Can’t think of one now but I almost bought an OUYA. You know you screwed up when Homestar Runner makes fun of you.
edit:
Not disappointing as in bad but disappointing I couldn’t make it work for me. I bought a 3DS XL on two separate occasions. I got horrible headaches after playing, even with the 3D completely off. I think it was the low DPI coupled with the fact I had to have my nose almsot touching the screen. I’m not sure what possessed me to try again. It wasn’t even a different model.
But I missed so many good games. I’m tempted to try emulating them, DS as well as I missed that too, but I’d hate to resort to piracy, even though there aren’t any other ways to play DS and 3DS games on a big screen.
Probably the Ouya…
Unpopular opinion, but Xbox 360. The first ones didn’t have hdmi, didn’t have a hard drive, the giant power brick was unsightly, the controller has the worst dpad I have ever touched and playing any fighting game on it was a pain, the paid multiplayer cancer grew there, the ads in the main menu of the console… And I didn’t get to see the red ring of death since I’ve switched to PS3 as soon as I could afford one.
I know a lot of people have fond memories of it, but for me the 360 represented the worst of the console manufacturers’ greed, milking the consumer to the bone while cheaping out on everything that was possible to cheap out on.
Mine was also the 360, but simply because of when I got it. I was a young teen when it originally came out, and I begged my parents for one. They were concerned that my kid brother (several years younger than me) would inevitably end up playing the games I had for it. The 360 was marketed more as a mature console, compared to the family friendly Wii. So I had to wait until my brother was old enough to play games like COD and Halo.
This meant that by the time I finally got the 360, the XBO was nearing release. And the 360’s multiplayer heyday had largely passed by that point, as everyone had largely moved on from games like Halo 3, Modern Warfare 2, Assassins Creed Brotherhood, etc… So matchmaking lobbies for all of the games I wanted to experience were basically only full of the diehard fans who had absolutely no sympathy for new/learning players. It meant I ended up using it primarily as a single player console. I enjoyed lots of single-player games like Final Fantasy 13/13-2, Lost Odyssey, Mass Effect Trilogy, Dark Souls, etc… But that’s pretty much all I used it for. I’d chat with friends while I played if they were online, but it quickly became clear that my friends were moving on from the console.
All of the big multiplayer experiences for the 360 were largely lost on me, because none of my friends were interested in playing those old games by that point. And multiplayer is unfortunately a large part of what the console was designed for. I think the only multiplayer game that really held our attention was Destiny, and even that turned out to be a pretty big disappointment after a while. We only really kept playing it as an excuse to hang out in voice chat.
I was also largely moving towards PC gaming by that point. I had already experimented with installing games like Oblivion and Skyrim on my (really shitty) laptop, and got them running at potato quality. I saw the potential, and shifted towards PC gaming after getting the 360. I saved up my money from my first job, and built my first PC a year or two after getting the 360. So I only really kept the 360 around for the exclusives that weren’t on PC.
Nowadays, I just emulate the 360 exclusives for single player. Currently working my way through Lost Odyssey, because I never actually got around to finishing it on the 360. I think because I built my PC before I beat the game.
I still want to play some of the rpgs of that era: Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata
Just need to find the time somewhere 😅
My Xbox 360 RRoD’ed on me twice.
It also had its disc drive die THE DAY I got Skyrim on release after waiting in line for it.
I spent the next several hours learning how to flash the firmware of a broken RRoD’ed Xbox 360 so that I could replace my drive with its parts.
It was simultaneously the best and worst console I ever owned:
Best because I have a lot of fond memories playing Halo 3 multiplayer, Skyrim, etc. with my friends in my college apartment we all shared.
Worst because it was an unreliable piece of shit.
They offered the HDD as optional if you paid for the “pro” package. The HDMI was a bummer but being honest I needed to buy a special adapter to use on my TV because I didn’t even have component out ! So slightly understandable at the time.
It wasn’t a well built system none of that generation was. I went through three Xbox 360s. I bought my fourth 2 years ago !
Lot of fond memories though
I am one of the few lucky ones to actually get an Ouya… It wasn’t great.
It was sooo bad. We had such a bad time with it. The controller buttons stick, the software was super buggy, and they required a credit card to log in (I dont know if that changed after the first couple of months, but I remember being pissed).
