As tech enthusiasts and gamers, are we not all sick and tired of being punching
bags? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, not only does it feel like
truly innovative new gadgets are few and far between these days, but the prices
for them have gone from expensive to ridiculous faster than a cod lobby turns
racist. And the worst part, the worst part is the reason for it. These chips
that are supposed to be affordable aren't because they're being hoarded by
a bunch of jackasses for the sole purpose of creating the giant slob
creature that's trying to take our jobs.
Is there any good news? [sighs] Yes, there is a lot of bad stuff
happening right now, but a part of the problem is the way that rage bait
generates more clicks, incentivizing negative news to spread. And so I think
it's more important than ever [music] to take a step back and appreciate some of
the positive things happening in tech because there's actually a lot more
happening than most of us probably realize. For starters, some really smart
creators have demonstrated how unsustainable the current AI bubble is,
which gives me real hope that while AI and some form is clearly here to stay,
this dystopian tech bro infinite money glitch dumpster fire isn't.
And there are even upsides to some of the things that get us down. No one
likes waiting longer for a new console or a GPU, but everyone likes it when
developers optimize their new games for those older systems, especially when the
broader economy is suffering. And while Microsoft seems determined to make
Windows 11 as crappy as possible, in the
background, the year of the Linux desktop is quickly turning from a meme
into a reality. Just like I'm turning this Segue into our sponsor.
[laughter] Do you hear that?
That's the sound of all the people that had to help me set up my new Rove Lab M1
sofa. [laughter]
Yes. [laughter] Oh, you know, it's easy to get lost in
the recent headlines and overlook just how much cheaper consumer technology has
actually become compared to just about any other time in my life. I mean, it's
tempting for us to think, well, of course there'll be a new chip next year
that's better in every way and also less expensive. But my recent factory tours
over in Asia really opened my eyes to the incredible talent. Not to mention
the R&D expense that goes into making everything from tiny SSDs to giant TVs
as affordable as possible for us. I mean, look at this glue robot for
instance. They built this for the express purpose of saving just a few
pennies per TV. That doesn't sound like
much, but it's this kind of obsessive optimization that has enabled flat
screen TVs to completely defy inflation
for decades now in spite of ever rising materials and labor costs. So, when
people ask me, how do you keep your joy and enthusiasm for tech? That's the
first thing I think of. Even more broadly, as the price of food, fuel, and
housing has skyrocketed relative to earnings, consumer tech items like VR
headsets, cell phones, game consoles, cameras, and gaming PCs have continually
leveled up in their capabilities while staying within [music] or at least
pretty close to their traditional price bands. And that's even after the insane
pricing surges that we've seen in GPUs and more recently the RAM apocalypse.
Look, I'm not going to tell you everything is as affordable as I'd like
it to be or as it should be. I literally
just wrote a video about how awful the RAM situation is. But I do think part of
the path to greener mental pastures is reminding ourselves that a dollar buys a
lot more tech today than it ever has.
Today, you can build an $800 gaming PC with a 12 GB GPU that will handle
high-end 1080p and even 1440p gaming.
And that includes a free copy of Battlefielding 6. In 1993, that would
have gotten you, let's see, not even this PC that was so mind-bogglingly
affordable that the LA Times wrote an article about it. Obviously, I
understand that that is not an apples to apples comparison. Back then, an entire
family would have shared that one computer. But the modern world demands
everyone have access to their own device to function now. But hey, if you're only
after basic functionality, the price floor goes even lower. Chromebooks, they
might not be the sexiest thing, but they are regularly available at prices that
would allow a family of five to each have their own device for what is still
less than that 1993 PC. And that's even
ignoring inflation. >> Of course, not everyone wants a
Chromebook. So, what about the enthusiast here? Same thing. Here's an
ultimate 4K gaming build that we did 11
years ago. By basically every single
measure, modern buyers have it better.
here. Without putting any work or research into this, I can just click on
magnificent AMD gaming/streaming PC on
the front page of PC part picker [music] and get a machine that's over $1,000
less and is better in every conceivable way. Sometimes I think we get a little
lost in the sauce when it comes to performance expectations. There are
absolutely poorly optimized titles. Looking at you, City Skylines 2. But in
general, I think we have to come to accept that 8 million pixels is a lot.
