Best current gen game console for no internet area?

July 13, 2018 12:08 PM

Looking for advice on what gaming console is best for a given set of circumstances and needs. The big one: zero internet access.

Got a friend who lives way outta town on a lake. I want to get him a current gen console for his place, but he has zero, no, none, zilch, internet access other than 1gb/mo on his cell phone plan. I don't play on consoles so I know nothing about them and their needs for internet. He does play games when we visit mutual friends and has wished he could have a console at his place but he's pretty sure that the no internet thing is a deal breaker, so I figured I'd ask here.

There's a couple other needs and wants as well:

• He mostly enjoys shooters and RPGs (single player, obviously)
• Must play DVDs and maybe blueray? He has a big collection of DVDs.
• Would be cool if it can play mkv files with subtitles (anime).
• I guess that's it!

Thanks folks.

posted by Sternmeyer to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (9 answers total)

I'm not sure I would bother; modern consoles and games rely pretty strongly on being patched, which requires internet. You'd realistically need to do an initial setup at your place or somewhere else with internet, and you'd want to install games somewhere with internet so they can get the day-1 patches, and it would want internet a few times a year outside that so that games and the system can patch themselves.

If both of you are cool with him bringing the box to your place several times a year, then go for it. Both XB1 and PS4 play dvds and blurays, and AFAICT both play mkv files. At least some XB1s play 4k blurays, ps4s don't. Otherwise you'd have to look around to find which interface is less annoying with no internet and see which exclusives he likes better. Really this just means getting a ps4 because Zero Dawn.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:01 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

That's really tricky; Xbox One and Playstation 4 will both need to download updates eventually. In your friend's place I'd probably get a cheap DVD player and a Nintendo Switch. The Switch has the smallest memory footprint for updates and is portable, so he can carry it into town when he needs to download something. And while it's not as oriented toward shooters and RPGs as some of the other consoles, it's getting a lot of great ports like Doom and Skyrim.
posted by waffleriot at 1:27 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have a switch and I hardly ever use the online features of it.
posted by nikaspark at 2:03 PM on July 13, 2018

and oh yeah the switch is awesome. I've played hundreds of hours of games on it just using the screen, I've never hooked it up to a TV (I don't even have a TV)
posted by nikaspark at 2:04 PM on July 13, 2018

I have a PS4 and love it, but pretty much every game you buy has a day-1 update patch that it needs to download and install before you play. Not to mention the occasional system updates. If he has some way to bring it into town when he goes game shopping and use a buddy's internet, it would work fine. Unless you're playing an online game, the PS4 doesn't make you 'check in' online for anything. It plays dvds and blurays also.
posted by lovecrafty at 3:17 PM on July 13, 2018

On PS4 Usually games only demand a patch for online play, you can almost always play the game offline just fine.

I am going to buck the trend and say a PS4 will work just fine, at least for a few years. There’s a huge catalog of low-cost games from 1-5 years old that come out as ‘greatest hits’ that include many nice solo RPGs and shooters.

In an ideal world he is willing to take it to an internet connection once for initial setup and maybe again in a year or two.
Swtich will also work fine by the library is tiny, and there are mostly only kiddie-friendly shooters and RPGs.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:08 PM on July 13, 2018

You can patch a PS4 via USB drive too. The OS at least.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:27 PM on July 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

I agree that the PS4 would be fine as well, if maybe a bit more inconvenient at times, but it sounds like this guy doesn't mind some inconvenience. I also think that the PS4 is pretty portable, really, he could bring it over to a friend's house a few times a year to install apps and updates, it's no bigger than a few textbooks or a bin of fishing supplies or whatever, and it plays dvds of course.

I love the Switch and think it would be a fantastic choice combined with a separate dvd player. It's also more likely to stay current gen than the PS4 for longer. But it's also something that he could easily borrow to play some of the big titles (Breath of the Wild is unmissably wonderful) whereas borrowing a PS4 is less viable.
posted by Mizu at 6:15 PM on July 13, 2018

My kneejerk reply here would be PS4, system patches are mostly useless, it's the game patches that might be important if he happens to get a game disc released in a broken state.

As for the mkvs, the PS4 is very picky regarding what will play or not. A patch allowing the choice of which audio/subtitle tracks to play landed only very recently (actually, here's something he would need internet connection for: downloading the media player, I don't think it's bundled by default) and the supported formats are very limited (no FLAC, no DTS, no Level 5 H.264 video) compared to a PC with VLC/mpv.
posted by Bangaioh at 5:25 AM on July 14, 2018