"These price increases have multiple intertwining causes, some direct and some less so: inflation, pandemic-era supply crunches, the unpredictable trade policies of the Trump administration, and a gradual shift among console makers away from selling hardware at a loss or breaking even in the hopes that game sales will subsidize the hardware. And you never want to rule out good old shareholder-prioritizing corporate greed.
But one major factor, both in the price increases and in the reduction in drastic “slim”-style redesigns, is technical: the death of Moore’s Law and a noticeable slowdown in the rate at which processors and graphics chips can improve."
is it just me or this title is weird?
It’s not that they’re not improving like they used to, it’s that the die can’t shrink any more.
Price cuts and “slim” models used to be possible due to die shrinks. A console might have released on 100nm, and then a process improvement comes out that means it can be made on 50nm, meaning 2x as many chips on a wafer and half the power usage and heat generation. This allowed smaller and cheaper revisions.
Now that the current ones are already on like 4nm, there’s just nowhere to shrink to.
Which itself is a gimmick, they’ve just made the gates taller, electron leakage would happen otherwise.
NM has been a marketing gimmick since Intel launched their long-standing 14nm node. Actual transistor density depending on which fab you compare to is shambles.
It’s now a title / name of a process and not representative of how small the transistors are.
I’ve not paid for a CPU upgrade since 2020, and before that I was using a 22nm CPU from 2014. The market isn’t exciting (to me anymore), I don’t even want to talk about the GPUs.
Back in the late 90s or early 2000s upgrades felt substantial and exciting, now it’s all same-same with some minor power efficiency gains.
Now, maybe, but like I said - in the past this WAS what let consoles get big price cuts and size revisions. We’re not talking about since 2020, we’re talking about things like the PS -> PSOne, PS2 - PS2 Slim.
Is it Moores law failing or have we finally reached the point where capitalists are not even pretending to advance technology in order to charge higher prices? Like are we actually not able to make things faster and cheaper anymore or is the market controlled by a monopoly that sees no benefit in significantly improving their products? My opinion has been leaning more and more towards the latter since the pandemic.
This has little to do with “capitalists” and everything to do with the fact that we’ve basically reached the limit of silicon.
Fine we reached the limit… But why the price gouging lol
Because people continue to accept that price by agreeing to pay it. The price of a product is dictated by what people are willing to pay for it. If the price is so low that the seller isn’t happy with it, they don’t sell it and stop making it.
In other words, if you think Nintendo prices are bullshit price gouging, then vote with your wallet. With enough votes, the prices come down or the company goes under. You don’t have that luxury of choice when it comes to groceries or shelter, but you absolutely do when it comes to luxury entertainment expenses. Make them earn your money.
I wish people would apply this to many other industries as well. A company will rip people off the first chance that they get.
What do you classify as “ripping people off” when it comes to pricing?
Not OP, but probably price gouging? Especially regarding things where you aren’t afforded the reasonable opportunity to make an informed decision (healthcare, baby formula plus necessary clean water). Also maybe regional monopolies (internet service) or pretty much anything involving an event or venue (ticket pricing or cost of a slice of pizza or a can of beer at a festival).
In all of these examples, you likely don’t have a heads-up or the chance to choose something else. Admittedly, most of the examples off the top of my head were unnecessary luxury spending, but how in the blue fuck is it okay that any of them are literally a situation of “pay me whatever price I decide or else a person will die”?
Pretty fucked up if you ask me.
I agree with your examples, and my issue is when people call pricing a game console at $450, or a game at $80 “price gouging”.
It’s not, in any way.
Consoles are just increasingly bad value for consumers compared to PCs.
Are they tho? Have you seen graphics card prices?
You don’t need a graphics card. You can get mini PCs with decent gaming performance for cheap these days.
By decent you meant significantly worse than console gaming performance though.
Consoles are still the king for values in gaming, even with their increasing prices.
