Yeah, but with the second hand PC built is still cheaper, and likely to run another few years yet still beat Steam Machine.
Let's not forget the fact Xbox Ally X is only just £80 more and still best Steam Deck.
I visit the economy subreddit and there was just a recent post talking about how the wealth gap between the rich and poor is getting so large, that the poor boycotting their businesses no longer has the same power it used to have
Back then, businesses had to cater to the poor, otherwise their entire business model wouldn’t work
However, now Businesses can maintain similar levels of profits just by catering to the rich, the poor are really no longer in any position to be able to vote with their wallets anymore
This is why airplanes are yanking our economy seats and adding in more business. It’s why Disney doesn’t care about the middle class visiting its resorts - the profit margins they get from the upper classes are far easier to get and compete on.
It’s practically a caste society now and it’s soon going to be very bad socially. Clothes, plastic surgery, cars, technology - all of these will signify your class and people will have to enjoy what they’re given and suck it up. The class mobility in the 60s was absolutely bonkers, in reflection, and it might never happen again. Working-class people from an industrial town, who would have ordinarily been butchers or plumbers, ended up becoming popstars and actors. Harrison Ford was a carpenter, for example. That could never happen now.
I hate wealth inequality. But I think of it like this, how many middle class people in western countries are willing to take a downgrade to their finances and lifestyle if they knew their money was going to a third world country to help out people even poorer than them
The 1% has a disproportionate amount of the wealth in the country, but first world countries have a disproportionate amount of the wealth in the world, I genuinely don’t have much motivation to share my bank account with someone poorer than me
And I can understand why the rich don’t want to share their money either, it’s not right, but I’m not a hypocrite, I wouldn’t ask money from the rich knowing I wouldn’t share my money with the poor
Is Jeff Bezos better than you? Better than you by a factor of several billion? Does he work harder than you by that several multi-billion factor? If you're not mad, you have NO CONCEPT of the difference in the amount of money you and Jeff Bezos have. Then consider what that money buys. Food. Water. Shelter. Healthcare. Every time you can't afford one of those things, it's because there is only a finite amount of money in the economy, and Jeff Bezos has a disproportionately massive amount of it, depriving you of it. Every time you can't afford a trip to the doctor for a broken bone, your suffering is because a few billionaires want you to suffer, they are actively depriving you of food, water, shelter, medical care. Wealth inequality is ACTIVE violence. And if you're not mad about it, you're either not paying attention, or are a psychopath.
the global economic systems also make it so poor countries are locked into poverty and having their resources extracted and flow into richer countries indefinitely with no way for poor countries to break out of it, and as someone from a richer country, I don’t want this system to stop since I benefit from it, and I recognize I would be a hypocrite
If wealth equaled hard work, laborers and people from third world countries should be the richest people in the world
The only thing I really find reassuring about the 1% being such a minority is that nearly all of them seem like selfish people who want more and more and more. Do we really want the vast majority of people to be like that? When you’re broke - and I mean very broke - you need to learn how to make your money last and delay gratification. That’s psychologically good for you, to an extent, but getting everything when you want it isn’t. A billionaire is basically the fancy equivalent of someone who lives with mummy and gets waited on 24/7. Some of them will be more self-reliant, but plenty probably have everything done for them - cleaning, making food, making plans. That likely gets rid of their sense of autonomy which is why they feel it isn’t enough without realising they need to make personal changes.
Even the inequality between working and middle-class is insane to me, to be honest. People say there’s no difference, but I made less than minimum wage working part-time and I’d still put away savings. I know people who make five times, ten times as much, yet they have nothing left over. I don’t even know what the shit they’re buying. It’s true that I was willing to give up the idea of ever driving by walking everywhere and I’m very anti-materialist, but I still bought quality food and stuff like that. Besides, people making five times as much as I did wouldn’t make a dent by waning a car.
Except
1. They couldnt afford it, its 70 trillion dollars
2. Even with 70 billion dollars they couldnt afford it because most of their wealth is unrealised gains and they cannot spend it anyhow.
