I worked at a company long enough to go from young dev who wants to use shiny new tech (and is told no by party pooper experienced devs); to the party pooper experienced dev for a new group of young devs.
I know I'm right, as I'm now sure the devs telling me no were right, but I'll be pushed out same as they were.
Young blood is naive and cheap and plentiful so they will always have the momentum advantage. They're the ones that promise the moon to other departments and then stay up all night covering their tracks when they were wrong.
It's damned if you do, damned if you don't for packages in the middle of your direct dependencies and a sub-sub dependency with an issue (be it security or tantrum based).
These middle deps could pin the exact version, but then when a security vuln is found and a patch issued, these libraries also need to update. This is like a traffic jam. If you're 6 hops from the vulnerable package you need to wait for not one, but six maintainers to push an update to npm before you can clear the security warning.
To get around this, middle packages list semver ranges. And then you have your occasional left-pad issue.
If I had to choose between those two ways to lose, I would use server ranges. The only way to win is to not play at all - have no dependencies.
Bill what you need for the life you want. If your total compensation is 100,000 and you want to keep earning that but working half as much, bill 2x your hourly rate.
In reality you will spend your free time lining up the next job, so maybe work a third as much for 3x the money.
If you don't feel comfortable charging that, why bother. Keep the desk job
Windows (which has native support for Xbox controllers) shares a digital game store with Xbox now, there's even a subscription service that lets you play some games at launch. It's probably the best deal in gaming, if your metric is dollars per fun hours in trendy games.
Sony has not one but two subscription services with free games. Like USD $50/yr for access to 24 best sellers. You play them some time after launch. You can play recent releases on their more expensive subscription, I forget the price, but it's competing with the Xbox service I mentioned earlier.
So there's plenty of ways to play best sellers and fresh games for less than launch day full price. And even though the gardens are walled to their respective ecosystems, Sony and MS are targeting the same audience so the consumer still benefits from competition.
If Steam enters the arena with Steamdeck, they will be the ones competing against two established console makers who have steam's desired audience already bought in to subscription services.
I'm not convinced Valve moves to the front by default. I think it makes a three company race and Valve is going to have to lean HARD on the steamdeck form factor their first generation to establish themselves.
I don't think Valve is ready for the fiercity of the console wars at all. They couldn't even keep Epic game store at bay when they started dropping Fortnite money on exclusives. I'm sure they've learned their financial lesson on that one... now imagine inviting two more companies to bid on exclusives against you!
Your wording is a little unclear, I can't tell if you want to know what gamers see in consoles or what non-gamers see in consoles. A dozen ppl have answered the first one so I'll answer the second one.
Since sony sells console hardware at a loss (only Nintendo doesn't do this), jailbreaking PS5 will create demand for the devices in clusters. Lots of research was done on PS3 and PS4 clusters where you could get GPU (and at one time CPU!) for cheaper than anywhere else. In modern times, I suspect people will mine crypto on them.
If so, this is actually really bad news for gamers because it will put the hottest current gen console into the same bidding war with miners as GPUs have been in the past few years.
You're not following the trends closely enough. Nintendo combined their portable and console markets with the Switch and this console format is a huge hit with kids, parents, and adult gamers even.
I suspect if MS takes another generational shellacking from Sony they will try a similar maneuver, combining the Xbox and Surface brands to make a single SKU gaming PC. The Xbox already runs Windows 10 with a custom ui. They won't drop out off the console race without trying this. (It would be a compelling student device.)
Sony is stuck selling dedicated TV attachments but luckily they command the biggest audience and have "won" the console war against MS three of the four generations. The PS5 has done so well there's no reason to believe there won't be a PS6. Sony plans the obsolescence on a 10 year timeline. They refused to put an SSD into the PS4 era consoles knowing that adding it would be a generational leap for the PS5, more than graphics.
In my experience as a former game dev who moved to enterprise apps, game dev techniques are broadly applicable and speed up enterprise apps without compromising on functionality.
Consider memory management techniques like caching layers or reference pools. Or optimizing draws for the platform's render loop. Or being familiar with profiler tools to identify hotspots. These techniques are all orthogonal to functionality. That is, applying them when you see an opportunity to will not somehow limit features.
So why aren't the enterprise apps fast, if it's so easy? I think that boils down to incentives. Enterprise apps are sales or product led and the roadmap only accommodates functionality that makes selling the software easier. Whereas in games the table stakes point you need to reach for graphics is not achievable by naively pursuing game features.
Put another way, computers and laptops are way stronger than consoles and performance is a gas. Enterprise devs are used to writing at 1 PSI or less and game devs are used to writing at 1 PSI or more.
The industry is broken. Self-identifying gamers are one of the most toxic online communities long preyed on by groups like pick-up artists and men's rights activists. The games targeting this group of self-identifying gamers have overindexed on machismo for decades. Every problem can be solved with violence and the reward is fame, money, and women. Why is there Overwatch porn and not Candy Crush porn? For marketers these gamers are fish in a barrel.
Game companies who make games for this audience rely on this audience as their talent pool because no one else will build these games on absurd timelines at great cost to every other aspect of their life. They are in effect paid in 'cool points' which matter only to those already hazed or yet-to-be-hazed.
I know I'm right, as I'm now sure the devs telling me no were right, but I'll be pushed out same as they were.
Young blood is naive and cheap and plentiful so they will always have the momentum advantage. They're the ones that promise the moon to other departments and then stay up all night covering their tracks when they were wrong.