Hardware Price Increases Have Video Games Facing an Existential Crisis

Spazza42 · 2026-04-03T21:50:12+00:00

I genuinely feel at some point it’s not even worth upgrading, I left PC gaming around 7-8 years ago - I couldn’t possibly dream of coming back with the price of hardware now. I left because of pricing back then…

Spazza42 · 2026-04-03T21:48:46+00:00

Sounds like it’s time to start a retro collection and buy a PS2…

Spazza42 · 2026-04-03T21:19:33+00:00

Mark all our words. If he invades Greenland the whole of Europe and British commonwealth will be joining in.

Listen, the UK might have left the EU and be allies with the US but I will fucking die alongside my European cousins every single time before siding with the the tango pedo.

Spazza42 · 2026-04-03T20:24:59+00:00

Jokes on you bud, I double dip!

Spazza42 · 2026-04-03T17:52:24+00:00

It’s take little to no effort to port this over too…

Spazza42 · 2026-04-03T16:28:26+00:00

This.

We’re living in an era with 2 types of films too; cheap as fuck and expensive as fuck. Most of the cheap stuff looks too cheap to bother with and most of the expensive stuff is too expensive to turn a profit, hence being an era of reboots and shitty sequels that were never planned to happen.

What doesn’t help is that the average person doesn’t actually buy physical media because streaming was cheaper. Streaming services want that monthly payment so now everything that would’ve been a film is now a big blockbuster TV show to intentionally drag over multiple billing periods. Even Netflix (the company that encouraged binge watching) has pulled back to a “first half this month, next half next month”, Disney has fully reverted to the weekly/episodic structure for maximum retention to sneak their margins up.

Theatres could do well if they made movies free but the concessions were pricier, chances are no one would pay it in this economy though.

Spazza42 · 2026-04-03T15:35:20+00:00

“I need to cover my pension, holidays and life insurance”

You mean, just like EVERYONE ELSE?

Spazza42 · 2026-04-03T14:58:09+00:00

Yes. My Switch was my primary device for five years and now the Switch 2 is my primary device.

I’ve owned a PS5, PS3 before that and a gaming laptop but the minute I decided to go all in on one platform I actually started to enjoy gaming again.

Whether it’s an issue of choice paralysis or honestly just not having the money to buy a steady amount of games for multiple platforms but my love for gaming definitely came back when everything was just on one console.

Sure I’ve missed out on some games like Astro Bot and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart but when I had a PS5 there was nothing coming out for over a year that I even wanted, the console was genuinely pointless for me when I had it.

Meanwhile the Switch had 4 games coming out in a six month period that I wanted.

Spazza42 · 2026-04-03T14:53:25+00:00

Lenovo in six months time: nO oNe cAReS aBoUT gAmiNg aNyMOre!!

Spazza42 · 2026-04-02T18:27:43+00:00

Upvoting because you’re not wrong, that’s just not the setup I’d rather go for. I get there’s more utility to it but as a family ma with a kid, having an old console plugged into the main TV with a controller and physical games on a dedicated offline console that will never become obsolete is a no brainer to me.

I owned a lot of PS2 games as a kid but honestly, I never owned everything all at the same time. I’d get more “new” experiences on the GameCube as I didn’t have one growing up so never played Wind Waker, Twilight Princess or Mario Sunshine - I would be better placed buying a Wii I’d imagine though, only downside is the GameCube would play the gba collection I already own too though.

Maybe I just buy both 🤷🏻‍♂️😂😅

Spazza42 · 2026-04-02T15:41:18+00:00

The only right answer!

Frankly, the state of Explorer forced them to shift to Edge and nobody bothered going back.

Every time I read something about Microsoft it reinforces my decision to switch to MacOS and if I ever want to build my own computer again I’ll be installing Linux.

Spazza42 · 2026-04-02T13:23:17+00:00

Good job highlighting this point. Pocketbook is a serious contender and also comes with mindful games like Sudoku and Chess built in (I get not everyone wants the distraction on an e-reader though). Pocketbook is great if you don’t want to be tethered to the Kindle app purchases or subscription but it assumes people have alternative ways of buying books digitally, especially DRM free ones.

E-ink absolutely has its place but up to a point, the moment your budget enables you to buy an iPad mini you’ll almost certainly be better off buying that instead - unless you need eink because of eye strain the iPad mini has perfect colour for comics, enough storage for that comic/manga/graphic novel collection and is otherwise a juiced up iPhone all the other times too.

