Gamers are constitutionally incapable of realizing that all of Gaben's wealth is extracted value from game developers and a tax on game prices.

They'll cry and scream about Epic, Origin/EA, and every other platform in existence, but somehow the largest one is always immune to criticism

I mean, it's still affordable if you're not playing new stuff. There are tons of computers/devices around that can natively play or emulate thousands of good, older games. It's more of an issue that the "gaming community" is filled with shallow trend-chasers who pressure and denigrate other people to spend insane amounts of money on the hobby before they're allowed to have an opinion or receive any sort of attention.

tbf from like 2007 to 2020 you could build a $600 PC and it would be good for gaming for at least 5 years, and on the console side of things they would drop the price by around like $100 every 3 years

damn grass just standing there MEANACINGLY!

Just find the guy who likes to make steam decks.

Thanks Brandon

the nerve

I felt a little guilty when I bought mine because I was unemployed at the time... guess it could've been worse!

While I agree the prices are absurd I don't think the lower capacity thing helps anymore. It used to be a lot cheaper because there were like manufacturing issues with packing more space onto an ssd but the main thing pushing prices up now is that the NAND chips are competeing with the AI hardware for space on the assembly line. So the companies still making consumer NAND are going to prioritize the higher capacity more expensive and higher margin products. I'd guess lower capacity stuff just doesn't exist in the volume needed at all. I wouldn't be surprised if soon the lowest you can find for an SSD is 1TB and its expensive as fuck. The AI companies really are just decimating global production of every computer component. I hope China comes in and steals the market from them while they're neglecting it.

fr, nowadays all AAAs are last of us clone, fort of duty, elder souls, or open world survivalcrafting

I adore indies because AAA hasn't been taking many risks since like 2008 with a few standouts (botw, mhw — not my fav but a big change, elden ring/sekiro yikes that's all that comes to mind for me!) but even indie gaming is getting a bit saturated with survival crafting and pick 1 of 3 action roguelites.

Strategy turn based or realtime, deception, platformer, shooters that aren't cod/halo/doom, colony sim, crpg, exploration-adventure, racing, vehicle sim etc are all left by the wayside. One or two coming out occasionally and usually not pushing the envelope.