Gaming is getting out of control. For a long time, it has been a very straightforward process. Some new shiny piece of gaming hardware comes out. It's twice as fast as last generation. Maybe cost a few dollars more, but you can reliably assume that it's gonna become cheaper and cheaper throughout the life cycle. And the next version is gonna come out; it's gonna be even better. That just keeps rinsing and repeating forever.

But I don't think that's what's happening anymore. Now it's easy to point at some of the more egregious examples. They're just super obvious, right? Like Sony raising the price of the PS5, look at the Meta Quest 2, what, a year or two after it comes out getting a hundred dollar price increase, right? Like that's weird. That's obvious. You can see that.

But I think the more insidious thing is what's happening under our very noses. Let's talk PCs for a minute. Obviously, I have quite the history of building gaming PCs. When I was really in my prime PC building days in 2013, 2014, 2015, it was easy to build a cheap gaming PC. You could spend $100, $200 on a graphics card; it would be completely fine.

Those days have been crushed into the ground not only by the wave of chip shortages and crypto mining but also just in the simple fact that these things have gotten wildly more expensive just at MSRP. When you're talking about $1,600 for an RTX 4090, that is outrageous and that is absurd. But you know what? That makes everything else look normal in comparison.

Think about the new Radeon 7900 XTX. This is a card that delivers really solid performance and it does it at hundreds of dollars less than the competition. How much does this cost? $1,000. Now, in a vacuum, that's crazy town; you're spending $1,000 for an upper mid-range graphics card. I mean, it's good, but it's not the best.

