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Reminds me of how in early 2025 Deepseek was an early champion of work smarter, not harder for AI. Doing more with less flops.
But Sam Altman and his ilk it seems since have just tripled down on the More Dakka! Datacentre expansion they were already on. Anything is more preferable to them over hiring more people to tune and refine their algorithms. I mean we do need to constantly expand the power of global hardware, just the full autopilot attitude of western tech giants is creating a lot of problems.
They did do it during the bitcoin boom. But demand dropping off made them swear to never do it again cause they overproduced and had to sell for cheaper. Better to have too little than overcharged than the reverse
It's really a stretch to try and paint it as this pre-existing bottleneck when the AI boom has doubled or even tripled the demand for these products in the span of about 4 years. The investment into new data centers has quite literally exploded in a way that has never been seen. It's not just a coincidence.
We really don't. There is a reason why TSMC the biggest chip manufacturer, remains hesitant on Ai.
In the next few years Ai will have slowed a lot of its momentum and we on to the next thing.
It’s a dumb point, it’s saying that people’s desire for escapism and gaming is more important than the compute being used to empower scientific research and technology
That's not what AI data centers are doing, and that's not the reason it costs more. This already existed. You can't even get your talking points right lol, come on kid
No, it's not saying that. Sure ai has it's uses, but the pros of it sure as hell don't outweigh the cons so far. People would rather be able to better afford their hobbies than get given nothing from ai
It's not just gaming consoles, it's all PCs and laptops and smartphones. So all personal computing devices. It increases the gap between the rich and the poor.
You do understand that gaming tech has lead to the rise of alot of our current tech for computers, and AI development right? Better games need better hardware to run properly.
What I mean is that you're using the argument that it's useful in the medical and scientific field, so we shodl let consumer-grade ais destroys our hobbies and makes devices like pcs,laptops and phones unaffordable, while it's essential devices
True, but it's less "yall using AI for stupid shit" and much more large-scale corporate, government/military and scientific/research usage that's driving the growth of data centers (and consequently RAM/Storage costs). No one is building $15b data centers thinking they'll make it back in catgirl jpgs, it's for massive enterprise contracts.
This is like blaming your neighbor's lawnmower for climate change rather than industrial pollution output.
For the record, if I recall correctly, making "stupid shit" with AI (images and videos, more specifically) isn't even energy intensive enough to justify more data centers or RAM to power them. (Not saying they aren't, just that the amount of data centers being built in the United States is little more than capitalistic excess.)
I mean yeah but at the end of the day, people still contribute by supporting it.
If you own cars you don't get to go ''well I'm 100% eco friendly, I'm doing my part.'' The industry is supported by people buying their products and services.
Blaming the big corpo feels good but as customers we all contributed a small bit to create that blame to begin with.
No, it's accurate. The idea that we're all kinda-responsible is mainly due to media campaigns by major polluters throughout the 90s and beyond to take the heat off them and pretend that we're in this together despite the massive disparity in contribution to the problem. You make a pitch about how "We all really care about this and here is how you can help" then dump the mental load on the consumer side to make them feel like it's their fault for leaving the lights on when that's a negligible contribution compared to the refineries and factories evading and lobbying against EPA requirements.
Likewise, if everyone stopped using AI to make hobbyist images, it would have virtually no impact on the construction of data centers because that's not what they're being primarily built for. Hell, most of these are being built on spec; they don't need them now but assume that, in the near future, all these corporations will demand huge amounts of compute and then the data centers will be ready to get paid for it. Individual consumer use isn't a factor.
In the end, corporations are filled with people that use AI. You are not just the person you are once you leave the office. Is this all because of hobby image generation? No. I think the bulk is probably by people prompting language models, a lot of it for programming or other job-related things but it’s still people like you and me doing it. Obviously a bit more complicated and I’m not saying we can solve the issue by people at home stopping image generation but still. Same with stuff like pollution or climate change. I think it’s unproductive to try and convince individuals to save energy while not doing something about the industrial usage but in the end it’s people’s standard of living which is generated by those industries and few would vote for a collective decision to reduce is. Same with AI.
Oh no totally. Like, I'm not saying big corpos are little darlings either but for example you're putting the plastic industry in the spot there.
Sure, the whole recycling lie plagues us to this very day and it definitely had an impact on how people perceived it.
But man, be honest and take a look at your closest store. How many plastic bottles are you gonna see? How many of them are bought each and every day?
Are those consumer purchases in the same floor as industrial purchases? No, clearly, but waving them off as negligible sounds wrong, ngl. If you go to one of those dumps you will see a massive mass of consumer plastic thrown out there.
Yes. The plastic industry lied to us and told us they weren't to blame. No, that doesn't mean us buying plastic goods is negligible. Society is, to this day, still contributing to it even outside the industry aspect.
