I guess I have to put my foot in my mouth over a comment I made a month or so back. I had said an XBOX handheld would sell out against the Steam Deck simply due to brand recognition.
This was of course before I thought they’d be dumb enough to make a console twice as expensive aimed at the mass market. If this was targeted at the same price as the Deck, they might have had a chance.
I don’t know anyone that would consider one of these now.
Shit I dont know anyone who can afford this. No one in my work or friend group has a Steam Deck or Switch 2. Nearly 20 people all of us of us have ps5, XsX, or switch 1. 6 have a pc that can run the latest games without chugging. Not even the scalper guy at work has gotten a Switch2 to flip.
The market for Steam Deck is already so small, you would have to undercut it in price or overshoot it in specs by such a rediculous margin (either one) to get mass market adoption. Consoles were BORN FROM being cheaper and “punching above its pricetag” compared to modular PCs. This handheld is neither.
$1000 consoles and $100 games…here we come I guess. I’m so tired of fighting this fight. One of the tenants of capitalism is that you, the consumer, should demand more-for-less. It doesn’t matter that you got a good deal already. It is a consumers duty to demand a product for less, or even free. People have grown complacent and lazy with this duty - misinformation and complacency, and a culture that promotes both “fuck you I got mine” and “overpaying is a flex” has allowed prices to rocket under greedflation.
One of the tenants of capitalism is that you, the consumer, should demand more-for-less
Oh dear, that was never a tenet of capitalism. Capitalism has only one tenet: amass as much capital as possible at all costs. Literally anything goes, including and especially capturing and controlling markets by stifling competition.
It’s a natural byproduct though. Assuming a free enough market, you should have several people all supplying the same good. Some will compete on price, some on quality, and some on overall service.
The problems happen when competition evaporates, either from regulations raising the barrier to entry, acquisitions, or resource scarcity. Capitalism assumes people are greedy and pits them against each other to provide better services to everyone. A lack of competition isn’t “capitalism functioning as intended,” but instead the opposite, it means something is preventing capitalism from working as intended.
You appear to be conflating Capitalism with the concept of free markets. They are wholly different and distinct concepts, regardless of what Capitalism’s propagandists would like everyone to believe.
Capitalism, being an economic dogma that worships private ownership and relentless pursuit and hoarding of wealth, actively incentivizes behavior that destroys free markets: trusts, monopolies, oligopolies, regulatory capture, sabotage, patents, union busting, mergers and acquisitions, financialization, and more, gradually eroding any free market until it no longer meaningfully exists.
When most people refer to capitalism, they mean free market or laissez-faire capitalism. Many (most?) of the issues you mentioned require government to step in to occur. For example:
trusts - government structure to protect wealth
oligopoly - failure of government to prevent collusion (price fixing and whatnot are expressly anti-competitive)
regulatory capture - government must be complicit since regulations are typically a government thing
I think government has a place in protecting the free market, but it needs to be restrained so it doesn’t get manipulated into destroying the free market. For example, a regulation could protect consumers, but it could also raise the barrier to entry and prevent competition from correcting the underlying problem.
A lot of the issues stem from corporate welfare, where wealthy people are able to manipulate corporate structures to build their own wealth and protect themselves from liability. I think it’s largely those liability protections that encourage anti-competitive behavior. End the protections and courts can meaningfully punish corporations when they break the law.
This is in line with the other Windows handhelds’ pricing, which are still doing half as well as the Steam Deck despite having to run an interface as awful as desktop Windows.
I guess I have to put my foot in my mouth over a comment I made a month or so back. I had said an XBOX handheld would sell out against the Steam Deck simply due to brand recognition.
This was of course before I thought they’d be dumb enough to make a console twice as expensive aimed at the mass market. If this was targeted at the same price as the Deck, they might have had a chance.
I don’t know anyone that would consider one of these now.
Shit I dont know anyone who can afford this. No one in my work or friend group has a Steam Deck or Switch 2. Nearly 20 people all of us of us have ps5, XsX, or switch 1. 6 have a pc that can run the latest games without chugging. Not even the scalper guy at work has gotten a Switch2 to flip.
The market for Steam Deck is already so small, you would have to undercut it in price or overshoot it in specs by such a rediculous margin (either one) to get mass market adoption. Consoles were BORN FROM being cheaper and “punching above its pricetag” compared to modular PCs. This handheld is neither.
$1000 consoles and $100 games…here we come I guess. I’m so tired of fighting this fight. One of the tenants of capitalism is that you, the consumer, should demand more-for-less. It doesn’t matter that you got a good deal already. It is a consumers duty to demand a product for less, or even free. People have grown complacent and lazy with this duty - misinformation and complacency, and a culture that promotes both “fuck you I got mine” and “overpaying is a flex” has allowed prices to rocket under greedflation.
Oh dear, that was never a tenet of capitalism. Capitalism has only one tenet: amass as much capital as possible at all costs. Literally anything goes, including and especially capturing and controlling markets by stifling competition.
It’s a natural byproduct though. Assuming a free enough market, you should have several people all supplying the same good. Some will compete on price, some on quality, and some on overall service.
The problems happen when competition evaporates, either from regulations raising the barrier to entry, acquisitions, or resource scarcity. Capitalism assumes people are greedy and pits them against each other to provide better services to everyone. A lack of competition isn’t “capitalism functioning as intended,” but instead the opposite, it means something is preventing capitalism from working as intended.
You appear to be conflating Capitalism with the concept of free markets. They are wholly different and distinct concepts, regardless of what Capitalism’s propagandists would like everyone to believe.
Capitalism, being an economic dogma that worships private ownership and relentless pursuit and hoarding of wealth, actively incentivizes behavior that destroys free markets: trusts, monopolies, oligopolies, regulatory capture, sabotage, patents, union busting, mergers and acquisitions, financialization, and more, gradually eroding any free market until it no longer meaningfully exists.
When most people refer to capitalism, they mean free market or laissez-faire capitalism. Many (most?) of the issues you mentioned require government to step in to occur. For example:
I think government has a place in protecting the free market, but it needs to be restrained so it doesn’t get manipulated into destroying the free market. For example, a regulation could protect consumers, but it could also raise the barrier to entry and prevent competition from correcting the underlying problem.
A lot of the issues stem from corporate welfare, where wealthy people are able to manipulate corporate structures to build their own wealth and protect themselves from liability. I think it’s largely those liability protections that encourage anti-competitive behavior. End the protections and courts can meaningfully punish corporations when they break the law.
This is in line with the other Windows handhelds’ pricing, which are still doing half as well as the Steam Deck despite having to run an interface as awful as desktop Windows.