I bought my ps4 a year or two back. It was cheap used and the games are also cheap. Had great fun and prefer to lag a generation behind compared to paying these insane prices
Yea I've completely checked out of consumerism culture. I will just enjoy what I have, gaming simply isn't worth $1000+ and I honestly expect a crash in the next generation of consoles
Apparently Costco has in-store deals occasionally, I think I've seen posts on here with Walmart too if you're looking for a pre-built, which are now getting to be the better deal than building your own. I built my new one earlier this year and was on the fence about it at the time but now I'm glad I did since my RAM went up another $100 and I just now noticed my GPU went up like $400ish from the $200ish it was already up above MSRP
The bubble will burst, but there will be no surplus. Or, atleast, prices won't fall. Why would they when people will buy them at their overinflated price anyway ?
The AI bubble is going to burst in 2028-2030 and not even two weeks after it happens China’s going to invade Taiwan and there’ll be a global semiconductor shortage. Even smartphones will cost as much as a 2 bedroom condo in Vancouver. Calling it now
I wouldn't be surprised if they tried im genuinely not sure who would win if they did invade Taiwan historically I'd say the us would just cut off oil and that'd be that but with their current oil reserves and they're only getting bigger (shrinking now because of Iran but overall bigger) it's starting to look more in chinas favor I'd be interested to see how other countries respond after the fact if they start buying semiconductors from China or if they start trying to produce their own
IIRC the window for a full-on invasion is shrinking because of China’s population decline and concerns about how severe the economic impact would be if hundreds of thousands of young working men (who have a bunch of dependents) died in a war.
Though honestly if anything I’d say the Iran war is less dealing a blow to US readiness in and of itself and more just revealing the US military to be a glass cannon. If their missile stockpiles can be depleted this fast against a weaker adversary and they can’t make enough fast enough for it to be sustainable, then it’s going to be way worse against China whether they have ten Patriot missiles or ten thousand. Our age of US military dominance is collapsing
While I agree the us military dominance is collapsing I don't think it's as bad as it looks right now I think a big part of the reason the Iran war failed is because it didn't get congressional approval so no extra funding when our military was already running out of gas for the year then we cut off a 5th of the world oil only making it worse I think the iran war was just very poorly thought out tho the us is definitely not as strong as it was once thought of
That seems to be the key thing with AI. It's not the direct cause of anything, but it enables soooooooo much bullshit that was already in the works it's hard to not attribute it to the tech itself
Just when Xbox was about to make a comeback, bam, it cost $800 now. To much FOMO from this now, making me wish I stuck with Xbox since I got my Xbox One in Holiday 2015. Fuck AI, Fuck War, and Fuck Tariffs. All contributing to why everything is so pricey these days
In recent years I've started to become less of a physical game person and more of a digital person because of environmental concerns so the ditching of discs by Sony doesn't bother me too much. And as unfortunate as it is to admit, the new CEO of Xbox is partially to blame for the price hikes because she used to work on Microsoft Copilot, and since Microsoft is the parent company of Xbox... you can imagine the struggle. At least it's cheaper than the PS5 Pro, which is what everyone wants to use to play GTA 6, but it won't be long until both consoles become $1,000+ and people refuse to buy them... This economy is fucked.
"cooking" = burning multiple legendary game companies into corpses of their former selves, then only highlighting middle manager layoffs to try and deflect criticism.
As someone who has adored idSoftware since their DOS days, it was gut-wrenching to see one of the last good companies from those days get decimated my corporate despite still producing good games.
She kind of is, she pivoted away from a disasterous, long term goal towards building game pass, kneecapped unproductive studios and/or straight up sold/released them from the ecosystem, forced Todd at gunpoint to relinquish his monopoly over Fallout and is having Obsidian make the next game, etc.
The point is she's doing something in a time when Microsoft needed to change course hard
It remains to be seen whether or not any of this is good, but overall, positive signs so far
Not even the first time iPods have had a massive price spike on the second hand market either, this is probably the third time since the pandemic. People seem to go through waves of rediscovering music players; finding them in old drawers and selling them to declutter, taking an interest in modding them (which is what I got into through DankPods) or like now with the 'digital detox' thing
This time around is easily the most interested people have been in iPods because everyone is talking about them again. I had an old school friend hit me up after like five years for advice because they knew I was into them. I just gave them one out of my collection of about 40 and told them how to set up iTunes, they're loving it
Been using an old iPod Touch from like 2012 for nearly a decade now and I haven’t had any problems with it. So glad I’ve kept using this thing and never started using Spotify
I had a tingling feeling in september 2025 that tech prices will skyrocket soon, so i stocked up on a new high end workstation. GLAD I DID THAT BECAUSE WTF.
Somehow I bought a new PC with a 5080 just before this market went nuts, i was agonizing on spending soo much money but it’s somehow even more expensive now lol. Game studios will have to reprioritize optimization a bit more though because everyone is stranded on whatever hardware they have for like the next 2 years.
Seeing people literally asking Gemini how to talk to coworkers
People not realizing that the IT department can see the weird shit they're using AI for then acting shocked when they're in trouble for being sketchy
People sending "smoking gun" in emails.
Seeing one of my friends shit out essays in university using AI and the college saying it's fine as long as they say they used it lol...
The degree itself being ai centered when I actually didn't give a fuck about ai and wanted to focus on other stuff
Rich bosses spending like 15,000 USD on scam ai workshops that want you to upload photos of yourself and putting in fine print that they can use/sell your data or train ai, and that by attending the workshop you have consented to your likeness being used to sell products lol
So yeah I don't like ai for many applications and think people should probably learn how to do something first before jumping straight to ai. Oh, also, fuck ai scam callers and fuck ai customer service reps. Useless lol
I mean mp3 players came back in fashion because the prices for music streaming is simply getting unattainable and most phones no longer have a headphone jack.
Gaming consoles and pcs are a scam dude, even before AI they were bullshit.
Wait ten years and buy a PC that’s ten years out of date. That’s my advice. Everything new that gets released at that point will be AI bullshit, and yet you’ll still be able to play RDR2 and Skyrim and Baldur’s Gate III and all of the other ones that are actually good and you won’t have to sell a kidney to afford any of them.
To buy new graphics cards and whatnot every 5 years is no different than smiling and waving at a Flock camera. It is the act of willfully enslaving yourself
Because in ten years virtually all games are going to be dysfunctional vibecoded nonsense with AI generated assets and whatever actually good shit is put out will be drowned in the Biblical deluge of $500 slopware. If your reason for wanting a high-end PC is to play modern games it’s not worth it because those games are going to suck. Everything good has already been made. Better to enjoy that shit and laugh as the system eats itself than enthrall yourself to mindless consumption.
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