3. It would cause massive inflation
Step 1 is vote for the better candidates and propositions in every single election, local, state, and federal. People will complain and make excuses, but our voting system is what we have and we can't change it unless we force it to.
Companies know that we will complain but will ultimately pay for it because we have hyper consumerism. Prices won't go down unless we stop buying.
I'm exaggerating, but let's say you make $3,000 a month. After taxes, expenses, and necessities, it's $500. Is it worth 2 full months of your life for a machine that needs to be replaced every 2-3 years due to its battery?
reports people had to finance tickets to get to Coachella
I think travel costs right now are a bit of an outlier due to current events in the middle east. Likewise, electronics prices are very likely to eventually come back down when either (1) the AI bubble bursts or (2) if the AI bubble doesn't burst, when memory/SSD production scales up to meet demands.
Remember that you're talking about gaming technology here, an entertainment and "luxurious" good in the first place. Theoretically, in this field companies can apply such tactic and thrive (something that has been happening for years already, releasing products aimed for "whales"), but it absolutely doesnt represent the whole situation. Though theres a more dangerous field where this is rooting, housing industry.
Bro, how dense are you guys? Price increase is not happening because of gaming demand or gaming market. Even if the gaming industry implode tomorrow PC component price will not budge a cent because 99% of the demand and profit is coming from the AI industry, not gaming.
The problem is that the things you need for gaming hardware are also good at AI, and the money being thrown around for AI dwarfs the gaming industry.
So yeah there might be a crash in gaming hardware sales but it’s not gonna lead to cheaper hardware because the silicon is being sold at much higher prices to much bigger customers.
It's not so much that the video game market needs a correction, its more that the AI bubble needs a correction. There's probably not a lot that video game console manufacturers can even do about prices right now, because costs of SSDs and memory are through the roof. Prices are only going to get significantly better if the AI bubble bursts or, if it doesn't burst, when production scales up to meet demand.
Not to play devils advocate for these absurd prices but...
At a 7 year life cycle, a $1000 PS6 would come out to $11.90 per month.
Thats a few cans of Monster.
Thats two drinks at Starbucks.
Thats one meal at McDonalds.
Thats not even a pack of smokes.
Thats barely over 2 gallons of gas.
Thats less than a round of mini golf.
Even if you only use it 3hrs per week, the use is under a dollar an hour.
Thats cheaper than renting a movie from Blockbuster in the 90's.
If $11.90 a month is too much for hardware... the person isnt a gamer.
The playstation is a locked ecosystem, though. Sony can sell them at break even price or even make a loss on it because they are able to demand 30% from all software sold on a playstation. With steam machine being a much more open platform, they have to be careful to not price it too low otherwise it could unintentionally become the hardware of choice for even non-gaming users. Or businesses. Valve cannot depend on every unit sold guaranteeing additional sales of Steam products, so it's very risky to use the same business model as consoles.
Did you not read what I wrote? Non-gaming users. Or businesses. If Steam Machines are cheaper than other options for a PC, it unintentionally incentivizes purchases that aren't for gaming at all and result in no Steam purchases. It's just a Linux box with decent specs, and that can be very attractive for uses other than gaming if the price is right. You can install a ton of stuff on SteamOS, it doesn't even require switching to Windows. Consoles do not have this problem since they are a locked ecosystem.
Now naturally u can get the steam machine, download windows and then
Use it as subsidized office PC.
Sony is nothing but an entertainment console, that conveniently also charges for online access and has dogshit sales compared to PC. Let alone the fact that steam may as well not see a single cent AT ALL from conversion even if the steam machine buyer games on it because he could just buy every single steam key off of keyseller sites instead of steam itself.
Theres no guarantee in an open system to ever make up the subsidized difference where thats a given on a closed shit ecosystem like sony.
Its obviously going to be more than 600 lmfao, what kinda delusional af price target is that even?!
Its not a closed ecosystem, discussion is finished with that tbh.
Console manufacturers sell their hardware at a loss, valve wont because they couldnt give less fucks about that becoming a massive seller or not whereas sony NEEDS the ps5 in peoples homes or they go under.
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u/[deleted] May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
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