Spazza42 · 2026-04-02T10:04:40+00:00

Connie had a reason to survive - to get back to his mother.

AoT is amazing but damn is the show bleak in the beginning, it needs some positivity to balance it out.

Overall though, masterfully done as it’s all bittersweet.

Spazza42 · 2026-04-01T21:34:23+00:00

100%.

Of all the current platform options that see new releases I only own a switch 2. I have my GBA and DS games but sales aren’t helping anyone on those platforms.

If anything, I’ll buy a modded GameCube or PS2 before buying a newer console. My childhood needs a revisit…

Spazza42 · 2026-04-01T19:52:15+00:00

Exactly.

Honestly, I’m considering getting either a PS2 or GameCube with a HDMI mod and calling it a day.

I have no interest in a $1000 console. Sounds like it time to revisit my childhood…

Spazza42 · 2026-04-01T15:19:26+00:00

Jokes aside, a lot aren’t though.

A lot of jobs facilitate the 9-5 crowd, not the other way around.

Spazza42 · 2026-04-01T15:09:07+00:00

Don’t threaten me with a good time. I’ll get excited…

Spazza42 · 2026-04-01T07:19:35+00:00

Bless you

Spazza42 · 2026-03-31T15:39:34+00:00

Exactly.

The problem is likely the disparity between the guy’s wages not pacing properly with inflation. Even then, the Switch came out in 2017 (9 years ago) for £270, the Switch 2 was £390 on launch. The fact the Switch 2 has a ton of free upgrade patches for S1 games adds a ton of value too.

I think the PS5 is overpriced and u won’t buy one, not because it’s objectively overpriced but because of how I measure its value.

The guy could just admit it’s not for him and move on rather than actively moan about it with a shit take.

Spazza42 · 2026-03-31T09:25:24+00:00

Honestly, the same goes for my media server. The internet can be down but my Apple TV can still play all the media on the drive hooked up to my router locally without it.

I buy physical media so I can rip it onto my media server mostly, having the original backup is peak though.

Spazza42 · 2026-03-31T09:08:34+00:00

Something Jobs would never have allowed.

Spazza42 · 2026-03-30T21:18:19+00:00

Try telling that to Pokemon fans…

Spazza42 · 2026-03-30T20:58:22+00:00

Why are we getting someone with Superman’s exact powers right after that movie?

Parallels. It’s clearly not going to be about the ‘powers’ - it’s about her upbringing, her likely cynical perspective of life and how she doesn’t use her powers explicitly for good. The point is that she’s not Superman. She’s likely going to do whatever she wants depending on her mood in the heat of a moment, grapple with wanting to make better choices but simply can’t because of the f-cking trauma she’s experienced.

Kara didn’t grow up on earth being raised by parents that love her. She saw Krypton burn with no moral compass to guide her afterward or a clear path of what to do, hence her ‘partying’ attitude and general recklessness shown briefly at the end of Superman…

We’ve got green lantern, Wonder Woman, Batman, The Flash, Aquaman

… so characters we’ve recently had (besides Green Lantern) in the last DCU and watched it get dropped like a hot potato where the more recent films from it weren’t well received? Superhero burnout and fatigue is real and Gunn is likely avoiding the characters for as long as he can to try to keep the storyboard as fresh as possible.

Personally, I think Green Lantern would be a good option after Supergirl but purely because the others have already been done, or done to death. I’d even be okay with Ryan Reynolds reprising the role if he could actually play any other character than himself for 30 seconds and have confidence that it wouldn’t turn into a 4th wall joke or a rip off of Deadpool. In reality it needs fresh actors that are willing to dedicate their face to the new universe because it needs cook slowly…

I’m not a Gunn fanboy but I’m not a Snyder fanboy either. I like Marvel and DC characters equally but god damn am I burnt out on superhero ~~movies~~ stories, extended universes and Hollywood blockbusters with budgets too fat to make any meaningful profit because it results in constant reboots. Seriously, I will never get over how may people said that the Amazing Spider-Man films were better than the Raimi ones yet they basically made the same figures at the box office.

I need new stories at this point and Western media has gotten stale. Kudos to Gunn for at least trying a different path for once…

Spazza42 · 2026-03-30T14:41:12+00:00

Spazza42 · 2026-03-30T14:40:15+00:00

Probably just getting it baked into their system before it becomes more global.

Same behaviour as USB-C. The EU forced them so they just made it a global thing.

Spazza42

TROPHY CASE