Primarily in my life ive been a console gamer. Starting with the ps1 and owning every system released since. Never did much pc gaming even when i had access to a decent rig. For the past few years ive been a collector. Going for rare and cool retro games i always wanted to own. After about a year with the steam deck it all feel so… archaic? Like, i went and hdmi modded my ps2, but i find the idea of booting up pcsx2 on deck more appealing. I dont feel the need to have a new game in my hands physically, when i know its gonna take me months to play it anyway, i can wait for a sale, get it cheaper, play it portably with mods. Console gaming, especially in the last 2 generations, feels like a hinderance more than anything. Why would i want to be tied to one piece of hardware, with a dubious at best chance of carrying my games forward to the next gen every 6 years? The steam deck feels like its released me from the shackles of console gaming. I dont think ill get rid of my whole collection… but my ps5 and xsx have been doing a lot of dust collecting these days.
Anyone else feel the same? Or have i just had an existential gamer crisis?
I’ve never really understood the appeal of collecting physical games. They cost SO much money second-hand a lot of the time, if they’re on disk, they better be in great shape, you need the original console in working condition, you need to store all those games in a storage shelf or something that takes up so much space, you need all those consoles to be plugged in to some sort of complicated AV switch system or something, and after all that, you get to play your retro game collection at glorious 480i 30fps, if that.
Or, you can put practically every retro game on a few micro SD cards, and boot them up on your Steam Deck or PC, often running flawlessly and with enhancements. Or better still, they have a native PC version!