QOTW: Is the cost of gaming getting out of hand?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah, because the companies are making serious profits when they're not supposed to.

But they are private companies not state monopolies - this is what the excuse makers on tech forums have been making for the last decade on tech forums,why tech should cost more. In fact they used more and more creative and sideways methods over the years.

In fact we had some paid Nvidia marketing people on here(and elsewhere) who made the arguments about people being "entitled" if they wanted better price/performance and how they could go to an expensive restaurant,etc and now people are making the same arguments,but don't get paid anything.

The cost of employing all those drug reps with srubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishy suits and fancy cars is also very high... as are the penalties for things like health-care fraud (GSK got hit with $3 Billion, IIRC?).
Old drugs are out of patent, which is why they're cheap. New drugs are quite cheap too.. Cornering the market with patents is expensive, but doing that and hiking the price is exactly what Pharma does, as Martin Shkreli himself has said. Heck, he's the guy that bought the rights to a patent-expired £13 pill off the owning company, then hiked the price to £750 overnight!!
THAT is why they're vilified!!

I have worked in the general area and know people who worked in the area.

Multiple drugs fail before final trials which take years and years,and the developement of drugs is getting increasingly difficult,so as a result they hedge their bets on a very few drugs which work and some can cost billions of USD to develop. The issue is that governments(and the public) need to fund more of the R and D,especially with the way antibiotics are going to go. Giving it to private companies who only want to care about shareholders and profits only works so far.

People expect companies to compete to drive prices down,but the other way is to form informal cartels,so you can price things higher. Its why governments have mechanisms to try and stop this and yet on tech forums people even have attacked more regulation to stop tech companies doing this,ie,they believe company interests are more important than consumer interests.

But you see despite that I couldn't give a damn about their costs,etc since competition from the generic drug makers,etc means cheaper drugs and more people getting treated which is what we want realistically.

Yet when it comes to tech companies,people defend them to the death on forums,despite cheap to make stuff push to high prices,and many don't even spend as much on R and D as we think.

There are people on here and elsewhere on forums who make cases for paying more and defending pricing increases,and even saying competition is bad for consumers.

Yet,even showing by your reaction,I get the impression you don't support oil and pharma pricing things too high.

Yet,when it comes to tech,people seem to feel almost different.

This is the GSK net margins:

https://ycharts.com/companies/GSK/profit_margin

2017 net income was just over £2 billion.

Exxon Mobile net margins:

https://ycharts.com/companies/XOM/profit_margin

2017 net income was just udner $20 billion.

Now compare that to some tech companies:

https://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/profit_margin

Higher net margins than previous two companies,and net income was just under $49 billion.

Google:

https://ycharts.com/companies/GOOG/profit_margin

Just under $13 billion last year.

Microsoft:

https://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/profit_margin

Net income was around $30 billion last year.

Now Intel and Nvidia:

https://ycharts.com/companies/INTC/profit_margin

Net income ws just under $10 billion last year.

https://ycharts.com/companies/NVDA/profit_margin

Nvidia just over $3 billion last year and its even more this year.

Tech companies make as much or even more than pharma and oil companies,yet get defended by people on tech forums.

Nvidia makes as much net income as GSK does. One gets defended on tech forums,and the other won't be.

I don't feel the need to defend the "poor" tech companies,just as much as people don't seem to feel the need to do for the castigated oil and pharma industries.

Isn't that what many of us here have already been doing?
I don't get where you're coming from, on this.... You're sounding like a Riches to Rags version of Cinderella, or rather like Goldie Hawn in Overboard (not the remake).

I have been doing it already,but again I find it rather amusing people attack oil and pharma companies,but on tech forums defend tech companies to the hilt,despite making mega money and mega margins,by upping prices as much as they can.

If they were not upping prices by significant amounts,then it wouldn't matter so much,but they seem to think consumers are an endless money tree,but maybe more a debt tree I suspect. It makes me wonder when cheap credit isn't as easy to get whether we will see another tech crash.

In fact what is funny,is that years ago most people wouldn't be defending or justifying the profits/margins of tech companies. People really didn't.

Now fast forward 10+ years,its interesting to see the marketing has worked so well people now make defences of tech companies,but since the media villifies oil,pharma they won't get a free pass!!

People are literally parrot repeating their marketing to the fact they attack people pointing out what these companies are doing!!

I am still laughing at the "internet experts" who justified graphics cards price increases years ago,said overclocking should be locked,etc as companies shouldn't care about consumers and were "entitled" and so on. I said lets see where this will head,when the consumers are doing what marketing should be doing!!

I just find it amusing people defend one set of private profit making companies making mega monies,over another set of private profit making companies making mega monies. I can understand if they were not making money or on the brink of collapse,but having yearly record revenues and profits(and margins) says to me they are not the poor charities techies think they are.

I am still waiting for all the people on tech forums,to start justifying oil and drug increases due to people being "entitled" for wanting stuff to be affordable.

Oh well,looks like certain industries get a free pass.

