Same here. The Quest put the fun back in gaming for me. I tried some of the fancy new AAA PC games and I felt I just was not having as much fun as I did gaming as a kid since everything felt as the same-old rehashed recipes but with way fancier graphics and different stories, so I was just left yawning and bored quickly despite the realistic graphics and major hype.

But gaming in VR really makes me feel immersed and I finally feel like I'm having genuine fun like I'm a kid again. Why control a 1st/3rd person character on a screen, when you can be that characters and live the adventure yourself ?!.

Even though the graphics have a lot less polygons on the Quest, but since the art style of some games is designed from the get-go to be low-poly, it really fits well together. But somehow, some games on the Quest 2 really do look visually stunning, verging on modern console/PC fidelity, which is insane considering the underlying HW.

Mental health wise, it was a real life saver for me during the 2020 lockdowns as it allowed some quick escapism in new territories when everything was closed and my social circles broke up.

Not to mention, gaming in VR with 360 degrees of freedom is a lot healthier for your body and posture than gaming sitting at a desk/couch, especially if your day job also involves sitting at a desk for 8 hours.

As much as I despise Facebook/Meta, the Quest is a game changer which had a genuine positive impact on my life.

Yep, this is a thing. Friends who never played a game in their life were shooting and climbing after a few minutes in the Quest. I struggle with modern console controllers (while I am really good still with 80s joysticks; they are not alike in any way), on the Quest 2 I will redo a round after failing 10x because I did not fail due to the frustrating controls, which I have no patience or time to learn anyway, but I failed just because i was not fast enough. That improves gaming so much for me, I started to like modern gaming again after leaving it for some 20 years (I played retro games with joysticks though during that time).

Not to mention all the extra calories you'll burn from redoing all those failed rounds ;)

When you have a very stable hardware system where the specifications are well-known, it removes some of the friction involved in software development.

Gaming PC’s for the most part are more of a liability than an asset to game development, owing to the constantly need to upgrade, driven by faster and faster CPU’s. It removes the incentive to design better software.

I get where you're coming from, but I very much disagree with this. It's like saying modern cars with safety features are a liability to road safety as it removes the incentive to have better trained drivers that pay attention to the road. One does not necessary mean the exclusion of the other.

HW advancements give more creative freedom to game designers and can let the studios focus more resources on the look and feel of the game rather than wrestling with technical limitations like in the old days when even 2D side scrolling games on PCs, like Commander Keen, represented a technical challenge and needed the incredible mind of John Carmack to pull off.

The vast, open, complex, high fidelity worlds we enjoy in famous titles today only exist because consumer HW has advanced enough at a palpable price point (barring the post-2020 scalpocalipse) to support the vision of the designers. Games with such details would have not been economically feasible on consumer HW in the distant pass even if you had to code them in raw assembly from scratch.

So IMHO it was good thing when every now and then a new game like Far Cry or Crysys would come along and break the mold by exceeding what the current gen mainstream HW was capable of, showing what the near future could look like when HW gets a bit faster and more affordable. But those days of the rebel engine designers that would leave everyone drooling in awe with visuals that only delivered on $3000+ PC HW are pretty much behind us now, as every studio is designing games to work on the lowest common denominator (consoles and phones) as that's where the majority of users and $$$ is.

And one can say, "Well, what was the point of making games that looked amazing on HW nobody could afford at the time?" but the same could be said "Well, what was the point of going to the moon when nobody can afford to go there?". Innovation needs disruptors to break the mold and push boundaries for the benefit of the knowledge gained in the process, as it will trickle down later with time.

But not having to download games or updates really changes the way you treat it. You just dive in for a few minutes at a time if you want, or hours for the times you have them. Play from your tablet or phone if you want, or pick up a controller and play on the big screen.

For all the reasons you mention. I have a career, I have a family, and I have side projects. I just don’t have time to dedicate to games. But sometimes you just need to blow off steam for 15 minutes before bed and the Switch is perfect for this.

Every game can be paused/stopped by hitting one button. The controls are great, software is great, and I’ve been using the the dock to play games together with family like Mario Kart. I have a bunch of maxed out characters in Diablo 3 just by playing 15 minutes here and there. :)

Being able to play anytime/anywhere for any length of time and the feeling of coziness that you get from being in your own gaming pod make handheld gaming particularly appealing.

As you note with Diablo 3, grindy RPGs are particularly great on handhelds.

Advantages of the Switch over smartphones include physical buttons and joysticks (though regular and Switch-style attached controllers are also available for phones), games that are largely untainted by intrusive "free to play" monetization schemes, and Nintendo's outstanding first-party game library.

