A lot cheaper than I thought but I guess it depends on how long they intend to offer it for. Will it just be this one year to help people transition to Windows 11 or will it be a more regular arrangement?

One of those stupid old design decisions that Apple is super stubborn about because they’re convinced that they are right and their customers are wrong. Very much similar to the old iOS volume controls that took up most of the screen

Some setups have you sitting further away from the screen like when people hook up their computers to TVs. Also less cables means less cable management

As a PC gamer I do feel like consoles occupy a useful space for some gamers. I have my PC set up very much like a console but it takes more effort to make it like that. I had to plan the parts I wanted to purchase, make sure my PC had built-in wifi just like consoles do, put the whole system together, install the OS and then set up my OS to boot directly into Steam Big Picture with no login or anything else just so I can immediately interface with my system using my controller and not touching my keyboard or mouse. All of this comes as standard for consoles right out of the box, you just plug it in and you get all of that ease of use straightaway.

Granted PC has its benefits for me since I’m someone who really cares about being able to play older games so I need things like unrestricted emulation and backwards compatibility with older games, these are things I can’t really get on consoles without forking out to purchase games I already own or to play it over a cloud streaming service. However, most gamers aren’t like me in that sense and probably don’t care if their latest PlayStation or Xbox can play the full library of SNES games.

Graphics used to be a big factor in favour of PC gaming but in recent years consoles have really caught up to PCs in offering higher resolutions, smoother frame rates and even ray tracing. To even match latest console performance right now you need dual graphics cards and a liquid cooling system whereas back in the days you could match a console’s performance using a single GPU and stock CPU cooler. Before it was just like putting Lego together but now it’s a lot more complicated and potentially messy.

Consoles also have the benefit of game preservation in that console game discs contain the 1.0 versions of games that can be run off a console without any internet connection whereas you have to engage in piracy to achieve the same thing on PC.

Whilst PCs are definitely still the option of the power gamer, consoles do offer features that a lot of gamers want but would be turned off if they had to deal with the extra steps needed for a PC.

Honestly when you look at the specs of the PS5 you are actually getting a pretty solid general home gaming system for the official asking price. I looked at building an equivalent PC and the cost basically doubled. However this is nothing new, consoles are generally great value for money for their first few years until PC hardware gets cheaper, it’s generally towards the end of a console’s lifespan that PCs start blowing them out of the water in terms of value for money.

Granted the PS5 has basically no exclusives to speak of after almost three years on the market so if you already have a PC capable of playing all the latest multiplats then there’s no point in getting a PS5 but if you’re looking to upgrade your primary home gaming system right now then PS5 is a good deal.

I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said here but I still have more on my mind.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never liked “SJWs” (for lack of a better term). Maybe it’s just me having been raised on 4chan during my teenage years but even now I still look at these kind of people with disdain. Whilst I’m fully on board with fighting for the rights of all kinds of minorities in society, I feel the approach taken by many “SJWs” is needlessly antagonistic towards the wrong people and is also completely devoid of class consciousness.

Reaction should not be tolerated, however this does not necessitate talking down spitefully to everyone who holds reactionary views. Many people are reactionaries not because they have a heart burning with hatred for minorities but because their minds have been twisted by bourgeois propaganda telling them that these people are a threat and can you really blame them? Can any of us here say with confidence that we have never been liberals or reactionaries or have never placed any trust in MSM narratives at any point in our lives? If you can then I commend you for having been raised and guided all throughout your life by such staunchly progressive revolutionaries but the reality for the vast majority of us in the imperial core is simply not like that at all.

Much of the proletariat has been pushed into the arms of the right since this culture wars bullshit began, you can see that reflected in how many “working class” (for lack of a better term, we cannot ignore class divisions) people support Trump whilst many of those people get roundly shat on by “SJWs” who, despite some having minority status themselves, are indeed economically privileged in comparison or “middle class” and I think it’s undeniable that economic privilege trumps every other privilege as money can buy freedom, dignity and respect for any member of any minority group. I know many of us here recognise that “working class” and “middle class” are bourgeois concepts but that still doesn’t dismiss the economic reality that people live under in that a few are at the top, some in the middle and everyone else is at the bottom. Those at the bottom can only look up in scorn. A wealthy trans person is more economically privileged than a poor cishet but would you really tell the cishet that they are the ones who need to “check their privilege” purely because they don’t have a problem with the genitals they were born with?

I also strongly believe that whilst Marxists should always fight for the rights of all oppressed groups, the economic emancipation of the proletariat must absolutely come first and foremost in everything we do to push for change. If economic emancipation takes a backseat, we are no better than single-issue campaigners because we’re just trying to affect change whilst remaining under a system that will continuously frustrate our efforts and create new conflicts and divisions. I also feel that progressive social change under a bourgeois dictatorship only serves to enhance the arguments in favour of bourgeois dictatorships which you see in many liberals. It’s too easy to make shallow takes like “US legalised gay marriage but China still hasn’t, therefore the US is overall more progressive than a socialist country.” (Don’t get me wrong here, as much as I hold disdain for “SJWs” I also hold the same disdain for reactionaries in socialist countries like China who are holding back social change due to “traditional family values” or other assorted piles of horse shit.)

Also, with the economic emancipation of the proletariat and the establishment of a strong proletarian state, this will destroy the structures behind, and effectiveness of, bourgeois propaganda as it will no longer be possible to paint certain groups of people as a threat to your livelihood when your livelihood is guaranteed by the state, bourgeois media orgs are banned and public education sets people on the right path. In such a way, much of the reactionary sentiment currently present in the proletariat should simply fade away into irrelevance.

So I guess my main point is simply that whilst we should not engage in class essentialism, we cannot deny economic reality as many do.