Anyway,nice to have this conversation with you but as with most of these threads they become a time sink,and frankly it will be repeating the same thing in different ways.

So buy the products that don't feature LEDs and haven't got gamer in the name. They do still exist.

Something I saw mentioned on a Youtube video(interview with an OEM) - it seems when companies want to sample lower end and non-gamerz stuff,review sites and channels have rejected them,and only want to review the gamerz stuff.

Also,at least in the UK when trying to do the builds,UK retailers on purpose have not stocked the lower end and more mainstream stuff(yet in the US they do). Examples being AM4 mini-ITX boards.

As a result for a number of mini-ITX builds with AM4,its only expensive effing gamerz boards which you can get!! Aghh.

Then this is compounded by motherboard OEMs not bothering as much with lower end chips - so the X300 and B300 never appeared for example.



Then you have motherboard companies trying some dodgy tricks especially with VRMs - look back at sub £100 board like the ASUS M5A97 EVO. A strong VRM and excellent cooling.

Now fast forward a few years,and there has been an increasingly focus on function over form. Poorly designed VRMs and cosmetic cooling which leads to issues.



I even remember going years ago onto a few retailers,about stocking the Xeon E3 CPUs - basically I was reading about them on US tech forums,and eventually two retailers did get them(Scan and I believe Insight),so I went around UK forums pointing these out as good alternatives and was one of the first over here to suggest it IIRC. However,stock was pretty spotty,but I managed to get away with doing tons of builds especially since you didn't need mega motherboards either. OFC,Intel patched that loophole with Skylake.

If you were not overclocking you basically got a Core i7 for Core i5 money.

Went to a few other retailers and I suggested it would be useful to stock them,and none were interested. They were more worried about selling the more expensive Core i7s instead and basically implied that. Oh well.

But its been an issue for a very long time - even when I was relatively new here,I literally went through US forums and UK forums,to look at many lower end motherboards,even to the extent of trying to analyse the VRM components myself. Review sites didn't care,but I managed to find some gems,which helped a lot,although it took a ton of arguments to show people that that expensive board wasn't needed.

[PC-LAD]

There are plenty of ways to play games though they may not all be legal, Emualtion of older consoles is cheap, you may not be able to run 360 or ps3 properly yet but anything with simular power to a GTX 950 will run titles from the wii u and earlier (bar the exeptions). what will a pentium and 950 system cost, i'd say about £200 if you deal hunt, i consider that well worth more than 3 decades worth of games.

[peterb]

Cat - again you are making the assertion that people are saying that tech should cost more. That is not the case and is misrepresenting the facts.

My position is why should companies charge less than they can?

The are offering a product - a consumer doesn't have to buy it - if they think it too expensive, they can buy a competitive lower cost product, or other cheaper alternative.

'Excessive profit" is an emotive term - but no-one has defined what 'acceptable profit' is. Profit goes to the owners of the business who have invested in it - if they don't get a return on the investment, then they won't invest and the company won't develop new products.

This is true for all areas of commerce - I don't know why you think technology companies should be different

Of course, if a company is in a monopoly position, and the product is essential, then there should (and is) some regulation - which varies from country to country.

This is true for all areas of commerce - I don't know why you think technology companies should be different - the latest and greatest GPU/CPU/motherboard is hardly an essential consumer item - you can buy a basic windows computer for well under £500, or a tablet that will do the majority of internet based tasks for under £150.

[kalniel]

There are plenty of ways to play games though they may not all be legal, Emualtion of older consoles is cheap, you may not be able to run 360 or ps3 properly yet but anything with simular power to a GTX 950 will run titles from the wii u and earlier (bar the exeptions). what will a pentium and 950 system cost, i'd say about £200 if you deal hunt, i consider that well worth more than 3 decades worth of games.

Buying old consoles second hand is even cheaper! You can get some amazing amount of gaming for the money now.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There are plenty of ways to play games though they may not all be legal, Emualtion of older consoles is cheap, you may not be able to run 360 or ps3 properly yet but anything with simular power to a GTX 950 will run titles from the wii u and earlier (bar the exeptions). what will a pentium and 950 system cost, i'd say about £200 if you deal hunt, i consider that well worth more than 3 decades worth of games.

Its bit of a legal minefield that - for example Nintendo kind of ignored some of the really old emulation sites,until they forced them offline,since they wanted to re-release the games on their consoles.

[PC-LAD]

Buying old consoles second hand is even cheaper! You can get some amazing amount of gaming for the money now.

an n64 + wii u + ps1 is what you would get for about £200 which is pretty amazing, it is just filth like me don't like paying for the games XD. Though you can have fun chipping them, repairing them and modding them to get the most for your money and still get games

[PC-LAD]

Its bit of a legal minefield that - for example Nintendo kind of ignored some of the really old emulation sites,until they forced them offline,since they wanted to re-release the games on their consoles.

