BuT wHy dOeSnT “SONY” jUsT eAt tHe tArRiFfS.
Back in my day console prices would go down after being on the market for a few years
Yeah but back then we weren’t winning™
Back in your day needless tarriffs weren’t a thing.
President Reagan decided Friday to impose punitive 100% tariffs on a wide variety of goods produced by Japanese electronic giants in retaliation for Tokyo’s failure to abide by the semiconductor trade agreement between the two nations.
In approving a recommendation Thursday by the Administration’s top economic officials, the White House decided to put the tariffs into effect about April 17, less than two weeks before Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone is scheduled to begin a visit to the United States aimed at easing trade frictions.
The tariffs will be targeted to bring in as much as $300 million and designed to punish such firms as NEC Corp., Hitachi Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd., Toshiba Corp. and Oki Corp. by either pricing some of their goods out of the American market or by forcing them to accept substantial losses on U.S. sales.
Was that not a measured response to a failure to abide by an established agreement?
Depends on who is telling the story.
Japan / Korea were early instances of US industrial outsourcing. The consequences of the project was an economic boom during late 70s/early 80s in both countries, such that American politicians feared Japan and Korea would return to the world stage as independent regional powers. Reagan’s tariffs, the subsequent opening of Japanese import markets, and the further industrial outsourcing to China, the Philippines, and the rest of the South Pacific labor markets effectively clipped the wings of the Japanese/Korean wage laborer.
You could argue this was part of the “agreement” between Eastern Zaibatsu executives and Western investment banks. But I’d hardly call it a “measured response”. I certainly wouldn’t call it a policy that served the best interests of either Eastern or Western wage labor.
So a specific tariff, on specific goods in a specific country, for a specific reason. Really not comparable.
Five years… in the OG days we’d be prepping for the next generation about now.
Then things got weird around the 2008 financial crash. :(
(US dates)
Atari 2600 - 1977
Atari 5200 - 1982
Atari 7800 - 1986
Atari Jaguar - 1993NES - 1985
SNES - 1990
N64 - 1996
Gamecube - 2001
Wii - 2006
Wii U - 2012
Switch - 2017
Switch 2 - 2025Sega Master System - 1986
Genesis - 1989
Sega CD - 1992
32X - 1994
Saturn - 1995
Dreamcast - 1999NEC Turbo Grafx 16 / CD - 1989
NEC Turbo Duo - 1993Playstation - 1995
PS2 - 2000
PS3 - 2006
PS4 - 2013
PS4 Pro - 2016
PS5 - 2020
PS5 Pro - 2024Xbox - 2001
Xbox 360 - 2005
Xbox One - 2013
Xbox One X - 2017
Xbox Series X - 2020I feel like part of it was that the console revisions past 2008 aren’t as big of a deal as they were before. You also had publishers start producing games for multiple generations of consoles at the same time.
Games took way longer to make in the 7th gen and later, so 5 years for a console generation didn’t cut it anymore.
Sega even had an earlier console in 1983 called the SG-1000. It was only released in Japan though.
I’ve owned 15 of the consoles listed. Doesn’t seem like I’ve been through that many of them!
24 for me and I still own most of them.
Back in my day, we elected scumbags who at least wanted to preserve stability and international trade relations so that at least a balance could be preserved long enough to nudge policy where people broadly wanted it.
Node shrinks are not as impactful as they use to be, in that area at least.
This is Republicans and Trump’s doing btw.
No no, I’m sure it’s the fault of the trans kids. And the immigrants. I’m sure prices will go down if the US just cracks down harder on these threats to gaming.
edit: do some of you dipshits have literal brain damage? If I have to add /s tags to something like this, it’s proving that we have NO hope for the future ffs, take your medication and talk to someone.
You’re not wrong.
Here’s how I think it’s going to go down.
- They’ll realize that Sony isn’t a American company.
- They’ll find out it’s a Japanese company
- They’ll blame Chinese-Americans for the increase.
- Republican gestapo intensifies
- Tariffs will continue until Americans aren’t so stupid
Everyone in the world suffers from higher prices.
They’ll find out it’s a Japanese company They’ll blame Chinese-Americans
I love how this is one of those things that sounds like an absurdist joke but it’s actual realistic analysis based on current trends.
Thanks, Obama
Username checks out.
It’s Biden fault
At least it’s not Obama’s…
DAG NABBIT JOSEH BIDUN
MUH EEEGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGSS
There is also the choice if making less money that companies are allowed to make.
A company that is profitable will still be profitable if they make a tiny bit less profit.
But that’s not even seen as an option anymore. The idea that a company should shoulder the cost of anything instead of the consumer is crazy to us.