But when you look at it compared to a $1,600 card, seems reasonable, right? You're saving money, but it's all because you've changed this perspective of what you think is normal and reasonable. It's so easy to think that this is what I should be paying for a graphics card.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Gaming is getting out of control.For a long time,it has been a verystraightforward process.Some new shiny piece ofgaming hardware comes out.It's twice as fast as last generation.Maybe cost a few dollars more,but you can reliably assumethat it's gonna become cheaperand cheaper throughout the life cycle.And the next version is gonna come out,it's gonna be even better.And that just keeps rinsingand repeating forever.But I don't think that'swhat's happening anymore.Now it's easy to pointat some of the more egregious examples.They're just super obvious, right?Like Sony raising the price of the PS5,look at the Meta Quest 2, what,a year or two after it comes outgetting a hundred dollarprice increase, right?Like that's weird. That's obvious.You can see that.But I think the more insidious thingis what's happening under our very noses.So let's talk PCs for a minute.Obviously I have quite thehistory of building gaming PCsand when I was really in mysort of prime PC building daysin 2013, 2014, 2015,it was easy to build a cheap gaming pc.You could spend 100,$200 on a graphics card,it would be completely fine.Those days have beencrushed into the groundnot only by the wave of chipshortages and crypto miningbut also just in the simple factthat these things havegotten wildly more expensivejust at MSRP.When you're talking about$1,600 for an RTX 4090,that is outrageous and that is absurd.But you know what?That makes everything elselook normal in comparison.Think about the new Radeon 7900 XTX.This is a card that deliversreally solid performanceand it does it at hundreds of dollars lessthan the competition.How much does this cost? $1,000.Now, in a vacuum that's crazy town,that you're spending $1,000for an upper mid-range graphics card.I mean, it's good, but it's not the best.But when you look at itcompared to a $1,600 card,seems reasonable, right?You're saving money,but it's all because you'vechanged the perspective.I feel like I'm getting my crazy hands on.You're changing this perspectiveof what you think isnormal and reasonable.It's so easy to think that," Oh, this doesn't affect me.This is not my problem.I'm just gonna buy amid-range graphics card.Or I'm just gonna buy a consoleor I'm gonna play cloud gaming."Actually, if you play cloud gamingit doesn't really affect you.But if you're literallyany other kind of gamerthis does affect you.And I think it's one of thosethings where it's insidiousbecause you don't really realize it.It's like the frog who gets slowly boiledas you turn up the heat onthe water and you're like,"This is fine. It's kind of hot in here.I didn't notice it."Oh, a hundred dollars more formy PlayStation 5 is normal?This kind of stuff isn't the waythat tech has traditionally worked.In the past, the calculus was very simple.Something would come out,it would become better,cheaper and faster over time.But now what we're seeingis to hit meaningfulperformance improvements,you are not just spendinganother 50 bucks or 100 bucks,you're spending hundreds of dollars,and even then you'renot necessarily gettingthose huge leaps thatwe've expected in the past.- Are you boiling frogs alive?- I don't boil frogs, but I'll tell youthat if you jump into boilingwater, you'll notice it.But if you're sitting in the hot tuband the heat is slowly being cranked up,you're gonna find like,"Oh, this is comfortable.Oh, this is nice.Is someone peeing in the water?Oh it's getting really warm."And then you're like boiledalive cuz you didn't realize it.That's you, gamers. It's time to rise up.Why is this happening?Well, as with pretty mucheverything in the worldthere's not a super simplestraightforward answerbut there are a few key thingsthat are pushing things in my opinion,very much in the wrong direction.First and the most obviousis inflation supply chain.The stuff that is basicallyaffecting the entire worldover the last few years.I mean, there's a simple factthat a dollar don't stretchas far as it used to,but on top of that,you gotta consider that ifyou're manufacturing productsyou've gotta make sure thatpeople can actually make them.Then they can put themtogether, they can ship them.All of those costs have risen quite a lotwhich does explain things like the PS5and the Quest costing more, right?It simply costs more to make these thingsthan it did two, three years ago.Then there's the simple factthat it is incredibly complicatedand expensive to develop games, right?I mean, just how it gets harder and harderto develop chips that aremore and more powerful.So too, does it becomemore and more difficultand expensive to develop a gamewhich is incredibly well supported,has amazing graphics, that's superwell battle tested.All this stuff costs money.So what can we actually do about this?Well, the good thing isthere are still good dealsand smart decisions you can maketo become a well-roundedgamer and enjoy titlesand enjoy the latest andgreatest for years to come.Now the first and most obvious will be,of course, build a pc.That's the smart move all the time, right?While at the moment I'm pretty concernedabout what this next generationof graphics cards are gonna cost,but you could still build a PCthat will give you years of enjoyment,fairly straightforward.Makes sense, right?Or maybe we could buy ourselves a console.You could get yourself a PS5for a little more than it usedto and it does the same thingand there's probably gonnabe a PS5 Slim coming,but that's an option right now.I think what might makea little bit more senseto look at the Xbox side of thingsbecause the prices a, havestayed the same on the Series Xand it is fairly readily available.Or you can look at the Series S,which has actually seen a price cut.But if you're thinking about,oh, I want to get into gamingI wanna make sure that I'mbuying a piece of hardwarethat is going to lastfor years in the future.The Series S for 250 bucksis a very reasonable betor you can get a little bit more spicy.There's this little thingcalled the Steam Deckwhich has very much been a successwhen you look at this yearas far as gaming hardware.This is a fully self-contained unit,you don't have to buy an extra TVor controllers or anything like that.That's actually a very,very respectable choiceand I think it's a bigreason why the Steam Deckhas seen the success that it has,is because for 400 bucksyou really can't beat itwhen it comes to performance.The problem though, ontop of just the fact thatand this is much more of a personal take,so, you know, don't get upset,but that Steam Deck'stoo big, just to be real.The Steam Deck is way too big.Now I get that it'srelatively comfortable,it's got lots of controls,there's a lot of goodthings with the Steam Deck.I'm not saying anything about that.But for me, the Steam Deck whileis a very respectable option.I don't necessarily feel greatabout it for the long termwhich leads me to,and I cannot believeI'm about to say this,the solution to all of our problems.The one piece of gaming hardwarethat is very low on compromise,that has stayed incredibly cheap,cheaper than anythingelse I've mentioned today.And that has a massive game librarythat continues to grow every single day.The solution, my friends, the Switch Lite.Yeah, you heard me right.The best new piece of gaming hardwareyou can get your hands on right nowis a three-year-old, $200 basic versionof the Nintendo Switch.So that might be alittle bit of a hot takebut hear me out here,cuz I actually think thatthere are some real meritsto the Switch Lite.First and foremost being the price.