A few days ago, I mentioned that I was in the process of thinning out computers and game consoles and, well, other technology that kind of piles up when you’re in the line of work I’m in and have the hobbies I have.

I wanted to take a second and talk about one of the reasons I’m having an easier time of that than I initially expected, and it pretty much comes down to the state of PC gaming today as compared to previous years.

I’ve been keeping track of the games I’ve finished, and the platforms I finished them on, for the best part of the last two decades.  Looking back at the earliest entries on my list, in 2007 and 2008, there aren’t a ton of PC games represented.  Part of that is that games simply weren’t being released for PC, and even the ones that were often had compromises – particularly when it came to controller support or weird compatibility issues on any version of Windows newer than Windows XP.

That said, it didn’t take long for PC GPUs to dramatically leapfrog the capabilities of the Xbox 360 and PS3 – so when games DID come out for Windows, they usually looked much better.  As a side benefit, controller support started becoming more of a Thing, thanks to Microsoft pushing the Xbox 360 controller as the default PC gamepad.

Still, looking back at the landscape before, say, 2020, you were really handicapped if you didn’t own a Sony console, and honestly a Switch was a good idea because Nintendo was really firing on all cylinders, and when you already have two boxes under the TV it kinda made sense to make sure there was an Xbox in there as well – particularly since the GPU scalping boom was at its peak, meaning that the best chance you had of playing games at their best involved owning an Xbox One X.

If we look back specifically at 2017, which I consider the best year for gaming in the last decade, I wrote a post where I talked about my favorite six games of the year.  (Horizon: Zero Dawn, Nioh, Nier: Automata, Doki Doki Literature Club, Mario Odyssey and Zelda BOTW).  Nioh didn’t get a PC port until months after the console version, Nier had a PC version that was a hot mess, Horizon didn’t see a PC version for three years, and Nintendo games are, well, Nintendo games.  That leaves DDLC as the only real “PC” title on my best-of list.

Or, well, Just Monika.

By 2020, all of those had quality PC versions… or could be trivially emulated on PC, in the case of the Switch games.

On the other hand, that was right about the same time that the Series X and PS5 hit the shelves and – dollar for dollar – punched WELL above their weight class.  And PC components were still being scalped, particularly thanks to Corona-chan moving half the world to work from home status.  So, I was still firmly on the console side of things.

Though, if I’m honest, even those weren’t getting a ton of use.  I finished a meager handful of games in both 2021 and 2022.  Wh0le lotta World of Warcraft and FFXIV being played, though.  Genshin, too.  Probably not the best use of time.

But, let’s stop the navel gazing and get on to 2024, since we’re there now, and I can start rambling about why 2024 has suddenly become the year when I looked at the consoles and said, “well, hmm… I guess I should keep a Switch around?  But these other boxes under the TV can go.”

Basically, it comes down to three things.  Well, two of them are closely related so maybe two and a half things?  But actually there’s a fourth thing though it isn’t as important.

Look, numbers are hard.  But let’s start with #1 and see where this takes us.

First, and most importantly, Japanese (and Korean, and Chinese) developers fell head over heels in love with Steam and with PC releases in general.  When I was going through the libraries of both my Xbox Series X and PS5, the only game of note that hadn’t received a PC version was Stellar Blade… and Shift Up has already promised a PC version for next year.  There’s still a bit of a lag from Sony – up to two years, in some cases – but since I’ve been pretty far behind the curve when it comes to new releases ANYWAY it’s not such a big deal.

Second, PC components got cheaper and you can buy a GPU again.  I assume mining for crypto is still a THING, but maybe it uses dedicated mining cards or something?  It doesn’t seem to be a factor in the consumer market.

You’re still probably going to have a hard time building a console-spec PC at the same price point as, say, a second-hand PS5, but that brings me to the third point:

The Steam Deck (and ROG Ally, and similar handhelds from Lenovo etc) are crazy popular now, and developers are absolutely tuning their games to work on them.  So, if you take the same amount of power found in one of these handheld devices and convert it to what it would cost if you built a desktop at the same specs… well, that equivalent desktop can be thrown together with some very inexpensive parts and now you have a reasonable low end  gaming PC today and your games will only look better as it’s upgraded in future.

Full disclosure: I did not do this, myself.  I have disposable income and I want shiny graphics.

Fourth, and honestly least importantly, Microsoft seems INTENT on making it so actually owning an Xbox console is …superfluous? Like, they can’t announce an Xbox game without pointing out that it’s coming to PC as well, and probably Playstation and possibly Switch.

Like, I’m not super into console wars but they seem to have completely thrown up the white flag and I’m just the tiniest bit salty.

I owned a Windows Phone.  I have the right to be salty about anything Microsoft does.

Anyway, that was a whole lot of rambling.  Thanks for reading this far, if you’ve stuck around.