Disadvantages are carrying and managing an extra (and somewhat bulky) device, more expensive games, and the lack of plausible deniability.

I don't game a huge amount, but we have weekly CS:GO games with friends and family, and I occasionally fire up a few favourites on my PC from Steam.

However, TBH, if I didn't also use my machine for work, it would be a colossal waste of money. Prior to building it, I was playing RDR2 and AC Valhalla on a cheap laptop using Stadia, and really enjoyed them.

> Do you enjoy gaming on an iPad?

Generally no, unless I'm playing a game for which a touch screen provides a good interface. Board/card games are great. "God view" games can be done well. Most first or third person games of any variety suck.

> Are you a Switch person?

Not really. The Switch is too large and fragile to be pocketed so it's only really portable in the sense that it's not tied to a TV, which means mine just lives in its dock 95% of the time. As a docked console it wasn't even competitive against last-gen hardware, and as a result it exists solely because enough Nintendo first-party games came out that I wanted to play.

I was a huge DS person in its era, because I could have it in my pocket anywhere. Pull it out, open it up for even half a level of New Super Mario, then slap it shut and it's immediately suspended for later. Switch has the same function but without the pocketability it's just not as useful.

> Or do you have a dedicated gaming PC at home?

Always have, always will. The PC is the longest lasting gaming platform on its own, rarely has it ever lost the performance crown, and thanks to both inherent compatibility and emulation it can play the majority of games ever made for any platform.

I have consoles for convenience and exclusives, but a good PC is a long term investment that pays off if you really like gaming.

Yeah, that used to be true, but then 2020 happened and GPUs became unobtanium. Not to mention they've been seeing a steady price increase in MSRP since a few years before covid. I fondly remeber the days when ~$400 was enough to buy you a wicked high end GPU, like a GTX 1070, that would play all games at high settings and would last you a few years. Those days are gone now and even when the supply chain gets fixed, it looks like the hiked prices will be the new norm and are here to stay for a while, as the nvidia-amd duopoly realized there is enough demand even at these price points. Or at least until the next crypto bust (which, IMHO, can't come soon enough).

The "major advantage" of consoles running super locked down walled gardened SW is that miners can't use them ... yet. So at least in the EU you can still buy the lastest gen consoles for MSRP if you're willing to look around hard enough.

GPUs for MSRP? Hell is more likely to freeze over before that happens.

But it remains to be seen if it can replace the mouse/keyboard combination.

[0] https://www.protondb.com/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voXc1nCD4IA

Plus, if you have an old android phone with buttons or close volume keys, you can use it as a complete portable GB/A or DS. I remember to have played the heck out of SFA3/Pokemon in an old phone on long trips.

So I would stick to portable handleds and check out ports or exclusives. If you have a modded home console its more of the same but with better graphics and power or more space for ROMS.

It feels harder to recommend PCs for gaming nowadays since a lot of games are designed for console-first, and the prices for average graphics card are now at 2x the price of the consoles. But also depends on the preferred genre. For indie games or some of the competitive online games PCs might be better options.

Retrododo has good reviews of these types of devices. Not affiliated, just think their content is good

Been waiting for handhelds to get powerful enough to do that

Can it do Ocarina of Time/Majora’s Mask/Goldeneye reasonably well?

Buying original equipment is very expensive. But emulators are abound. A middle ground would be for me to play those with original controllers.

But how could that be done?

For NES/SNES? Absolutely trivial. Those controllers are literally just one (NES) or two (SNES) 4021 shift registers connected to the various buttons. Console sends a latch signal every now and then and then reads out the button state one by one.

There are adapters to convert those to USB HID available through a variety of sources and they're also trivial to DIY if you like to play with microcontrollers.

Most other 8/16 bit era controllers are either doing something similar or just directly wire the buttons to pins on the connector like the old "game port" on PC sound cards did.

If you want the ultimate in realistic play though, you can build a MiSTer.

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki

Take one not-super-expensive FPGA dev board, add some open source firmware and optionally a few open hardware addon boards, and you have a near universal hardware emulator for 8/16 bit era consoles and computers that has perfect hardware timing. With either of the addon I/O boards you can connect native controllers directly at which point the accuracy is so high that you can actually use original light guns if you're connected to a CRT.

Anyone who is nostalgic for the 8/16 bit eras should really take a look at this project. Recently there has even been progress in to the 32 bit era, with both PSX and Saturn cores in development.

Too bad there were not many of us.

PC gaming can give you more, but it also requires more care and time to maintain, upgrade, run, install, and optimize.

the difference in ability to aim is night and day