even so, you still won’t be able to find all the games that might interest you. There are a lot of gamers who are after titles that came out 10 or even 15 years ago, so it would be pretty farfetched to expect to find them on a cloud gaming service. That’s because cloud gaming services prioritize the new games while they barely give any attention to the old titles.
There’s less than a month left of 2023, and 2024 is just around the corner. For the new year, we can expect smartphones and cloud gaming services to improve even more, making it an even worse idea to spend money on consoles or gaming laptops/PCs.
What’s your take on the subject? Do you still prefer running your favorite video games on a console or gaming laptop/PC?
Tim M. Hill helped bring Digital-Overload from a weekly newsletter to a full-fledged news site by creating a new website and branding. He continues to assist in keeping the site responsive and well organized for the readers. As a writer to Digital-Overload, Tim mainly covers mobile news and gadgets.