On the upside, the evaporation of availability for high-end consumer hardware might lead to a renaissance in more reasonable hardware requirements for software. There's a lot of stuff we managed to do 20 or 30 years ago without anywhere near as much overhead. The indie gaming market already shows there's plenty of room for companies to work with more modest overhead.
That's a fair point. I feel that PC gaming was in a peak of consumerism with ridiculous prices and never ending "upgrades" so it'll be interesting to see if anything changes. I hope it does and some of that knowledge/skill and enthusiasm for optimisation comes back.
A certain amount of this seems to be happening anyway just because the culture at AAA studios is so inimical to gaming in general. Looking at a game like Peak, I don't see any indication that the devs went out of their way to reduce hardware requirements, but it's less intensive than major releases anyway. Companies not having the resources to spend years working on super detailed massive environments may end up working in their favor.
Honestly, I think something like Peak ends up feeling more intentional and well executed than something like Cyberpunk 2077. Peak's jank feels like it's just part of how the game is supposed to be, whereas Cyberpunk they put so much effort into some aspects that it's weird and jarring when you run into those things that break verisimilitude. But if Cyberpunk looked like it was designed by an indie dev with good enough but not state of the art graphics? I probably wouldn't notice some of the issues as much. Also I feel like there wouldn't be as much corporate involvement leading to the kind of hand-holding that shows up in Phantom Liberty.
This is headed toward devolving into me complaining about feeling like I'm not in half the scenes that revolve around Idris Elba rather than V, but you get the point!
I love your comment not only because it makes a lot of sense, but also because it taught me the words "inimical" and "verisimilitude." Thank you.
If I keep learning new words I'm going to start to forgor older ones!
Very related, you should check out Cairn.
Isn’t Microsoft stabbing itself in the foot? 11 is so bad it’s bogging down regular machines available before this nonsense
11 runs great on 13 year old hardware, once you debloat it.
Imagine if the bubble pops and simply all these companies go bankrupt (because the shares are all tied by these mega deals), will there be ANY computing means available?
If shares drop enough, another company with cash on hand buys them.
Shares aren't revenue. The bubble pops, investors lose money, companies go back to selling PC components.
The problem is that the current production is for stuff that can't really be used as consumer equipment.
If enough of the world's component production capacity is dedicated to AI specific components, then when the bubble pops there won't be anything to sell to consumers for months which could cause the manufacturers to go under.
Yeah, but the odds of them just being allowed to fail like that are basically nil.
They'll retool and start making what's profitable.
That takes time and money, though.
Well I bet they have both of these.
Not if they've bet the farm on income from AI hardware sales.
The agreements being made aren't for existing stock; they're for the total future production capacity. If the manufacturer produces a shit ton of AI hardware and the bubble pops, they're left with unusable inventory and nothing left to put on shelves. It's a fundamental flaw in JIT manufacturing.
This isn't excusing anything. The manufacturers are being extremely short sighted to the point of negligence and it's probably going to backfire on them. But if they go down it'll greatly impact consumer hardware production, likely for years.
Except by the time they do that there are already new Chinese competitors selling those components to their old customers.
Chinese RAM is already out and being tested. How long before they have viable products in the marketplace? Especially considering that they aren't really competing with anyone at the moment. Do you think people are going to suddenly switch back to spending 4x as much for American RAM once they are already happy with using this new shit?
How long before its processors and video cards?
You don't get customers back after you exit an industry unless you are offering a competitive price or something that no one else is offering.
That's a definite possibility. But the op proposed that PC component vendors stock price would drop and therefore no one would build PC parts.
Chinese companies could fill the void if Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are slow to switch back. But there is no situation where companies simply stop taking money. However I believe that after the bubble pops, ram prices will not go back to the same price they were last year. Everyone will have to pay more and Chinese companies will be happy to take that extra money too.
I want you to think about these two statements that you made:
But there is no situation where companies simply stop taking money.
But the op proposed that PC component vendors stock would drop and therefore no one would build PC parts.
These cannot both be true. PC Component vendors will NOT stop selling parts and customers will NOT stop building PCs because that is leaving money on the table. They will source components from whoever will sell them at whatever price they can get. That is what WILL happen.
If my statements are in conflict then explain a situation where all companies, Chinese or otherwise, refuse to make consumer ram after the AI bubble pops?
PC Component vendors will NOT stop selling parts and customers will NOT stop building PCs because that is leaving money on the table.
???? I am baffled by your rebuttal because that was exactly my claim.
It was the OP who claimed that a stock price drop would cause companies to stop making all ram of any type.
Start your next comment with three question marks if I am correct about everything I said and you consent to have your body experimented on for potential use as the skin of a new line of sex robots.
??? What exactly did I change? I'm always going back and fixing typos and adding clarification because people always nitpick if you don't write a paragraph explaining the definition of every word.
I certainly didn't change the meaning.
I agreed with your claim that Chinese could take over but reiterated my original claim that the OP's idea that no one anywhere would make ram was wrong.
If I remember correctly what I added was a statement that agreed with your claim about the Chinese so my reply wouldn't appear to be combative. But even without that addition, there was no way to read my statement into whatever you imagined.
That's the fun thing about editing shit after people replied to you. No one has any idea what you changed.
You quoted me! Nothing in your quote shows what you claim.
Cope
Most of its going to AI chips, it wont be useful for anything but AI.
Come on, you know damn well that if the bubble pops, the global taxpayers will be bailing them and the rest of the affected companies out with direct payments just like the last global crash caused by corporations.
Executive bonuses and buy backs for corporations and austerity for the working man who just wants to play a video game is always the plan.
"To big to fail" just like US automakers and banks.
The US government is bullshit.
I will be glad it's just the US taxpayers that will pay for this mess this time if that is the case. You make this mess, you pay for it. Maybe you could have voted for someone that would regulate the markets a bit better.
Open-source tech co-ops buy up the production capacity and flood the consumer market with cheap GPUs and RAM?
We can dream, at least...
AMD, you were the chosen one!
Come on, they never were. They're just another company with no ethics other "make all the money, consumers be damned" and always have been.
Gonna be a rough few years for PC gaming. Or any gaming, for that matter.
But hey, at least we'll keep killing jobs and the AI cat videos will continue to flow
My games all still work fine, how is it rough?
Most of the games I play are old enough to drink.
Don't do this to us! AMD was our last hope!
AMD, You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the cryptominers, not join them! Bring balance to the video card market, not leave it in darkness!
Saving me the legwork to not have to figure out which company is dead to me for treating its regular consumers like trash. I hope every one of these companies crash and burn in spectacular fashion. Never forget
They don't want us to own our own hardware. We already don't own (most) of our software or operating systems, even.
This is lemmy, most of us use Linux or TempleOS.
Is there a Lemmy client for TempleOS??
No, but you could probably port Firefox to Holy C.
Gaming with Linux man. Just take the plunge now before AI consumes your rig completely.
Dislike. But I guess I can't blame them for letting someone else hold the bag.
🙄
Honestly, if the AI craze hadn't bought off all the basic components needed for consumer PC builds, I'd probably object, but as it is, the market for consumers is being so starved that they could not survive on sales to them alone.
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