Have you ever wondered that your computer could be way faster for that price?
I did, and I came to a conclusion that video games are demanding indeed, in terms of hardware. But video games being heavy isn't the sole issue here, nor is it the bad pixelated images taken from your phone, or chrome being too demanding...
Long ago, we've been under the effect of something called planned obsolescence, and we seem to be under it for a few more years, perhaps decades or even the whole of what's left of humanity.
What is "Planned Obsolescence"?
Obsolete is a word, an adjective to be precise, that describes something outdated product, be it a tangible product, a digital product... What it really means is if something becomes obsolete, then it instantly becomes useless, especially in our age of technology.
Let us name a few obsolete products:
Good old Floppy Disks
It was an honor, seeing this legend in action back in the day where 1.45MB used to carry a lot.
Alarm Clock
As beautiful as it looks, no matter how old. Having one of these in 2020 can only mean one thing, You can bend space and time.
In fact, now you can destroy that alarm which bothers you at 7a.m without having to worry about the price, you can get roughly 600 alarm clocks for the price of one IPhone 12...
Best deal ever?!
Now these mentioned products have seen a dramatic development throughout the years, we've gone from floppy disks of 1.45MB, to flash drives going up to 1TB ! Alarm clocks have been replaced, no actually they've merged, along with other functionalities such as GPS, music player, cameras, all into one single product, that is the mighty Smartphone.
When it comes to video games however, and hardware to be precise, the platforms such as PlayStation, Xbox and PC, showcase a serious struggle between the last, current and next generation.
Let's take an example of GPUs from Nvidia,
Source: DigitalFoundry - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyYXMrjOgs0&t=1190s&ab_channel=DigitalFoundry
In the shot above, we get to see about 30% difference between the best RTX 20 series card vs the best RTX 30 series card in terms of budget-performance balance.
The 3080 only outperforms the 2080 Ti by 30%, which isn't a huge upgrade, but from a budget perspective, it might be the best choice to go from the 10 series to the 30 series.
Now my point here is instead of providing customers with a new GPU every 2 years, for something that's barely trying to reach 150% the performance of its predecessor GPU, why not provide good quality upgrades. As an example, the RTX 30 series powered by the Ampere architecture, could've taken the stead of the RTX 20 series, that would mean a serious leap, or rather an real UPGRADE.
A very similar case with the newest generation of CPUs from Intel...
Why would the 10700k exist at all? or perhaps the question should go to the 9700k...
Companies tend to prioritize their own profit, it doesn't represent a serious matter, only if it starts affecting the customers badly... we can definitely take Sony as our main culprit by the end of 2020, which produced a very limited amount of PS5, and the stocks are going in a serious drought while the demands are agitated like the winds in Jupiter or perhaps Uranus, who knows?
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