- 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.
And 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.
So let's talk PCs for a minute.
Obviously I have quite the history of building gaming PCs
and when I was really in my sort of 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,
that 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 the perspective.
I feel like I'm getting my crazy hands on.
You're changing this perspective
of what you think is normal 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 a mid-range graphics card.
Or I'm just gonna buy a console
or I'm gonna play cloud gaming."
Actually, if you play cloud gaming
it doesn't really affect you.
But if you're literally any other kind of gamer
this does affect you.
And I think it's one of those things where it's insidious
because you don't really realize it.
It's like the frog who gets slowly boiled
as you turn up the heat on the 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 for my PlayStation 5 is normal?
This kind of stuff isn't the way
that 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 seeing
is to hit meaningful performance improvements,
you are not just spending another 50 bucks or 100 bucks,
you're spending hundreds of dollars,
and even then you're not necessarily getting
those huge leaps that we've expected in the past.
- [Matt] Are you boiling frogs alive?
- I don't boil frogs, but I'll tell you
that if you jump into boiling water, you'll notice it.
But if you're sitting in the hot tub
and 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 boiled alive cuz you didn't realize it.
That's you, gamers. It's time to rise up.
Why is this happening?
Well, as with pretty much everything in the world
there's not a super simple straightforward answer
but there are a few key things
that are pushing things in my opinion,
very much in the wrong direction.
First and the most obvious is inflation supply chain.
The stuff that is basically affecting the entire world
over the last few years.
I mean, there's a simple fact
that a dollar don't stretch as far as it used to,
but on top of that,
you gotta consider that if you're manufacturing products
you've gotta make sure that people can actually make them.
Then they can put them together, they can ship them.
All of those costs have risen quite a lot
which does explain things like the PS5
and the Quest costing more, right?
It simply costs more to make these things
than it did two, three years ago.
Then there's the simple fact
that it is incredibly complicated
and expensive to develop games, right?
I mean, just how it gets harder and harder
to develop chips that are more and more powerful.
So too, does it become more and more difficult
and expensive to develop a game
which is incredibly well supported,
has amazing graphics, that's super well battle tested.
All this stuff costs money.
So what can we actually do about this?
Well, the good thing is there are still good deals
and smart decisions you can make
to become a well-rounded gamer and enjoy titles
and enjoy the latest and greatest 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 concerned
about what this next generation
of graphics cards are gonna cost,
but you could still build a PC
that will give you years of enjoyment,
fairly straightforward.
Makes sense, right?
Or maybe we could buy ourselves a console.
You could get yourself a PS5
for a little more than it used to and it does the same thing
and there's probably gonna be a PS5 Slim coming,
but that's an option right now.
I think what might make a little bit more sense
to look at the Xbox side of things
because the prices a, have stayed the same on the Series X
and 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 gaming
I wanna make sure that I'm buying a piece of hardware
that is going to last for years in the future.
The Series S for 250 bucks is a very reasonable bet
or you can get a little bit more spicy.
There's this little thing called the Steam Deck
which has very much been a success
when you look at this year as far as gaming hardware.
This is a fully self-contained unit,
you don't have to buy an extra TV
or controllers or anything like that.
That's actually a very, very respectable choice
and I think it's a big reason why the Steam Deck
has seen the success that it has,
is because for 400 bucks you really can't beat it
when it comes to performance.
The problem though, on top of just the fact that
and this is much more of a personal take,
so, you know, don't get upset,
but that Steam Deck's too big, just to be real.
The Steam Deck is way too big.
Now I get that it's relatively comfortable,
it's got lots of controls,
there's a lot of good things with the Steam Deck.
I'm not saying anything about that.
But for me, the Steam Deck while
is a very respectable option.
I don't necessarily feel great about it for the long term
which leads me to,
and I cannot believe I'm about to say this,
the solution to all of our problems.
The one piece of gaming hardware
that is very low on compromise,
that has stayed incredibly cheap,
cheaper than anything else I've mentioned today.
And that has a massive game library
that continues to grow every single day.
The solution, my friends, the Switch Lite.
Yeah, you heard me right.
The best new piece of gaming hardware
you can get your hands on right now
is a three-year-old, $200 basic version
of the Nintendo Switch.
So that might be a little bit of a hot take
but hear me out here,
cuz I actually think that there are some real merits
to the Switch Lite.
First and foremost being the price.
$200 is a price
that you just simply cannot get anything else for.
I mean the Series S is the 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 cards
whatever the case is.
The Switch Lite you can buy it
and be completely happy standalone
or spend $20 and throw a microSD card in.
And while the Series S
does play pretty much all Xbox games,
you are playing it
in a little bit more of a limited capacity.
