"These price increases have multiple intertwining causes, some direct and some less so: inflation, pandemic-era supply crunches, the unpredictable trade policies of the Trump administration, and a gradual shift among console makers away from selling hardware at a loss or breaking even in the hopes that game sales will subsidize the hardware. And you never want to rule out good old shareholder-prioritizing corporate greed.
But one major factor, both in the price increases and in the reduction in drastic “slim”-style redesigns, is technical: the death of Moore’s Law and a noticeable slowdown in the rate at which processors and graphics chips can improve."
I just built a PC after not having a computer for about 5+ years.
Built it for games, did not feel like I was missing out on anything in particular except games by not having a computer. There’s a lot of things I’d rather use a computer for but these days most of what I used to do on a computer can be done just fine from a phone or tablet.
During those 5 or so years, I maybe needed to use a computer about a dozen times, and if my wife didn’t have a computer I could have just swung by a library for a bit to take care of it.
To me tablets feel like the most useless devices ever invented. Too large to carry around with you but just as stupidly limited as a phone compared to a real computer where you can actually automate some of your tasks and type on a decent keyboard and have a decent sized screen that doesn’t ruin your wrists with the weight of holding it up.