[fortran77]

I see this all the time, in every area. Bicycle forums are filled with hate for "casual bikers" who buy $5,000 bicycles and all the expensive accessories. My feeling is "good for them! They help the industry and help finance the lower-end models."

Some people are just too petty to see the "enthusiast" market also drives the low-end.

[hobofan]

> They help the industry and help finance the lower-end models

Do they though? From how most companies operate that I've seen from the inside, I would assume that such a market response would shift their focus towards high-end models, and low-end models will be neglected.

Sure, there is somewhat of a technology trickle down towards lower-end models over time, but that seems to be driven on an industry/supplier/competition level and mostly disconnected from luxury consumers. Especially "_financing_ the lower-end models" seems unlikely, as no manufacturer would lower the prices on the lower-end models, just because they make "enough" on the high-end ones. The only way this would apply would be through shared overhead, which given that we are talking about different product lines often tends to be minimal.

[kaibee]

> The only way this would apply would be through shared overhead, which given that we are talking about different product lines often tends to be minimal.

My understanding is that in the CPU case, the lower product tiers are literally just higher tier chips that had faults in some cores/areas and had those features disabled.

[leetcrew]

> The only way this would apply would be through shared overhead, which given that we are talking about different product lines often tends to be minimal.

this is very much not minimal in the CPU business though. intel's entire line of (consumer) desktop parts is different bins of the same chip. they wouldn't be able to offer an i3 for $120 if they weren't also selling i9s for $500. and they probably couldn't sell consumer parts for <$1000 at all if they couldn't sell xeon parts with the same architecture for thousands of dollars.

[ac29]

> intel's entire line of (consumer) desktop parts is different bins of the same chip.

Is that true? Intel's 14nm yields are high enough that it wouldnt really make sense for the dirt cheap quad core processors to secretly be 8 core processors with half the cores (and cache) disabled.

[leetcrew]

I think for the current gen parts, the quad core parts are actually six core dies with two disabled. the overall point stands though.

[speeder]

I am a heavy gamer, both table and electronic.

In our market at least many companies gunning for the enthusiasts are completely screwing the normal users, not helping them in any way.

1. MTG fans been complaining a for years that some cards have not been reprinted and are literally essential to the game, new players need those cards. The manufacturer reaction was launch a product that does have those cards but in a sky high price point, when players complained they literally replies that the product wasn't for them, it was aimed at the luxury market. How that helps the low end? Not only just the possible buyers, but current players that can't have new play partners because new play partners can't afford to hunt on secondary market for basically mandatory game pieces.

2. Ana Android F2P game I play decided to go full pay to win while denying it, they launched a new piece of armor that makes your character drastically better on ranked matches, and then proceeded to make it cost a currency that the free players can get only half of the price of the piece of armor, to get the rest of the currency needed you need to pay some 200 USD.

When players complained the main dev wrote a extremely rude answer on the forums that also made clear all he cares about is getting money from big spenders, the currency to get the item in question is not available to even the vast majority of paying players, not even subscription players can get it, you need to buy that separate expensive pack. As for why people care about the ranking? Well, the reward for doing well is permanent character buffs, that there is no way to get in other manner, thus reinforcing the pay to win aspect.

3. There is a certain game publisher that found out profits can be made with DLC, now they launch then at breakneck speed AND lock essential features behind them. Whenever they update the game alongside DLC they balance the game in a way that it is not fun without the DLC, making them mandatory. I found out even UI buttons get shut down (example: one patch fixed AI notorious stupidity by letting players ask allies to follow them instead of wandering around in stupid manner. But the button that you click to do so, is part of the DLC. Or in other case sometimes you have a huge list of things to decide, you need to click on each item one by one, or but the DLC that adds a button on the interface to do the same action to the entire list). Another case with same publisher: updates literally removed features of the game, added new mechanics to compensate, but those are DLC.

[ubercow13]

This doesn't seem to apply to the CPU industry, where Intel has been charging these high prices for the enthusiast products and then not driving innovation in the midrange, due to having a monopoly position partly brought about by previous anticompetitive behaviour on their part. Is that similar to the bicycle industry?