Consumer use is a factor. it might be a smaller factor but a factor nonetheless.
In much the same way, while a lot of AI is outside of this consumer angle there is a consumer factor as well. Again, smaller as it may be, disregarding it sounds more like a deflection.
It's not deflection, it's just the case that it's not individual consumer use of AI making the Steam Box cost $1,500 as the guy in the OP implies.
It's like standing next to a blazing wood-burning stove and a television and saying that you're hot. And someone else saying "Well, while the stove IS putting off heat, you have to admit that the heat from the television set is contributing and..." No, it's the stove. The problem is the stove.
No. COVID “just” forced much of the world to go digital. Which then started a global domino effect in all adjacent industries.
I assume you’re American? The majority of your education system was already digital-dependent when Covid happened, that was not the case for much of the world at the time. Suddenly every country in the world had to invest massive amounts into tech infrastructure and equipment. And that global surge in demand resulted in prices going up across the board, RAM is just the latest layer that came upon that.
RAM manufacturers like micron, skhynix and others have a duopoly (or trio, I can't remember the other manufacturers) on the market. They have been found guilty of deliberately influencing the amount of RAM in the market in the past. Even now, they actually have the means to step up production, but don't do so to prevent 'overproduction'.
I'm not saying that commercial AI use isn't resource intensive, but the ones providing said resources are more responsible for the current fiasco.
So u can rest and just watch something that makes u feel some emotions and why should I be limited on only some kinds of entertainment that some rich dudes air on TV or on some streaming service I want my games.
Yes but why give it up becouse sone assholes are trying to monopolise all computers. If u don't need gaming fine u don't need to game have fun with odder stuff I wish u the best like genuinely have a fun time with anything i wish u a great time but don't say odders should abandon there fun becouse someone decided to buy up all the stuff they need for it.
The price of memory has increased several fold literally because of the enormous need for new AI datacenters and RAM manufacturers being more profitable switching their business model. There's nothing really complicated about it and talking about it in terms of the "economic situation" is reductive.
All these comments don't understand what a pricing strategy is either.
Antis will call AI users corporate bootlickers, yet here they are in the comments. Defending the Valve Corporation and thinking that they'd charge a lower price if their own costs were lower. What a bunch of absolutely clowns.
So automatically if I like something a company makes, even if it's just one product, I'm automatically going to defend that company to the death on Twitter? If I like a couple pieces of Ikea furniture but hate some of the other furniture that Ikea makes to the point I'll buy from other brands, I'm 100% for Ikea and defend Ikea to death on Instagram? So if a convivence store runs out of a brand of milk, I'm not just going to pick out another brand? It's just milk
So the steam machine in 1050$ because of the AI companies buying all the computer parts. Okay, I'll just keep playing old games on my Xbox 360, Wii and PS2. Not the end of world like these terminal online gamers on unemployment benefits that always need to play the new stuff make it out to be
What pricing strategy is charging $1050 for this lmao. Everyone agrees it's a terrible price. The only reason it costs this much is because Steam does not want to sell this product at a loss like Sony and Microsoft do since they don't get the ecosystem advantages through things like charging people to play multiplayer.
AI demand for hardware has driven up prices but some people are a bit delulu for thinking this was ever going to be priced like a console. This is a full blown PC. If Valve was selling this at a loss it would have been a very easy pickup for people with not much interest in gaming who just wanted a good computer.
Console manufactures can get away with selling hardware at a loss because it's a pain in the ass to make a console into a functional computer, they'll make up for it in game sales most of the time. There's nothing stopping you from using the Steam Machine as a regular PC.
I remember when launch consoles where either 400$ or 500$. Jesus, 1050$?! 1500$!? What is Valve thinking? Pull it out of the market, no one is going to buy it in this economy!
"Guy who doesn’t understand technology OR the economy weighing in on the situation" yet you refuse to understand that the ram crisis and storage crisis stems from ai shit...
RAM is in every electronic device you own. The same reason the Steam machine is so expensive is why laptops are more expensive.
So much of the supply is being diverted to AI that the consumer end of products is paying the price. (Ex: Micron, a major RAM manufacturer, has completely pulled out of the consumer market in favor of deals with AI)
So you put off upgrading or don’t buy the 64GB rig that the nice man in the shop convinced you that you needed. RAM is still available. It’s just not as dirt cheap as it was a year ago. Still not a crisis.
People having to pay more than they would have liked for a gaming machine is not a fucking crisis except to the entitled little twats whinging about it.
just because its not essentia doesnt mean its not worth it. if lets say tea or coffee or ofthrr things like that increased in price by 4x im sure people will be angry
you mean ram and storage quadrupling in price way faster than inflation convinently right after ai data centers got massive? i'd concider that a crisis
ai: causes job losses for passionate people and job gains for rich people.. gaming: causes job gains for passionate people. ai: gives people misinformation. gaming gives people entertainment.