My friend got an ouya, I think he mostly got it as a bit of a curiosity since he was a game dev student (and now does it professionally)
It absolutely didn’t do anything particularly different or better than any other gadget we could have hooked up to the TV to game on, but we did have a lot of fun with it for a while. It was kind of nice that it was so small so he could carry it around easily if he wanted to take it somewhere for a party or something.
And a few of the games we first discovered on the ouya are still mainstays of our parties when we manage to get together as busy adults.
Through a series of moves, roommate swaps, and marriage, that ouya (though not the controller) has actually now ended up in my possession
It’s on the left with my small collection of retro consoles and handhelds. Couple other cool bits of geeky paraphernalia scattered in there too. Disregard the mess on the coffee table and such, this was taken in the middle of some renovations, turns out I don’t take many pictures of my entertainment center.
Your entertainment center is so cool I didn’t even notice the so called “mess”.
The real shame is that the coffee table isn’t really visible because it’s pretty cool itself, it’s a hatch from a ship (I believe a WWII Liberty ship)
Bit of family history with it too. My dad originally had it, but my mom hated it, so eventually it went to live with my grandfather. He died, and it ended up back in our basement. My sister and I both really liked it, and we had a bit of an agreement that whoever moved out first got the table, and I won.
EDIT: Also for anyone else who likes my setup, the entertainment center and shelves in the wall are IKEA Fjallbo, no pretty affordable. The shelf of the far right is just an IKEA Kallax.
And I have the TV synced up to Phillips hue lights behind it and in the ceiling
That’s a lotta Chianti
I’m not totally sure where the bottles came from, we don’t really drink chianti, and they’ve just kind of been hanging around on a shelf somewhere, but they ultimately ended up on this chandelier
Hahaha nice. I’ve tried it once, it was nice. Very distinctive bottle, though!
Nice portal gun hiding up on a shelf.
Every so often I get reminded of the Ouya. I still have mine from the Kickstarter somewhere. It was good in concept, and I even saw posts of it being sold in major retailers like Target, but it just fizzled out far too fast.
I came to say this. Some good games on there, but Julie Uhrman is the worst. and to think, she just failed upward.
I owned Ouya. The games weren’t great but OK. Some were fun. At least console wasn’t too expensive. Then I tried to change my email for my Ouya account and learned that the company behind Ouya disappeared. I was frustrated and sold my Ouya :(
Xbox One. Everytime I booted it up to feed the Halo crave, there’d be an update that took like an hour. Finally get on… Halo needs to update. 1 hour later, I’ve lost interest.
Repeat 6+ months later.
I quit getting consoles after the PS3 and Xbox 360 and I made the right decision. The PS4 and XBone were painfully slow, had horrid load times, and everything was expensive. Watching my friend play Monster Hunter drove me insane, like five minutes of loading per hunt!
An hour progress in Morrowind, so caught up I forgot to save. Red ring.
Probably the Sega 32X. The messaging around it was kind of confusing, and still being fairly young when it came out, I was expecting it to be the gateway to 32 bit gaming that I would be enjoying for years to come. I ended up getting virtua racing on it, which was better than the Genesis version, but nothing spectacular really. I also got virtua fighter, which was a genuinely good game. Almost everything else was ports of mediocre games that had already come out on the Genesis. A couple of original games like knuckles chaotix just… Kinda sucked. Then when I found out that all of the support was going behind the Saturn, and that’s where all of the new and original games were going, well I just felt swindled.
Nintendo Switch
Mario Odyssey was fine, but I didn’t really see the use for a portable slab compared to a pocket-size device like my phone or the 3DS. Also, this was the first Nintendo device that felt completely soulless. At least the Wii U had some charm to it.
yep, switch sucks balls.
Xbox. I wanted a gamecube but my parents didn’t like nintendo for some reason. Now im old and i don’t like nintendo for some reason, and I still don’t like xbox
My friend, there are lots of reasons not to like the litigious corporate monstrosity that Nintendo has become.
Also, they don’t really do proper adult games like Elden Ring.
If you love Zelda I understand but it’s time to move on.
[edit: Added a line break for two separate thoughts. Sloppy writing remains for the sake of responses.]
“Proper adults” play whatever the fuck they like, including Zelda.
not proper adults, ops saying games catered towards adults
Also, they don’t really do proper adult games like Elden Ring. If you love Zelda I understand but it’s time to move on.
