Valve recently raised the price on the Steam Deck, making the handheld gaming PC cost up to $949 for the 1TB OLED model. While that’s a massive $300 increase over its original price, the Steam Deck is once again sold out.
Valve recently raised the price on the Steam Deck, making the handheld gaming PC cost up to $949 for the 1TB OLED model. While that’s a massive $300 increase over its original price, the Steam Deck is once again sold out.
It’s definitely getting worse, but I feel like it won’t get that bad. I don’t think that the unaffordabiltiy of PC components will result in gaming becoming a niche commodity, I think it will result in people either not being able to play certain games, or not play them at the settings they want. I think gaming will persist via things like cheaper or used hardware. I think also some game developers will adjust the performance requirements of their games so that it meets (or attempts to meet) the reality of what people are able to buy. Triple A gaming might die tho if they don’t adapt.
It will shift to streaming that can run on anything and things like mods, running older clients, and cheats will essentially be impossible. Unless of course you pay for them with in app purchases, which publishers love
Short sighted consumers will eat it up because “oh now I don’t need an expensive console, I can just run an app on my tv!”
Then comes the death of all the above, as well as a generation of kids having access to not just gaming, but 3d modeling and serious digital art, programming (as well as learning through modding and finding ways to cheat), music production, video editing, etc. how many of those things were only available to kids via piracy? Capitalists don’t give a shit about this. They’re salivating at everything become a streaming client which both essentially eliminates piracy as well as turning a one time software purchase into perpetual subscription hell.
The crazy part is everyone but the tiniest sliver of people will be fucked by this. You know how musicians have shifted to basically making dick from streaming, and view it essentially as advertisement to funnel people into physical merch and concert ticket purchases, their only remaining revenue streams? Developers will be in the same place. It’s arguably advantageous now to be on something like gamepass but that’s because Microsoft is purposefully taking a small percentage barely above costs (10.5%). Once it’s dominant do you think they won’t shift to 30% like apple, steam, and google? And probably even more once distribution outside of their platform is unfeasible?
And for the short sighted consumer saving $3-500 on a console once every 5-10 years becomes another $30 subscription, which outpaces the cost of a console in 2 years and also robs you of the shred of autonomy you did have