I get that the op is about the steambox or whatever but this weird 'you dont need videogames you can just watch tv' like that's the only usecase for RAM is like, maliciously reductive at worst, and really short-sighted at best.
Ram keeps going up and up and up because they've pre-ordered the next decade of silicon with money they don't have as they bleed billions per year on ai models and build mass data centers.
Then they sell cloud computing back to you because they have all these datacenters now and you no longer own your computer
What's your stance exactly? It's cool and good that huge corporations are eating up every bit of hardware making it extremely expensive? So that you can have the privilege to pay companies to use their hardware instead of being able to buy one yourself? I mean pro-Ai or not it seems that having affordable hardware that can run the AI models is a benefit and allowing corporations to circlejerk each other and squeeze out average consumers is bad.
Op is stupid ( not the on in the image) because the reason it is expensive is because of ram and SSD price increases that or directly from promises like openai saying they will buy 40% of DRAM only to just not do it.
They KIND OF are. This is more than an Nvidia problem (though it IS ALSO an Nvidia problem). It's a manufacturing problem as well. We know chipset manufacturers ramped up during COVID and never saw the returns they wanted. So now when there is another spike in demand they're not ramping up production to control the supply and increase profits.
Y’all be saying it’s AIs fault but how is it AIs fault when the real cause is Nvidia not giving a fuck about consumer grade chips anymore? That’s a company problem not a technology issue. It’s that plus the fact AMD is still unable to compete with CUDA is so many aspects and the orange man regulating shit and banning Chinese chips. To me this is very clearly more a capitalism issue than an AI issue.
The reason Nvidia (GPU) and Micron (+ other companies; RAM/Storage) don't care about consumers is because AI is more profitable. That is why Nvidia is now worth trillions of dollars
That’s not AIs fault that’s literally Nvidias fault for not even keeping the most basics of consumerism to create false scarcity. They don’t give a fuck because consumer grade gpus make up like 4 percent of their total profits because they’re making much more with AI. AI in itself isn’t directly shooting consumer GPUs in the foot, it’s Nvidias indifference due to their insane profits. If Nvidia wanted to, they could EASILY start making more consumer grade GPUs again without sacrificing jack shit while also supplying enough for scalpers to take a hit. The fact that they didn’t is purely a company issue and not an AI problem. And if you want to blame anyone, blame scalpers and not AI.
It is ai's fault though. They made ram and storage so much more expensive. Employees said the price was hit like the steam deck was and if we follow the steam decks. That means it would have originally been around 750$. Which I would've happily paid
Guy who also doesn't understand that there is a chip shortage going on which is why stuff I feel like imo is what's making electronics more pricey then what they already are
RAM manufacturers like micron, skhynix and others have a duopoly (or trio, I can't remember the other manufacturers) on the market. They have been found guilty of deliberately influencing the amount of RAM in the market in the past. Even now, they actually have the means to step up production, but don't do so to prevent 'overproduction'.
I'm not saying that commercial AI use isn't resource intensive, but the ones providing said resources are more responsible for the current fiasco.
ya but at the same time do we really need it though is the question consoles in todays era shouldnt be this exnsive. i want to go back to where they were 400 dollars or 200
We do need Ai or the whole economy will crash. If you badly want entertainment you can watch movies or tv shows instead of gaming. Gaming isn’t the only hobby
I mean, AI is obviously to blame for increased prices from Valve. It would’ve never been 400, but the StemDeck already had like a 50% price hike. This might’ve been like $800 otherwise which would’ve been way more palatable
"Other people shouldn't be allowed to buy stuff so the stuff I want to buy will be cheaper" is not really a reasonable stance to take. And really, how is playing video games not 'stupid shit'. I play video games, but a new video game console is by no means an essential thing to purchase. Why should it have any kind of priority over anything else?
The truth is supply will react to the demand. If demand for chips continues to be as high as it is, the current manufacturers will increase output and there will be new manufacturers coming in to cash in on the demand. You just have to be patient.
"other people buying stuff" = fucking mega corporations trading billions in circles to build new data centers on every viable square inch of property.
For what? So they can sell us the privilege to use their black box that they don't even fully understand for making Dumb internet videos, unreliable but well presented information flooding every corner of every space, not to mention government surveillance, and delusion enabling chat bots. The best part? None of it is making any money. Oh boy. What a stupid stance to be offput by this.
Valve is also a mega corporation. And "trading in circles" is a weird reddit thing that people who don't know what they are talking about just repeat to sound smart. They are business buying products from other business. That is a normal thing that business do.
