Animated drawing of my fursonas Hender (1st from left), Noggy (2nd), Hakiya (3rd) and Jacky (4th) waving to the reader

I don't see light in the future of video game consoles

I love video game consoles, each one with their different design, ideas and characteristics. But since the rise of the game distribution through digital platforms, my love for them decreased substantially.

Distributing games through digital platforms isn't bad, on the other hand: it's convenient and help the planet using less natural resources. But we live on a world doomed by DRM, and both video game consoles and games have locks to limit what players can do with them.

What does this mean?

Video game consoles' online services doesn't last forever, and there are multiple examples. In the first moment they only disable the feature for purchasing new games, but there will be a moment when they throw everything out for good, because keeping them on costs money, and their biggest priority is increased revenue. When that happens, you'll not be able to download your own purchased games anymore.

If video game consoles were more open, we could backup our games in external devices and restore them whenever we wanted. But fuck you, DRM is there to shove your ass, you need to be gay do crime to be able to do something simple that should be a constitutional right.

What about physical media?

Physical media almost doesn't exist anymore, in both ways. Less and less of them are made today, with multiple titles that doesn't even receive them. And when they receive, it's basically just a "certificate of authority" because the game requires big updates from day one to run - and these updates aren't saved on the media itself. So, it doesn't matter if you got a physical media of the game, you need to update it from servers that no longer exist to get the full experience!

What about the high seas?

It's funny how half a dozen people can provide a better experience than a multibillion dollar company, but for consoles it's something slow. You can expect this after the video game console end of life, with a few exceptions. I know practically nothing about this subject, but I know that last generation consoles have not yet been fully unlocked yet, who knows when the current generation will.

What's left?

For me, computers remain as the best platform for gaming, since they're vastly more open than video game consoles, have much greater backwards compatibility and can emulate multiple other platforms. The problem of digital distribution of games still remains (Steam, Epic Games Store, and the product of the antichrist called Denuvo), but has a much smaller scale than their counterparties on video game consoles.

Maybe things change in the future, but I expect even worse things with examples like Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 editions without a disc player.