It was hard to drive then and it's hard to drive now, especially as gamers
expectations for lighting and visual fidelity continue to grow. The PC gaming
industry has smacked us around a little, but [music] it's by and large been
pretty good to us. >> And we're not just talking about the hardware. I picked up a copy of an older
AA game the other day so that my daughter and I could play it together.
It was under $5. Truly, glory be to Gay
Ben, who hath blessed us with his winter sale bounty. And okay, yeah, not
everyone wants to play a 17-year-old strategy game. But how about this? I
also just picked up Expedition 33, the literal game of the year for just over
$40. I mean, when I was a kid, I paid
$50 for Pilot Wings, which would barely even qualify as a Mario Party miniame
these days. And I get that this might come across a little bit back in my day,
but I [music] do generally stand behind my belief that gaming is pound-for-pound
the best value entertainment that you can buy. Five out of six of the game of
the year nominees this year can be had for less than $50. And each of them will
last you many hours. And that's something we should take a moment to
appreciate. Do it. Drop a little note to your favorite indie game developer. I'm
sure it's going to brighten their day. I picked Radical Fish.
So, mathematically then, there's a
pretty easy case that we shouldn't be mad at the talented people who create
the products and experiences that we love so much. And yet, we are mad. We're
super mad. So, why is that?
Well, that's going to be a deep one to unpack because it is both kind of hard
to justify as we've demonstrated already and yet still also completely
understandable. Let's talk about that. I don't know about you, but my housing
costs have gone from less than 20% of my monthly expenses to above 40%. So, sure,
yeah, my Xbox controller might cost the same as it did 18 years ago, but the
share of my disposable income that I can allocate to it is being chipped away on
all sides. And I recognize that I am one of the lucky ones. I didn't go into
major debt for school. My parents gave me a deal on my first car, and I stayed
healthy enough that I've never missed more than a couple days of work for a hockey injury, you know, here or there.
When you feel like things have gotten harder, it's not your imagination and it
sure as hell isn't your avocado toast.
You are right to be tired of hearing um
actually it's not more expensive if you account for inflation. Yes, inflation is
part of the equation, but it doesn't tell the whole story. And it can also be
a way to justify the rising cost of everything and normalize
corporate greed that directly affects wages. A better measure of affordability
over time is consumer buying power,
which has fallen behind inflation for decades. Couple that with corporate
consolidation and the new threat of AI, it's no wonder people are at their
breaking points. But I do want to make
sure that we're not muddling our passion for technology and our anger about the
state of the world. Let's look at the affordability of tech a different
[music] way by tracking it relative to wage growth, which is broadly considered
a more representative measure than just raw inflation. According to Fred, from
1995 to 2024, there was just over a 40%
increase in real median personal income.
That means that if we compare the $300 launch price of the PS1 to the current
price of the PS5, we're actually tracking pretty damn close. Not with
inflation, but with realworld wage
increases. [music] Yes, I know that the base PS5 doesn't
come with a Blu-ray drive, free cloud saves, or even online play, but neither
did the PS1. And it's not hard to find
similar examples where the tech industry has come through for us, delivering more
value over time rather than less. It's
also not that hard to find areas where we've been let down. Though hard gotcha
mechanics and in-game gambling have created financial incentives for
developers to prey on people with addictive personalities, which is something I fell victim to. I actually
opened up about it on WAN Show. It really sucks. With that said, I might
just be the biggest PS1 fanboy this side of Pluto. And even I will literally slap
anyone who says that it provides a better overall experience for most
people than a PS5. [music] It was incredible. It was influential.