And yes, absolutely,
the biggest downside of the Switch Lite
is the fact that you cannot play it in dock mode
like 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 very much games on portable devices
and almost never needs to dock,
that is actually not only not a huge downside.
There are actually some upsides
to choosing the Switch Lite hardware
over the traditional Switch.
First and foremost for me is size.
Now I get it,
you're listening to a guy who's a little bit weird,
who likes holding flippy phones
and small devices and other things in my hands.
But the thing with the Switch Lite
is that it is the smallest device on this entire list.
It is the cheapest,
and I think it's actually the best version of the Switch.
My daily console, the thing that I play most often
is my Switch Lite,
which again is three years old at this point.
You know what's really funny about this
is that the reason the Switch Lite is the deal that it is
is because Nintendo are doing their completely own thing.
The spec of the Switch Lite,
yeah, that's running a 2015 mobile Nvidia processor.
Yeah, sure they've updated it,
it's a little bit more efficient and whatnot,
but the performance level of this is not high.
And yet what Nintendo have done is they have
an absolutely enormous library of terrific games
which have been incredibly well optimized for the hardware.
And while the Switch is not powerful
by any stretch of the imagination,
it is good enough to play
a surprisingly wide variety of games,
including some fairly new AAA stuff.
Now for downsides,
it is not fully compatible with all Switch games.
There are a few titles
that really do require Joy-Cons which means that,
while they will technically work on the Switch Lite,
you'll need to actually buy an extra set of Joy-Cons
or sometimes like a Pro Controller
and obviously games that are more multiplayer in nature.
You're probably not gonna do an eight-person
Smash 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 Switch with the Joy-Cons attached.
To me that sort of, it feels creaky,
it feels like a little bit of that flex.
Whereas the Switch Lite is a single-piece unit
that is all fully contained.
And on top of that, that smaller screen I think
actually pays dividends
when it comes to playing a lot of mobile games,
because yeah, you can plug in your Switch OLED to the TV
and look at 480p blown up on a 4K TV.
Oh boy, that's a great experience.
Or I can play on a small 5.5 inch, 720p screen,
which is way, way more forgiving on some of the,
shall we say, potato-like graphics
that you can sometimes run it into on the Switch.
I'm way, way more okay with that on the smaller display.
I'm not saying that the Switch Lite
is the console for everybody, obviously not, right?
But I think a lot of people have completely been sleeping
on the Switch Lite, when in fact,
I think it is a terrific value proposition.
And honestly, it might be the best Switch
you can buy right now,
especially if you have an older Switch, right?
I think a lot of people have like maybe a 2017 model
of the Switch, the battery's starting to die.
You could always leave that thing on the dock or whatever.
But as far as the actual portable console
to carry with you every day, the Switch Lite is way smaller
than the Switch or the Steam Deck,
has better battery life than the Steam Deck.
And in my opinion,
it is just a nicer overall piece of hardware.
I know that's a little controversial
cause it doesn't have all the bells and whistles and stuff,
but for me I like the small size
and I like the fact that it doesn't get loud
and 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 device
and to see gaming evolving at the pace that it's at,
prices ballooning to astronomical figures
left, right and center,
and yet you got this little Switch Lite
that no one pays attention to,
which I think is absolutely one of the uncovered gems,
I almost said uncut gems, that's not quite right,
one of the uncovered gems of the gaming space.
Look, I get that my bias is showing,
cuz I'm perfectly happy to play my Pokemon games
on my Switch Lite in portable mode forever, right?
Like, that's not everyone. I fully understand that.
But if you look at the overall state of gaming right now,
it is both vibrant
and has massive storm clouds on the horizon,
because the games that we are seeing right now are amazing.
The art that developers are crafting
is truly something that we have never seen.
And I think we're gonna look back on these years
as some of the best for gaming ever.
But on the flip side,
the costs associated with some of this stuff,
not only from the gaming perspective,
but also the hardware
that companies are trying to develop
to keep on the cutting edge,
is quickly getting out of control.
And I don't think there's a good answer here, right?
I mean, you could take the Nintendo approach
of we don't need that latest and greatest hardware
all the time.
Maybe we take our foot off the gas a little bit,
focus on trying to deliver something
which is actually affordable right?
That's a reasonable solution,
but it doesn't push the industry forward.
And the traditional stuff
that has pushed the industry forward
has gotten so bananas,
so disconnected from reality
that I really wonder where it lands.
Like are we all just gonna accept $1,000 graphics cards?
Are we all just gonna accept
that consoles are gonna be 7-, 8-, $900,
maybe, or maybe we all buy ourselves a Series S,
a Steam Deck or a Switch Lite
and we live our happy little lives
not knowing the true potential of piles of money
and effortless resources.