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.

  • theparadox@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Honestly, the way shit is going, get what you can while you can. Gaming is only going to get worse and more expensive by the week.

      • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        Only if AI continues to ramp up.

        We’re seeing a lot of cracks. I don’t know if any bubbles are going to burst, but the hype is far less common than the frustration these days.

        • sobchak@programming.dev
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          1 day ago

          On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of stories of people getting addicted to the “agentic harnesses” and personally (and happily) blowing through hundreds to thousands of dollars/month. I’ve seen people write articles about how their $200/month subscriptions are such a good deal, lol. Companies are forcing their employees to use AI at insane costs. Nearly every software engineering job posting mentions using AI tools as a requirement. Anthropic’s revenue is set to double this quarter and be its first profitable quarter (likely using a lot of accounting tricks).

          I’m really curious if this AI industry can self-perpetuate itself with stupidity and greed indefinitely as everything becomes shittier and unreliable, and civilization slowly crumbles.

          • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            That’s the beginning of a bubble popping. Addicts and stupid people only have so much money. It runs out quicker than you’d think.

            • Magiilaro@feddit.org
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              1 day ago

              That is ok for NVidia, they don’t really want to sell to end users anymore. AI datacenters give way higher margins

              • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                When that falls through (and it will), they’ll try to come crawling back to retail.

                Don’t let them.

                • veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world
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                  9 hours ago

                  The broader a customer base, the less solidarity there is.

                  Nvidia has shit on consumer goodwill in the past, they never get punished for it.

                  • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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                    3 hours ago

                    If the other manufacturers had any sense whatsoever, they’d be using this opportunity to take over Nvidia’s market share. Leave them no space to come back to once the bottom falls out on AI datacenters.

    • cmbabul@slrpnk.net
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      2 days ago

      This is why I went ahead and bought one last January, It’ll probably last at least 5 years(i hope), and I can pirate and emulate games much more easily than on a console to keep my entertainment budget lower. Just a year early

      • AngryPancake@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        I bought one at launch (not OLED though), it’s still going strong. They made a really solid device and if anything breaks (which hasn’t happened yet), it’s easy to replace. I used GeForce now for the first time this month and it was really smooth and it’s great the console doesn’t heat up with it.

        That being said, I think it’s too expensive now…

    • amniotic druid@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      What marketing agency wrote this? Dumb fucking idea. No one in the world needs Steam Deck and no company has ever responded to more sales with lower prices. Boycott that shit

      • theparadox@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Nobody needs any entertainment, but some people enjoy hobbies like gaming.

        no company has ever responded to more sales with lower prices

        Prices are going up rapidly thanks to AI data centers exploding demand by orders of magnitude more than retail customers. There is no end in sight to the price increases.

        If you want a gaming device, buy it sooner rather than later. That’s all I am saying.

        • Coldcell@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          Is there not a future in which the AI bubble bursts, and we are in a glut of datacentre memory and storage with no buyers?

          There should be a cataclysmic bottoming out of the market that leads to a period of cheap, abundant parts.

          • theparadox@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Is there not a future in which the AI bubble bursts, and we are in a glut of datacentre memory and storage with no buyers?

            There is. Unfortunately, not even the chips on the memory used by data centers is compatible with consumer hardware. They use extremely high performance, expensive HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), we use DDR memory. Unless consumers start getting affordable devices that are compatible with such memory, there is not much hope of buying what has been or is in the process of being made for data centers.

      • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        What is life without entertainment? Do you think all what life is about is to barely make ends meet while making extra profit for the billionaire class? I even got told that I don’t even need healthy food, just be mindful how much I’m eating of the cheap unhealthy stuff, do some intermittent fasting, and eat apples as snack instead of sweets.

      • pilferjinx@piefed.social
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        2 days ago

        Is money going to hold its value? I’m debating on just stocking up on non perishable food and decent quality tools while I still can.

        • Coldcell@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          solid self-repairable or renowned long-lasting tools is my thinking. You can learn lots of basic plumbing and electrics in small doses