It was my personal favorite. But let's be honest, the PS5 library has way more
games that people want to play today. And while few of them are PS5 titles in
the traditional exclusive sense, that's great. Better access to games is what we
were fighting for, right? I mean, not everything's going our way, but hey,
it's good to celebrate wins, right? And crossplatform compatibility was a huge
one for both consumer choice and for affordability. Same goes for things like
removable media. Do you remember when saving your game meant buying a
proprietary 128 kilobyte memory card for
almost $20? Now I can just pull the SD
card out of my Switch and throw it into my laptop. And this move towards
industry standards affects more than just gaming. The introduction of USBC
LT cables coming soon by the way was a watershed moment. I mean, many of you
will remember that not that long ago,
every single device you owned had a proprietary charger and a proprietary
cable so that the manufacturer could milk you for accessory profit. [music]
These days, you can pack a single power brick into your LT backpack and that'll
work with your ASUS laptop, your Valve Team Deck, your Apple iPhone, your
Nintendo Switch, your UG Green Power Bank, your Sennheiser headphones, and your Sony camera. Wow, that all fits in
there, huh? Nice. ltstore.com.
But while I meme on it obviously often,
it's also important for me to point out that you don't need to buy this or
[music] any of the stuff that goes in it. >> Yeah. Or any of the shiny gadgets that
we show off on this channel. This is going to rub some people the wrong way.
But I think a big part of why we're so angry right now is the unrealistic
standards that social media creates. When Lionus grew up, there were cell
phones that cost $2,000. It's just that his parents didn't have it. But it
didn't bother them because no one we knew had them. But now, when I go to a
creator convention, there are literally people who gave me funny looks because I
didn't have an iPhone at the time to tap and exchange information. I mean, even
on channels that aren't constantly telling us that we need the latest and
greatest. Here are a few recent LTS about deal hunting and getting the most
out of what you already have. It can be hard to unsee the performance of a 5090
on a tandem OLED display, and I get why that can be frustrating. But does that
mean that we shouldn't cover them? LT
has always covered cutting edge technologies, knowing that it's a dream
for most people today, but thanks to the magic of rich people buying two of them,
they're just going to become more accessible over time, either as the
technology matures or more directly on the secondhand market. I think another
issue is the way that some media frame this conversation. Telling you to be
angry that a video card exists, but it
was never targeted at the 99%. I don't
have a 5090. Should I feel bad about my PC? no. I'm running a B580 and
yeah, maybe I can't run the latest games with all the bells and whistles at 4K,
but I don't need that to enjoy myself, do I? And frankly, neither do you. Even
if you're still running a second gen i5 and NVIDIA GTX 1030, there is a wild
world of older emulated games that can be enjoyed on even modest hardware,
often for free. We've said it before, but it's worth saying again. The point
of this video, guys, is not to minimize the very real frustration that you and
[music] your family and friends might be facing right now. It is valid to be mad,
[music] maybe even cynical and jaded. But just because it's valid, does that
necessarily mean it's helpful? Like, I could be pissed that Halo Infinite will
never get a split screen co-op mode, and I am a little, but I could also be
excited for the coming surge of co-opcentric games that look freaking
awesome. I could be mad that the PlayStation 6 is likely going to be
delayed, not to mention more expensive because of the RAM apocalypse, and I am.
But okay, bright side, I can also be happy that in these trying times,
Rockstar is going to be forced to optimize GTA 6 for the hardware that
gamers already own. I could also be disappointed that the Steam Machine
isn't a cuttingedge FPS monster. But
maybe it was time for someone with the influence of Valve to normalize just
enjoying PC games rather than hyperfixating on graphical fidelity
while also low-key ending the Windows gaming monopoly. The point is that tech
is supposed to help you. It's supposed to make your life better. It's not
supposed to dictate [music] your mood. And if you're already working on an
angry comment about this video, I offer you this,
a reminder that your mental health doesn't need to be shaped by tech bros
who don't give a about you. Staying mad doesn't mean that you're being
effective in the resistance. It just means that you are unhappy, which is a
real downer. Like I don't even feel like doing the segue to our sponsor.
Huh? Huh?
Oh.
Huh?
[laughter]
>> [sighs]
>> Rove Lab is running a huge sale on the M1 sofa, but it won't last long. Head to
the website before it's gone. If you guys enjoyed this video, we'd
love to hear [music] a few things that you're excited for or grateful for in
the tech space or even in the world. We could all use a little positivity these
days. And if you want more positivity, go hug a loved one, take a walk while
listening to your favorite album of all time, or maybe go watch the video that I
got to make with my son recently [music] about him choosing a Kindle.