In the context of the first sentence, the second sentence seems to imply that Zelda isn’t for “proper adults”. Even if it wasn’t meant like that (I can’t see how else it can be meant), who is OP to tell people to “move on”.
Fair, my phrasing was probably too saucy there. Drunk post, my bad. I would still call myself a Zelda fan, even though the last one I played was Twilight Princess. It’s one of the all-time greatest series and the titles nearly always score 9/10 everywhere for a reason.
But I’m still going to say to “move on”. Not because of Zelda, no. There’s no real substitute. Rather, move on because Nintendo is scummy and doesn’t deserve your money when plenty of other publishers are making fun and creative games and working hard for it instead of suing their own customers.
Rather, move on because Nintendo is scummy and doesn’t deserve your money
So you’re saying move on to the high seas? Yarr
What’s the GabeN quote? Piracy is a customer service problem? That seems applicable here.
I downvoted your rough draft but upvoted your final version.
Yes this was what I actually meant.
That’s true. I wouldn’t expect someone to play games that aren’t fun to them.
But you’re not exactly helping the gaming industry improve if you’re regularly giving money to douchey companies rather than more open-minded publishers. I think it’s pretty simple to argue that you’re endorsing the scumbag behavior if you help finance it.
Nintendo has always been litigious. I don’t understand this myth that they used to be wholesome and friendly in the good old days.
They sued Atari for making NES games. They sued Galoob for making the Game Genie. They sued Blockbuster for renting their games.
Kirby the character is literally named after Nintendo’s lawyer John Kirby.
That’s a very good point. But they’re even more of a corporate behemoth now.
I was a Nintendo Power subscriber until the GameCube era, and I feel like they used to share a little bit of behind-the-scenes fun (e.g. making-of Donkey Kong Country VHS) and promote 3rd-party titles even on the magazine cover. But it seems like even that kind of stuff is long gone.
Shitty take.
minus that one comic book looking gorey slasher game for the wii
That was pretty fun, very clever too. They could spend more on the graphics because it was greyscale.
Red Steel or MadWorld?
i think it was madworld, didnt know there were 2 games like that for the wii
Red Steel was a release title, meant to showcase the Wii as a serious console for adults as well as a family friendly console for kids, but I’m pretty sure it, MadWorld, and No More Heroes were the only remotely gorey games for it.
I owned a fucking Virtual Boy. Do I really need to explain why I was disappointed?
I tried one in the local shop and couldn’t see why anyone would want that shit.
And I bought one cheap while on a trip to the US (being European). Was happy I got this curiosity cheap. Worth it for me.
Yeah I can see buying it as a curiosity, but did any kid ever actually ask to go home so they can play their Virtual Boy?
And, holy shit, they’re going for a decent price on eBay.
Nah, of course.
Tiger GameCom. I really think it had a lot of potential and was ahead of its time. They didn’t make a lot of games for it and it was underpowered. Some really cool ideas though, it was the first touch-screen anything I had. It had 2 game cartridge slots. It had built in utilities, tools, and games.
The Switch.
Damn thing was fragile af, and they wanted to rent everything to us, no more Virtual Console no more solid hardware, they spend more money suing people for fixing it then they do on it like blocking local backup of saves so they can force a cloud sub and them still not having fixed the drifting JoyCons then charging you more than they are worth for repairs.
I… I have to ask. I really like the switch as the last console there ever was or possibly might be. But I see lots of issues too.
By rent everything to us, you mean game downloads? If so, the switch has a huge physical media collection but yes they might not be in your stores.
I mean the emulation, their online service as a sub with it all included, rather than letting us buy like they did from the time they implemented it up through the 3DS. There’s issues with digital copies, but my 3DS has a permanent license when they closed the eShop, so all of the games I have on it will work until the system dies and I can;t downalod them again. The Switch, if I am not subscribed to Online, all of them are gone.
I wholeheartedly agree, the classic games in Nintendo online as a subscription is a shit concept.
If I didn’t have better ways of playing these (and more) retro games I wouldn’t have any morality issues using a hacked switch to play these.
Oh, they’re all on RetroArch, now.
I just hate them not letting you pay for it, their greed forces piracy, but then I’ve not downloaded a game because I was too broke to buy it for decades. It’s all been being unable to buy, or having terrible DRM that broke the game, or a shitty launcher that you were forced to use.