$200 is a pricethat you just simply cannotget anything else for.I mean the Series S isthe closest like $250,although it is on a temporary sale,but for 250 bucks you still need the TV,you still need extra stuff,you may need extra memory cardswhatever the case is.The Switch Lite you can buy itand be completely happy standaloneor spend $20 and throw a microSD card in.And while the Series Sdoes play pretty much all Xbox games,you are playing itin a little bit moreof a limited capacity.And yes, absolutely,the biggest downside of the Switch Liteis the fact that youcannot play it in dock modelike you can with a traditional Switch.And depending on who you are,that may or may not be a big problem.For me, as someone who verymuch games on portable devicesand almost never needs to dock,that is actually notonly not a huge downside.There are actually some upsidesto choosing the Switch Lite hardwareover the traditional Switch.First and foremost for me is size.Now I get it,you're listening to a guywho's a little bit weird,who likes holding flippy phonesand small devices andother things in my hands.But the thing with the Switch Liteis that it is the smallestdevice on this entire list.It is the cheapest,and I think it's actually thebest version of the Switch.My daily console, the thingthat I play most oftenis my Switch Lite,which again is threeyears old at this point.You know what's really funny about thisis that the reason the SwitchLite is the deal that it isis because Nintendo are doingtheir completely own thing.The spec of the Switch Lite,yeah, that's running a 2015mobile Nvidia processor.Yeah, sure they've updated it,it's a little bit moreefficient and whatnot,but the performance levelof this is not high.And yet what Nintendohave done is they havean absolutely enormouslibrary of terrific gameswhich have been incredibly welloptimized for the hardware.And while the Switch is not powerfulby any stretch of the imagination,it is good enough to playa surprisingly wide variety of games,including some fairly new AAA stuff.Now for downsides,it is not fully compatiblewith all Switch games.There are a few titlesthat really do requireJoy-Cons which means that,while they will technicallywork on the Switch Lite,you'll need to actually buyan extra set of Joy-Consor sometimes like a Pro Controllerand obviously games that aremore multiplayer in nature.You're probably notgonna do an eight-personSmash Tournament on your Switch Lite.Well, if you do, props my friend.That's pretty impressive.But to me the smaller size is a big win.Also, there's smaller things like just,I don't like using a Switchwith the Joy-Cons attached.To me that sort of, it feels creaky,it feels like a little bit of that flex.Whereas the Switch Liteis a single-piece unitthat is all fully contained.And on top of that, thatsmaller screen I thinkactually pays dividendswhen it comes to playinga lot of mobile games,because yeah, you can plug inyour Switch OLED to the TVand look at 480p blown up on a 4K TV.Oh boy, that's a great experience.Or I can play on a small5.5 inch, 720p screen,which is way, way moreforgiving on some of the,shall we say, potato-like graphicsthat you can sometimesrun it into on the Switch.I'm way, way more okay withthat on the smaller display.I'm not saying that the Switch Liteis the console for everybody,obviously not, right?But I think a lot of peoplehave completely been sleepingon the Switch Lite, when in fact,I think it is a terrificvalue proposition.And honestly, it might be the best Switchyou can buy right now,especially if you havean older Switch, right?I think a lot of peoplehave like maybe a 2017 modelof the Switch, thebattery's starting to die.You could always leave thatthing on the dock or whatever.But as far as the actual portable consoleto carry with you every day,the Switch Lite is way smallerthan the Switch or the Steam Deck,has better battery lifethan the Steam Deck.And in my opinion,it is just a niceroverall piece of hardware.I know that's a little controversialcause it doesn't have all thebells and whistles and stuff,but for me I like the small sizeand I like the factthat it doesn't get loudand hot in my hand.It's just, I'm telling you,I'm getting fired up right now.But the Switch Lite is such a good deviceand to see gaming evolvingat the pace that it's at,prices ballooning to astronomical figuresleft, right and center,and yet you got this little Switch Litethat no one pays attention to,which I think is absolutelyone of the uncovered gems,I almost said uncut gems,that's not quite right,one of the uncoveredgems of the gaming space.Look, I get that my bias is showing,cuz I'm perfectly happyto play my Pokemon gameson my Switch Lite inportable mode forever, right?Like, that's not everyone.I fully understand that.But if you look at the overallstate of gaming right now,it is both vibrantand has massive stormclouds on the horizon,because the games that we areseeing right now are amazing.The art that developers are craftingis truly something thatwe have never seen.And I think we're gonnalook back on these yearsas some of the best for gaming ever.But on the flip side,the costs associatedwith some of this stuff,not only from the gaming perspective,but also the hardwarethat companies are trying to developto keep on the cutting edge,is quickly getting out of control.And I don't think there'sa good answer here, right?I mean, you could takethe Nintendo approachof we don't need thatlatest and greatest hardwareall the time.Maybe we take our footoff the gas a little bit,focus on trying to deliver somethingwhich is actually affordable right?That's a reasonable solution,but it doesn't push the industry forward.And the traditional stuffthat has pushed the industry forwardhas gotten so bananas,so disconnected from realitythat I really wonder where it lands.Like are we all just gonnaaccept $1,000 graphics cards?Are we all just gonna acceptthat consoles are gonna be 7-, 8-, $900,maybe, or maybe we allbuy ourselves a Series S,a Steam Deck or a Switch Liteand we live our happy little livesnot knowing the truepotential of piles of moneyand effortless resources.