Hardware

That mostly tracks. I think the problem is less the availability of affordable options and more the willingness of the market to take those as a standard, though.

The affordable options are there. You can get a PS5 starting at 400 bucks (tariffs allowing). That's a lower sticker price than a launch PS3 and on par with the inflation-adjusted price of a 360. It's also cheaper than some comparably performant GPUs, let alone an entire PC.

Problem is then you're playing at some variation of upscaled 1080-1440p at 30 to 60 fps and apparently the PC market thinks that's for peasants and you should only ever play at hundreds of fpss and many megapixels.

And yeah, the tech hasn't made those specs available to the human-tier and instead the marketers have gotten really good at giving you FOMO for all the high end features you could be getting instead.

There is a low end. I think the fact that a Steam Deck is ostensibly a full handheld PC starting at 420 bucks is absurd. Not gonna raytrace much on it, though.

Do I think games should all be made for Steam Decks and PS5s and not have any features that require beefier hardware? Well, seeing my point about loving visual features I'm going to be a no, but I also think we need to get better at managing the FOMO as a group.

Or the hardware needs to find a new route to get us back on the Moore's Law curve. Either/or.