This is my answer too. As soon as I read the question it just hit me. I only had a lite. Never the big one. The thing was fragile. It always felt like I was gonna break it even just holding it in my hands. I babied the fuck out of that system. I really enjoyed the games I had for it. I played it quite a bit. It’s just that the system itself was kinda jank. The lifeless interface, the slow store, the slow games that pushed the hardware too far. Just bleh. Then Steam Deck came out and it blew it out of the water in every way possible.
I never got the steam deck comparison.
It’s like comparing different leagues, classes or whatever and then additionally apples and oranges.
Yes, first off, of course the steam deck is far more powerful than the switch. For the price and used hardware it better be! That’s a moot point basically, I could also argue that a >2k€ mobile should be more powerful than a <200€ one. Also, the switch literally is a mobile while the steam deck more of a PC anyhow, which again is a more powerful platform. I’m not going into energy usage though.
The other point is that the steam deck is a pc with a console frontend and that the switch is a console. One is a locked down system (with hard specs) and the other - Well, a pc.
That makes neither better or worse but it depends on your requirements. I love my PCs but sometimes I just want stuff to work and be one packaged experience. And thats where consoles shine. Example: I’ve played steredenn on switch but never got the controls to work on steam deck, although it’s a Linux version even.
The point being. It’s fine to like the steam deck over the switch. But it’s not comparable however crappy the switch might be.
I get what you’re trying to say but I really disagree. You can compare the two because they’re offering the same basic premise. The ability to play video games in a handheld form. Of course the price is different. Of course the capabilities are different. Of course the power of the two machines are different. That’s a given. They’re two different pieces of technology. We compare technology based off of what they’re offering. These two machines are offering the same thing. The ability to play video games in a handheld form. In what world is anything that’s offering the same thing as another thing not up for comparison?
For me the Steam Deck made the Switch a redundant device. You can compare them apples to apples. Store experience? Steam Deck wipes the floor with the Switch. We all know the Switch has a horrible store experience. Online capabilities? Steam Deck. Don’t have to pay $20 a year to use online capabilities with my Deck. Form factor? Steam Deck is a big bulky machine but it’s more ergonomically better suited for me because I’m not as scrunched up like I was holding the Switch lite. OG Switch may have a better experience there. Games they offer? The only thing a Switch offers that separates the two in favor of the Switch is the ability to play Nintendo games natively without jumping through hoops.
You can say the Switch is a console and the Steam Deck is a PC all you want. That’s factually true. You can even compare that. They’re both computers with a processor, a fan, some form of gpu. One offers a closed off user experience bound to the rules and end user license agreement of a single company. The other is an open full blown PC experience where the makers of the machine say do whatever you want to it. Because you can do whatever you want to a Steam Deck you may run into problems with it that you wouldn’t otherwise experience on a console. That’s a fine and fair comparison.
To say they aren’t comparable is shielding the Switch from criticism. It’s doing a disservice to anybody who is looking for a handheld device to play video games because you’re hiding information from a perspective buyer who may have a certain set of requirements pertaining to purchasing such a device.
Thanks for the great discussion. I am fine with everything but the last paragraph.
But first, let’s respectfully still disagree in general. However I think we’re just expressing it differently.
So, from a pc perspective the steam deck is obsolete, since my 14" notebook is a far better device to me. And it’s highly mobile too. Thing is, this point is basically going nowhere since with price and over all sectors there will always be a (technologically objective) better device. Why don’t we all buy pro tools? Well price for one. It’s always about the ratio. Anyhow, just for clarity, I’m really fine with disagreeing here.
Regarding the last paragraph: just recently I had a talk with someone interested and she was looking for a mobile device. I told her about switch and also steam deck, showed both and highlighted the experience differences but as the main point I told her she at the single most important thing needs to look into the game libraries which suits her otherwise she will have a paperweight. It is always and has always been the software that sells the systems.
The perspective buyer wants to play a game and deserves the best experience. On whatever current or future system that might be, and has to weigh in on the price he wants to spend. And that’s what I would recommend.