And to top it off, if the tariffs went away in 3 months, would they lower the price back down?
I think, if I understand US law correctly, not a legal choice to publically traded companies.
This is true
Dodge vs Ford Motor Company started us down that road to our current shareholder economy
Why would they take a hit for something the US population voted for themselves? That makes no sense.
Why would businesses shoulder the burden of economic downturns when they have the option to force poor people to pay for it?
Why would they ever save for a rainy day when the laws allow them to constantly redline their buisness?
Yeah that’s the question
I struggle to shed a tear for souless corporations
I don’t shed tears for soulless corporations either. But i also don’t shed tears anymore for a populace that systematically votes for self-harm
Why would they make less money just so someone else can pocket some of it? Raising prices is the only and proper business decision to this.
So they lower prices when the economy is doing better right?
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Wow you are a weird ass troll
well, that and the insatiable lust for profit
But the shouty man on TV said tariffs were good! Why vibeo janes cost more?
Trump: tariffs ARE good. For budget, not for you, though…
Bad for the budget too, because a shrinking economy shrinks tax revenues from other sources.
Good for the sovereign wealth black hole of money though! Wherever that ends up getting spent, likely on gold plating the jumbo plane bribe he accepted.
Well, that’s tariffs for you. Completely expected, though a ~10% bump on the PS5 doesn’t adjust for all the tariff increase IIRC.
Pretty sure this is due to the dollar weakening by 10%.
Both? Probably both.
Positive feedback from Trump trying to fix an economy he is beyond understanding.
That’s not a particularly realistic explanation
The USD index has weakened by 10% as a whole, but not relative to the JPY. It has held roughly steady against the yen for the past couple years, before which the yen had weakened significantly. USD to JPY is extremely high right now, compared to where it has been over the past 15 years
Pretty sure the dollar weakened by 10% over it being harder to trade with the US.
*capitalism for you.
the tariffs are part of the overall system which is designed to exploit folks a few rich owners can profit.
Then why did Sony also increase pricing in several other countries?
Unfortunately Christmas is gonna be rough time for a lot of Americans this year thanks to the trump tax
Americans need to boycott Christmas. Make memories and handmade presents instead of sending money at billionaires
That’s their fault for voting for Trump or not voting at all
Tens of millions of us voted against it and did our best to convince those around us.
On the whole, we deserve what we’re getting. We asked for it. I just hope the rest of the world doesn’t forget that so many of us tried.
Literal millions of us (myself included) voted “correctly” for Harris. Blue no matter who. We did our part for your petty ass purity test and we’re still getting fucked.
Must be nice to live in a world where people only experience the results of who they voted for.
Dude, I’m from the US. I know. But the fact of the matter is that there’s shittons of poor people who voted for Trump, and they’re the ones most at risk. And they’re the ones I’m calling out
Eh, I voted third party. Why? Because my vote literally doesn’t matter in my state, since Trump took it with >20% margin. Votes only really matter in like 8 states because the rest have enough straight ticket voters to secure the election for one of the candidates. And in those 8 or so states, the misinformation was real, so it’s understandable that many people didn’t know what they were getting with their vote, they just voted based on whatever smear campaign made them hate the other candidate more.
IMO, the fault here lies w/ Kamala Harris for running a mediocre campaign promising the “status quo” when most people wanted real change. If she ran a more interesting campaign with actual plans regular people could understand, maybe she could’ve cut through the noise and reached enough people to win.
de minimus tariff exemption (imported goods valued at under $800) ends at the end of the month because trump said so a few days ago
this is why
This does not only affect playstation. Anyone who doesnt have a stockpile of inventory already imported are gonna be affected very soon.
Norwegian postal service will not send packages with less than $800 dollars (except for private packages). Many businesses will not send anything to the US in the coming months.
jokes on you if you thought this was about this term, it’s about his first term.
The COVID deaths statistic gave it away. Nobody cares about that any more.
Plus the number is quite a lot bigger now.
Belgian postal service is suspending all deliveries regardless of value.
The ports must be bracing for chaos.
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Reduce comes first for a reason.
You do not need a PS5. You don’t need a new console - if you need a console at all.
IN MY DAY WE HAD A STICK AND A HOOP AND WE WERE HAPPY
“When I joined the Corps, we didn’t have any fancy-shmancy tanks. We had sticks! Two sticks, and a rock for the whole platoon - and we had to share the rock!”
— Sgt Johnson, Halo 2
I’m my day that wasn’t far from the truth. We don’t need quality games machines but they’re a very nice luxury.
Quality is exactly what we need in games machines.
