[bluescrn]

I’m much more concerned by the skyrocketing cost of housing, energy, food, and transport than the cost of tech luxuries.

If I never buy another GPU or console again, there’s more than enough quality gaming for several lifetimes available on older hardware and often very inexpensively.

[everdrive]

>I’m much more concerned by the skyrocketing cost of housing, energy, food, and transport than the cost of tech luxuries.

I'm with you, but given that I have no control over any of them I wouldn't have minded that my luxury fun was still cheap. About a decade or so ago, I remember saying something like "We're in an odd period historically: if you except housing, healthcare, and education, everything else is _stunningly_ cheap by historical norms." I wasn't trying to discount the importance of those things, but it felt like there was at least some relief among the rising costs there. Now, it seems like "everything else" has caught up and it's simply that everything is expensive.

[milkytron]

> I'm with you, but given that I have no control over any of them

We all have a little bit of control over at least housing and transport. Local politics determine land use, and municipalities in the US have consistently voted for more car dependency (leading to more expensive transport) and limited housing construction (leading to more expensive housing).

Local politics aren't really paid attention to, which results in any amount of participation and influence having a relatively large impact compared to state or federal politics.

[tavavex]

Those same components are contained in tech everything, not just "luxuries". If you want to stick with your current hardware, you just need to hope that your existing setup will outlast you and never have any part failures.

[jdprgm]

The difference is those have largely all been steadily increasing every year for decades. Tech and entertainment (streamers etc) have been one of the few bright spots you could point to as something that would usually improve yearly.

At this point there is hardly anything left and I think it leads to some pretty dark scenarios when we have a society where we have somehow decided: fuck it, almost everything gets worse for almost all of you every single year.

[wtetzner]

> older hardware and often very inexpensively

What makes you think demand won't drive those prices up as well? And this is more than just gaming, the Steam Deck prices are increased due to the increase cost of general components like RAM, which impacts machines used to do work as well.