Yeah no problem. I think I know where the disagreement is stemming from. I may be wrong so you can correct me, but you look at the Steam Deck as a handheld PC competing with other PCs. I look at the Steam Deck as a handheld PC competing with other handhelds in general. That’s the disagreement. It’s a fine line because neither one is really right or wrong. We fall on the opposite sides. I have a PC that is much more powerful than the Steam Deck. That didn’t make the Steam Deck obsolete to me. I wasn’t looking at the Steam Deck as a PC replacement.
My last paragraph and your actions with your friend prove my point. If they weren’t comparable you wouldn’t bring them up together. I do agree with you that software sells the system. That’s why I bought a Switch to begin with.
The Steam Deck with Eden on it plays Switch games better than my Switch, move up to a more powerful Ally X or a full computer…
Yeah my PC is part of the reason the Switch was so disappointing too. I really wanted a handheld so I didn’t have to sit at my desk. Turns out I sat at my PC way more than I ever turned on the Switch. Outside of the exclusives it was a really redundant system.
Sadly Xenoblade doesn’t play well on emulation, the only exclusives I lost, I was kinda miffed about losing my Animal Crossing island after having spent hundreds of hours building it and raiding forums for island visit codes of people with rare items in the shop but it is what it is when the greey company locks your saves on internal memory and sues the guy who dropped the code to copy them.
That and surprisingly Breath of the Wild always crashes my PC after a while. I don’t know what is causing the crash other than possibly a spike in memory that freaks the GPU out. Luckily Unicorn Overlord doesn’t do that and that game looks a million times better on my PC. It upscales really nice.
The weird one I get is DQ XIS, if I launch it in 2D mode it plays perfectly, but if I swap to 3D it crashes hard, like my whole computer has frozen up and I run Linux so that’s not normal.
I miss Xenoblade, and I’m mad I bought special editions of the whole series only to be unable to play them now, but that’s a few hundred bucks lost vs all the money spent buying three Switches only to have them fail and losing saves because you can;t back them up yourself and Nintendon’t sued the guy who wrote the code that let you to push their shitty cloud nobody asked for.
I’ve been off Sony for a while, as well, because getting ads on the home screen was a big “Nope!” for me, but when I left they had a better cloud system, but you could still plug in a USB device and backup your saves to it without PS+. No idea if they broke it as well, but Nintendo has always been at the forefront ot greedy corporate fuckery, it’s just now that enshittification has seeped into everything pushing the boundaries of an already bad ecosystem isn’t just kinda annoying like it used to be.
I’m on Linux too. AMD or Nvidia?
I haven’t gotten into a console since SNES.
I bought a PS5, played it a few times, but it gathers dust. I think it was last powered up in 2024. I don’t find the games fun.
What games do you play?
None at this point
The Sega Game Gear. That sucker could drain six AA batteries in about three hours. Do you know how hard it was to find a place to buy AA batteries on Christmas day?
While a rechargeable battery pack fixed that problem, most of the games were garbage compared to the GameBoy. The first party games were the best, but most everything else was ‘meh.’
I never did get that TV tuner add-on either.
I think one saving grace for the Game Gear was that you could also play Master System games using an adapter, if I remember correctly?
You might be thinking of the Sega Nomad, which was made explicitly to pay the full size cartridges. My dad had one for a while and it was the Game Gear turned to 11, flaws and all. Huge, hot, heavy, and devoured batteries. It was a cool concept on paper but nobody wanted to spend hundreds on it to play Sonic the Hedgehog on a tiny screen with a giant warm brick as a controller.
I was in primary school when the Game Gear was a thing, so my memory was foggy - but the adapter was definitely a thing:
Instant flashback to my childhood. At some point i finally got a used game gear somewhere and the games were just awfull.
PS5. Minimal games
PS4 - no games. Worse multimedia experience compared to PS3. No longer matters to me but did at launch.
Xbone - no games
Didn’t buy PS5 or another Xbox myself but my roommate did get a PS5. No games. He’s not buying another Sony console either.
Artificial value of exclusives lost combined with drastically less output from AAA and oddball titles like Sony had on PSN during PS3 era renders consoles completely pointless to me now. Since I was always PC gaming while also owning consoles in the past, I built a PC for the living room too.
Upcoming disappointment:
Probably Switch 2. I think Nintendo has lost their way ever since Iwata died. Certainly their style has evaporated. You will like your black/white barren GUI or else Mario’s getting shot. Switch 1 was already borderline.