Not meaningless iteration and oppressive corporate greed. The 2600 was a quality machine - you can still find working VCS consoles in the wild - and when they fail, it’s usually something that can be fixed by the owner of the console. It doesn’t die because software tells it to die, or because of a known manufacturing fault where a simple fix was ignored because it wouldn’t have been profitable. The same can (mostly) be said of NES, SMS, MD/Genesis, SNES, and even TG16/PC Engine.
Beyond that, I expect that 32-bit machines and forward should still work, even if disk rot is affecting the ones that weren’t cartridge based.
Getting into that case also gets into pedagogical theory, because giving kids primarily analog entertainment compared to digital seems to be beneficial. I was talking about those of us adults who are already doomed. We have computers. We already have machines. We don’t need the new one.
A okay gaming PC withis not cheap. To some people, console is the only way
Just buy used PS5.
My PC is not a “gaming” PC. I play games on it. I have access to a nearly 50-year library of games. Just because I don’t have the newest and shiniest doesn’t mean I don’t have tons of fun games available. And I said ‘if you need a console at all’. If you are determined to play video games and you don’t want them on a PC, phone, or tablet, then fine. There are thrift stores, there’s eBay (though that’s loaded with scalpers and scum even more than the thrift grifters), there are many ways to buy a used console. But I also stand by the thought that if what you have is working and being fun, keep using it. If the corporations have made it not fun, either go to older hardware they can’t do that to, or get homebrew set up.
Don’t just keep it on a shelf “in case”. Don’t store it. And for the love of anything good, don’t just discard it.
Reduce. If you think you’ve reduced “enough”, find something else to reduce.
What is wrong with ps4 or ps3? Are the games not good because they are aged?
I do most of my gaming on ps1 and wii, and a bit on PC.
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Then decrease the demand by reducing what you buy and the lifespan you demand of the hardware and software.
“You don’t need a new PS4-game player. Your PS4 is fine enough as-is!”
I mean, there’s that too.
A cheap SSD upgradeand a PS4 plays PS4 games the same way a PS5 does.
remember when consoles got cheaper as they aged? …and eventually they’d hit that $99 sweet spot in the last few quarters of life? and used game stores were overstocked with older cheap used games…
That’s why all of the major players have been frothing at the mouth to get rid of discs
Damn shame, Sony. I’m lowering my buy price by $50.
Are you under the impression this is Sony trying to gouge you? It’s your idiot president and your trash country
Then why did so many other countries get an increase first?
Other countries got their price increase months ago. Ours was probably delayed so that they could tell how bad the damages of our idiot president would be.
Damn shame, Trump. I’m lowering my buy tax by $5.
You’re right. I can’t forget to factor him in.
It’s $100 less now. I’m taking a tariff on it. Final offer.
I’m gonna wait until 11:59 to order my PS5 and then list it tomorrow as a “limited edition pre-increase model” for $150 more. Then Sony will hire me as their CEO.
Damn I’m gonna not buy it even harder now
Make gaming great again!
Somehow I think this generation of consoles are going to be suffering.
They will sell fine everywhere except the US. I don’t even want a switch2 because the bullshit Nintendo did with the virtual carts. God it’s a fucking PITA to even play my first gen switches because I have to be sure both consoles are powered on and connected to the Internet to “activate” the cart that was active on the other.
They will sell fine everywhere except the US.
Nah, tariffs didn’t help, but there are other economic factors and trends here that have been slowly at work for a very long time.
FYI there is a fix for the virtual Cart thing.
- Go to User Settings.
- Scroll down and find Use Online License.
- Switch it to ON.
“Going to be”? I feel like this generation already failed at the starting line. I can’t name a single PS5 game I’d want to play that doesn’t already look and run better on
myPC. The Switch 2 is running on several generations-old hardware so it’s already a non-starter. And Microsoft screwed up their naming convention so badly that I don’t even know what the latest Xbox is called.Hell, this console generation is somehow already five years old, and I still don’t know anyone who actually owns one of these systems. Everyone I know is still using their PS4s, XBones, Switches, and gaming laptops with 10, 20, and 30 series Nvidia GPUs. Hell, I haven’t seen any hype for modern console gaming since the XBOX 360/PS3 era. No one cares about owning the latest and greatest gaming system anymore. Everyone’s happy with what they have.
I can’t name a single PS5 game I’d want to play that doesn’t already look and run better on my PC
The keyword here is “my”.
It’s not just the console generation that is suffering. PC gaming is dying too. Crypto dealer the first blow, now AI. I’m still running an RX580 that I bought for $180 back in 2019. I was planning on buying a 9700XT at launch this year. Still not a great value- an MSRP of $600. Adjusted for inflation that’s still ~2.6x the price and it’s not going to give me 2.6x the performance. But even then it was impossible to find a card for $600 - even months later the cheapest one on nowinstock is $700, and those are hard to find. That’s JUST the GPU - you still need another grand or more to build a decent PC around it. Even with this price increase, the base PS5 is $550.