I know, that is why all my copies of games for emulation are saved as a zip twice and the full version so i dont get worried about dead files for when they are no-longer accessible. I can see the price of GC games going through the roof once Nintendo have done their legal fight. legality doesn't bother me <admin removed>

[peterb]

I know, that is why all my copies of games for emulation are saved as a zip twice and the full version so i dont get worried about dead files for when they are no-longer accessible. I can see the price of GC games going through the roof once Nintendo have done their legal fight. legality doesn't bother me <admin removed>

HEXUS does not condone the illegal copying of copyright or protected material. Discussions or posts describing methods of circumventing controls will be removed.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah,best not to go that way PC-LAD especially as even things like converting your own CDs for personal use on a MP3 player is technically illegal in the UK,and even discussion of how to do that could lead to potential legal ramifications for a forum:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...in-the-UK.html

The whole abandonware thing also is another issue - even if companies CBA to do anything with an old game,which has not been available for 20 years and does not work on any modern OS,they are still within their rights to stop anyone trying to redistribute it without prior consent.

Edit!!

An old but good article from the site sight to Hexus,Bit-tech about abandonware:

https://bit-tech.net/reviews/gaming/...-essentials/1/

Its why what GOG do is pretty awesome especially when you realise its the same people as CDPR. They actually try to get hold of older titles and release them at a reasonable price without any DRM.

[TooNice]

Yeah,best not to go that way PC-LAD especially as even things like converting your own CDs for personal use on a MP3 player is technically illegal in the UK

Wow, that is still the case? I was hoping that they were going to change that (I am hardly in the UK anymore so doesn't concern me much, but it's still silly).

@peterb

Generally speaking I am fine company charging as much as they can to maximise profit, but there are some cases that doesn't sit well with me. The $750 pill fiasco is a bit of but I tend to not think too highly of companies I felt relied more on their legal team than actual innovation to control the market. Admittedly I do not keep track of tech news as much as I used to, and it may well be that they are all guilty to some extent, but I still lament the loss of Aureal 3D and blame Creative for it, and I've also not been a fan of Rambus from their early days shenanigans.

[Ttaskmaster]

But they are private companies not state monopolies

So?
They're still pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable, otherwise known as taking the mick, to the point where people are screaming for renationalisation.

In fact we had some paid Nvidia marketing people on here(and elsewhere) who made the arguments about people being "entitled" if they wanted better price/performance and how they could go to an expensive restaurant,etc and now people are making the same arguments,but don't get paid anything.

Not that I've seen. Everyone is complaining about how much stuff costs.

I have worked in the general area and know people who worked in the area.

I have worked in the specific area and known people who work in the specific area.

Multiple drugs fail before final trials which take years and years,and the developement of drugs is getting increasingly difficult,so as a result they hedge their bets on a very few drugs which work and some can cost billions of USD to develop.

Again, no.
They cost billions to secure legal protection over and dominate the market.
They cost naff-all in comparison to develop... and even less if all you're doing is rehashing something that you then MASSIVELY hike the price on.

Yet,even showing by your reaction,I get the impression you don't support oil and pharma pricing things too high.
Yet,when it comes to tech,people seem to feel almost different.

Yet, when you look at it, so few people buy the high end tech being discussed here, and so few people have any knowledge about their tech beyond using it to surf Farcebook, that it's still a seriously niche market. This means no-one cares enough to fully regulate it and so the people here have little choice but to either accept stupidly high prices if they want to play the latest games, or just not buy the tech and go read a book in the corner instead....

Tech companies make as much or even more than pharma and oil companies,yet get defended by people on tech forums.

Tech companies cater to several billion users, though, and that's just their own kit - Think how much additional money those billions of users facilitate in advertising to all the companies of the world.

Drug companies, have maybe tens of millions in 'customers'. More usually hundreds of thousands. Fuel companies, maybe a couple of billion between them, if they're lucky. I don't see pills sold with adverts for Amazon printed on them...

Nvidia makes as much net income as GSK does. One gets defended on tech forums,and the other won't be.

Why would we defend a medical company on a tech forum?
But regardless of that, both are dodgy dealers and both get called out on it. People are forever whining about Intel and Nvidia faking results, undercutting competition, blatantly lying and forcing the market. Were we not just recently ripping into Nvidia over their GeForce Partner Program?

As for the rest of it - Yeah, just saying the same thing.
Looking around places like this, I find it quite unsubstantiated.

[peterb]

@peterb

Generally speaking I am fine company charging as much as they can to maximise profit, but there are some cases that doesn't sit well with me. The $750 pill fiasco is a bit of but I tend to not think too highly of companies I felt relied more on their legal team than actual innovation to control the market. Admittedly I do not keep track of tech news as much as I used to, and it may well be that they are all guilty to some extent, but I still lament the loss of Aureal 3D and blame Creative for it, and I've also not been a fan of Rambus from their early days shenanigans.

I tend to agree in a few limited cases. The patent system was designed to promote disclosure of inventions - in returm for a period of protection so a company or person could capitalise on the invention.

But there will always be someone who will abuse the system even if it is technically legal. Monopolies are another area where regulation may be appropriate.

But in the case where there is competition and alternative products - I see little need for regulation, especially where the products are for hobby purposes.