[mchahn]

Not too long ago I bought a cheap printer (don't remember the brand), took it home, and returned it after seeing the horrible quality of the print. Then I brought home another cheap printer of a different brand, had the same experience, and returned that.

The reason I was buying cheap printers is that they were the only ones locally available, other than one very expensive model, the epson XP800. Apparently the market has been shrunk to only people that don't care about quality. They give the printer away and make a killing on the ink.

In the end I bought the expensive Epson and have been very happy with it. I'm not happy about the state of the market though.

[gherkin0]

Is there a name for the scenario where market forces push new products to be objectively inferior to older ones?

[mchahn]

Maybe planned retrogression instead of planned obsolescence?

[gherkin0]

I don't think there's usually a plan to "retrogress" on product quality, though. It just sort of works out that way.