Beyond the inflation angle this is an interesting thesis. I hadn’t considered that we are running out of space for improvement in size with current technology.
Beyond the inflation angle this is an interesting thesis. I hadn’t considered that we are running out of space for improvement in size with current technology.
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Yeah, that’s why. Not corporate greed and shareholders.
Maybe developers can actually start optimizing games again.
As an old ass man, I think I’m done with modern gaming. Don’t get me wrong, some of the best games I’ve ever played have been in the past decade, but it all just feels so gross and slimy now. The switch 2 is the first console won’t get at launch and really don’t care about at all. And I’ve gotten every system on or before US launch since the SNES.
Moore’s law has been dead for a bit now and this is one of the consequences.
Also the insatiable demand for AI chips means fab prices have skyrocketed along with memory prices.
I work in the semiconductor industry. Moore’s law is not dead, it’s just become very expensive.
The consoles you know until now, even PS5 are built using chips that are made with lithography machines that utilize deep ultraviolet light. One such machine sells to the chip manufacturers well above 18-20 million.
Higher scale does exist, but extreme ultraviolet light lithography machines cost 120+ mill each, and the end game Hi-NA systems that are only piloting in 2025 go for 250+ mill.
Unless you are willing to pay 1200+ for your consoles, they won’t be designed any better because it simply does not make sense financially.
Let this also mean that the next gen consoles are not coming for a long time. Let this gen live on for a while and let devs make optimized game for this gen first. Why are YouTubers already talking about PS6?!
Was I just imagining that the 1050 Ti was a marvel when it first came out? Basically it seemed like an affordable card that didn’t guzzle electricity but still punched above its weight, even if obviously not as powerful as the contemporary high end. I know there are the whole subsequent 50 series, but they don’t seem to have had the same performance to value ratio as the 1050 in its day. Is it something that can’t be done or isn’t profitable enough to bother?
It’s like when the OG crysis came out, it was so poorly coded nothing could max it out. Now the remastered one can run on a potato.
Or how the original oblivion was like 13 gigs and the remaster is over 100 and runs poorly
Games aren’t all about graphics. I continue to go back to games that have last gen graphics because the mechanics of the game are just better. Under the hood most games use the same programming code designs regardless of graphics.
>The last permanent price drop for a major home or portable console we could find came back in 2016
The world suddenly deciding that putting up trade barriers and tariffs was a good thing in 2016-2017 certainly didn’t help things.
Apparently it worked so well that we decided to double down on it in 2024, somehow expecting a better result.
1990-2016 was an amazing run, we just didn’t realize it.
People have been all on the Nvidia hate train this year but they are kind of right when they talked about gains in raster performance being mostly dead for RTX 50 and onward. Instead we are getting tech like MFG which is interesting and useful but definitely not a direct substitution for rendering real frames.
Moore’s Law has ground to a halt and most people are either unaware of what that actually means (severe diminishing returns on chip improvement) or act like there should be some way we can break the laws of semiconductor physics and magically overcome it.
It is true, we’ve shrank chips down so much each transistor is only a couple molecules in length, meaning there’s not much room to shrink things from here. But that doesn’t mean chip prices should be going up.
this feels like … duh moment as rasterization hasn’t really moved much since the ps4…
and it ain’t gong to move much with this goofy ai race happening
Price cuts LoL 😂
I have no source but I once read some report about it. I am certainly not an experts and i could be wrong.
So higher end chips basically are more transistors/components on the same or smaller surface area, ergo you maker everything smaller. Needing more precise measurements and new machinery etc.
Not only this, laws of physics get funky when you build things on such a small scale, engineers have to re-engineer their whole products to make it work.
ASML (the supplier of machines which produces chips) basically has to introduce new technology, I imagine their R&D costs are huuuuge.
Not to mention all other manufacturers who design chips and manufacturers who mount these chips on their products. The whole supply chain needs to advance their tech.
I’m convinced this is just propaganda for corporate greed. If Moore’s law is truly dead and it takes more RD funds to improve technology, then tech companies could just look at historical RD spending, and limit RD year over year for a slower hardware progression while focusing on cost cutting and software. It would drive more stability for investors, more value for consumers, and less human waste.
Legacy support hurt performance