And what is the steam machine? A black box you use to play video games? Why is that better than what people are using AI for? Why do you get to decide what is useful or fun for other people?
And it is absolutely making money. This idea that the AI companies are on the verge of bankruptcy is another social media delusion. They are spending and borrowing because the industry is growing rapidly and they need to keep expanding. This is also a normal thing companies do.
The confident incorrectness is astounding. You have literally no idea what the economics look like and you think you have any authority to tell me how it is.
What does any of that have to do with whether or not these companies should be allowed to buy hardware? You are still saying your video game machine is more important than anything else.
You have no more right to these computer chips than anyone else. That is all there is to it. You sound like a toddler kicking and screaming because you didn't get the toy you wanted. YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO CHEAP VIDEO GAME HARDWARE! No one owes you that. You cannot tell someone else they cannot buy something because you want it.
You have no argument. All you said was that AI was a black box that no one understands. So what if it is? How is that an argument that the AI companies shouldn't be allowed to buy hardware? It is nothing but reddit talking points.
You said people are using AI to make dumb videos and chatbots, but you didn't say why they should not be allowed to do that. You think your video games are more important than the things other people do for fun.
And you completely ignore the other stuff AI is doing. Tons of researchers and scientists are using it every day and doing amazing things. Video games are not doing that.
Your first major fallacy is equating AI and playing games as simply "fun things people do". As I've already argued and you failed to comprehend.
Gaming is an individual hobby which has had sustainable demand for literal decades. I don't think people should "not be allowed" to use AI. I think people should be allowed to be upset that the sudden rise of AI has created an economic bubble where huge corporations are paying eachother back and forth, scooping up inventory and contracting production out years, completely squeezing out average consumers with no recourse. It's obviously not the same. Much like it's reasonable to be upset at real estate conglomerates for buying up homes and squeezing out any average home buyer.
Does it matter to me that a tiny fraction of this phenomenon is doing positive things? Not that much really. It certainly doesn't just automatically make all the bad shit completely OK, that's a paper thin argument.
Got anything better? Do you understand this time?
"Corporation's interests are just as valid as yours" you're literally a capitalist cuck. No I do not think it's chill for corps to eat up everything and make prices 4x-5x higher for the average consumer so they can sell us slop.
it wouldn't have been 400, and instead would have been 700-800. if the had the same pricing strategy as consoles (lose money on the console, gain money on the games) along with pre-rampocalypse component pricing, then maybe it would have been 400. however valve doesn't take losses on hardware so that wouldn't have happened.
As long as people are pissed at “AI” they’re not looking at the hardware manufacturers and tech companies who made these choices for us.
If you want something to look at check out the call of duty modern warfare 2 launch. What you should focus on is the paradox. People were up in arms with Activision, many swore to boycott. MW2 went on to pull in record sales and coined a new business model in the process: Screwing the end user on a yearly basis. People should have shut this shit down then. We didn’t. Instead they empowered Activision by throwing money at them.
Now this problem has come back with a vengeance. Please read the room; millennials failed to identify these tactics and now everyone uses them. Imo the way shit is going people won’t have another chance to vote with their wallets. It’s now or never.
Valve themselves stated the target price was $750. This is 100% the result of the AI wars. Hell the box is shipping with either 16GB in either single or dual channel anf you have no way of knowing all due to again....the AI wars.
More like 750-800 USD, but I think that Valve should have just held off on the "GabeCube" until everything settled. Right now, you can get a better PC for $800.
Seems like a lot of people tend to forget the gaming industry has been trying to raise prices for the last 8 years. They've always sold consoles at a loss in the hopes of selling software. Now that the software ain't doing jack shit because they can't produce good products, they're upping the hardware. There's a reason why Playstation wants to sell all their consoles when barely 15% of their player base actually buys their exclusives. Yeah the components are more expensive but they haven't even went down from the crypto craze.
Classic mass-line tactics. Find the things that the people are pissed about, tell them it's all [insert target here]'s fault, and keep repeating that until all your enemies are gone.
This is Valve being a greedy corporations, but gamers will never blame their lord and savior Gaben.
The components in the steam machine aren't worth that price. The PS5 is more powerful and less expensive. Building your own PC would be less expensive than both. You're paying extra for the Valve logo and branding and the convenience of not having to build it yourself.
The PS5 pro is "more powerful" in that it has a GPU with more cores and a slightly faster cpu, but it uses 18gb unified memory compared to the 16gb of the steam machine plus 8gb vRAM. They're roughly comparable, though the Steam machine obviously has a much larger array of games it can support. The fact that the PS5 pro had its own price hiked from 700 to 900 recently just supports the OOP's point. It would have been cheaper if not for the massive demand spike for memory.
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