I’m not trying to make this a console vs PC thing. They all suck right now. The only good values for gaming is on the fringes. The Steam Deck was an incredible value when it launched, and only looks better today. Other cheap, low-powered solutions like Chinese handhelds and android TV boxes loaded with pirated old ROM’s. Mini-PC’s that are good enough to handle 5-10 year old PC games… At 1080p or less with the settings turned down bit. Maybe an Xbox Series S might be a decent short-term value, especially if you are a person who loves game pass or just wants to play free games like Fortnight.
It’s looking bleak. Not just videogames but everything. Food, medicine, clothing, housing.
Then again, a cpu and gpu from 2018 still plays 90% of the Steam library so… more? Less? Relative.
I mean, that’s just diving into the classic Console vs PC arguments that have been going on for years. My point is that it’s gotten worse for both. We can argue all day over which is the best way to go in 2025.
What I think we CAN say for sure is that buying any sort of gaming device in 2019 is better than any option in 2025. I’m using 2019 because that was the year I built my PC for $1k total, and that holiday season I bought my PS4 - a slim model that came bundled with Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, and The Last of Us 2 all for $199.99. Either of those deals blow pretty much anything today out of the water.
I guess profits are up, the PS5 is selling well so far, and it looks like the Switch 2 is tentatively on place to be one of the better-selling units of all time. Maybe the average consumer just doesn’t care about the bang for their buck- they just want the new shiny thing.
Fixed my comment
Astro Bot. I’d argue it is a system seller. It’s as wonderful as Mario Odyssey was for the Switch 1, one of the greatest platforming adventure games I’ve ever played, has a breathtaking soundtrack, gorgeous visuals and art style, incredible dynamic controls especially with the PS5 haptics, and a top 10 game for me. I had so much fun playing both Astro Bot (paid) and Astro Bot’s Play Room (free game). This absolutely deserved game of the year, and I’m happy it won. Asobo (developer) showed their full passion and love for gaming in this gem, and to play it is well worth the price of a PS5 in my opinion. It’s that good. And I’ve been a PC and Nintendo gamer for a long time.
I hope it’ll come to PC one day so that others can experience it. PC won’t have the tantalising PS5 haptics that immerse you into the game (the incredible adaptive triggers as you’re climbing, as an example, or walking through grass in that game and feeling the gentle scintillating haptics in the controller), but regardless, it’s a magnificent game that I want everyone to experience. I can’t praise Astro Bot enough, it’s such a gem.
PC won’t have the tantalising PS5 haptics that immerse you into the game
It will if you have a PS5 controller. They don’t just work on PS5.
Wow thanks! Didn’t know that. I remember reading about it when it first came out and gamers didn’t have much compatibility and could only get standard vibration with Steam input, probably around when the console first came out. I now see there’s full support, and while most devs can use Steam input, there’s a new DSX version for PS5 that claims to support adaptive trigger haptics on Windows. I game on my PC with KBM and an Xbox Series controller though. I don’t know how well PS5 haptics will work on my Linux PC though.
The only one I know some people have is Switch2 from my friend group. And its mostly mario kart. They stopped playing after a bit so it will be interesting to see what will occur there.
Overall you dont buy the system for the system, usually you buy it for hte games. And like you said…if the games are not there (PS5 games vs say steam/pc) then people are not incentivized to get it.
There’s a good chance I won’t be buying into the next console gen. Too damned expensive now for a walled garden. PC costs more up front, but there are much more affordable options for playing games on them.
Already skipping the Switch 2. Every time there was announcement I was like:
Same. Waiting for Metroid Prime 4 to release so I can play it on my hacked Switch, then it’ll be no more new Nintendo games until/unless there’s a viable Switch 2 emulator someday.
probably won’t be that long, honestly. But if it is, I’m fine to wait too.
The issue won’t be the tech, since it’s out of date, but defeating whatever security Nintendo baked in as well as managing to avoid their army of lawyers. There is certainly a lot of motivation for hackers to get one up and running, since their games are highly desirable and they’re a pretty hated company by the kinds of game preservationist types that would usually put in the work of making an emulator. I’m figuring it’ll be a while, but if not, great!
haven’t they already been?
lol only in the US bud
The US is the biggest market for all consoles and most AAA games are made there as well. If they suffer there enough, it will affect users of them everywhere eventually.
Yeah it literally wont be the biggest market anymore because of tariffs, the end
