What are you currently playing?

[sunrise089]

Find me another product without reasonable substitutes which has seen a near-doubling of prices and a near total exhaustion of supply and I’ll stop blaming Crypto.

Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X right now? Nintendo Switch for almost all of 2020? I had serious trouble finding a physical copy for my wife of Animal Crossing this past year despite the fact that physical video games virtually never have supply issues. Gaming-related hardware has been bonkers for a year now. The car mention is just pointing out a side effect - that supply/demand is so jacked right now that it's spilling over into normally unrelated industries.

Clearly I don't see eye-to-eye with my internet friends about this  I did say "without reasonable substitutes" and "a near doubling of prices" though. The secondary market prices I'm seeing for the consoles don't approach the markups I'm seeing on GPUs, and, with admittedly a pretty cursory search, restock updates seem to be pretty frequent for the consoles, which are being sold at MSRP. And, supplies of the competing Switch seem fine. Likewise for much of 2020 certain AMD CPUs were hard to find, but other AMD models and most Intel models were prevalent. 

My experience matches T-Hawk's - I don't think I've ever seen a product have this sustained of a shortage and this much of a secondary market markup. I've bought my share of difficult to find items in the past, from early generation launch-week iPhones, to my own Switch, to my NES and SNES classic editions, to various concert and sporting tickets, and all of those products had various stories online about difficult supply, and all of them were ultimately available at or close to MSRP if one was willing to either wait a few weeks or work the phones to check stock. 

Meanwhile with GPUs the best I'm seeing for current stock are last-gen products with a 100% market over launch MSRP, and it's been that way for months...

[Bobchillingworth]

I don't think I've ever seen a product have this sustained of a shortage and this much of a secondary market markup.

Clearly someone isn't into firearms ownership (or at least doesn't go shooting very often) Prices for ammunition have been skyrocketing for a year now, and resellers are stocking the most popular rounds like 9mm and 5.56 for around 3x what they used to go for.


Prices for guns themselves have been going up too for most models, though not as dramatically, since generally speaking they aren't "consumables" people need to regularly replenish.


This has nothing to do with crypto mining or graphics cards shortages, but then again neither is really about what anyone is currently playing (still Cross Code! It's really good and could probably run on a toaster!).

[sunrise089]

I don't think I've ever seen a product have this sustained of a shortage and this much of a secondary market markup.

Clearly someone isn't into firearms ownership (or at least doesn't go shooting very often)    Prices for ammunition have been skyrocketing for a year now, and resellers are stocking the most popular rounds like 9mm and 5.56 for around 3x what they used to go for. 


Prices for guns themselves have been going up too for most models, though not as dramatically, since generally speaking they aren't "consumables" people need to regularly replenish. 


This has nothing to do with crypto mining or graphics cards shortages, but then again neither is really about what anyone is currently playing (still Cross Code!  It's really good and could probably run on a toaster!).

Bob, I accept the dig because as a card carrying NRA member I'm shamed to say the only time I've fired a gun in the last 5 years is to shoot holes in a burn barrel for better airflow

My...bump in the night...rifle shoots 7.62 which, in theory, helps with supply due to the interchangeability with .308, but I have no idea what prices are like. I own a few thousand rounds bought in bulk that I obviously don't shoot, and I've been out of the market since (and hoping my ammo, fortunately stored in cans inside a safe, is still good).

What is ammo stock like though Bob? If one goes into a Bass Pro or a local gun shop is 9mm and .223 not sitting on shelves at any price?

[Bobchillingworth]

Depends where you live, but at least in NoVa most local gun shops are out of stock or charging exorbitant prices. I don't have a Bass Pro or similar store near me, but I've read stories about crowds of loons showing up at them early in the morning to buy them out as soon as they restock. Generally speaking, you're better off buying online and having it shipped to your door (unless you live in a state which requires sending ammo to a FFL to pick up... bleh), but you're going to pay out the rear no matter who you buy from.


The common calibers are available at some price, though. Scarcity isn't quite so bad that it's impossible to acquire any, so perhaps the graphics card market does have it worse.


Btw, a "few thousand rounds" of 7.62 (or .308) would be worth a few thousand bucks now, at least, depending what you stocked up on, though .308 ammo hasn't actually gone up nearly as much as other common rifle bullets, probably because the quality brands have historically been comparatively expensive.

[T-hawk]

<p>

My experience matches T-Hawk's - I don't think I've ever seen a product have this sustained of a shortage and this much of a secondary market markup. I've bought my share of difficult to find items in the past, from early generation launch-week iPhones, to my own Switch, to my NES and SNES classic editions

</p><p><br></p><p>I didn't say anything about my own experience - I haven't shopped for or bought any of those scarce items.&nbsp; I was just commenting on the market phenomenon with the GPUs right now.&nbsp; I did have a college roommate who bought extra PS2s and Wiis at launch somehow and flipped them for a profit that christmas season.&nbsp; But I haven't chased anything scarce myself.<br></p><p><br></p><p>... Except for the NES and SNES classic, which are a different story (the scarcity was artificial, only if you wanted official Nintendo hardware; there's any number of ways to do emulation with the same functionality.)&nbsp; I did buy those.&nbsp; The SNES I got by camping an online product tracker for Target a few times a day, and ran out from work over to the store right away when it showed up.</p><p><br></p><p>The NES classic was a fun story.&nbsp; I saw on Reddit that Best Buy online was supposed to be getting in a shipment on a certain day.&nbsp; (This was the original release in 2016, not the 2018 rerelease with more supply.)&nbsp; I logged on and hammered the site like everyone else, which was throwing errors constantly.&nbsp; But I'm a programmer, so I went in to the browser developer tools, and saw each service call that was failing, and kept retrying only that service call instead of having to reload the whole page and restart the entire checkout process.&nbsp; After a few dozen iterations of that, I got the order all the way through, and Best Buy did indeed ship it as promised.<br></p>

[scooter]

Find me another product without reasonable substitutes which has seen a near-doubling of prices and a near total exhaustion of supply and I’ll stop blaming Crypto.

Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X right now? Nintendo Switch for almost all of 2020? I had serious trouble finding a physical copy for my wife of Animal Crossing this past year despite the fact that physical video games virtually never have supply issues. Gaming-related hardware has been bonkers for a year now. The car mention is just pointing out a side effect - that supply/demand is so jacked right now that it's spilling over into normally unrelated industries.

Clearly I don't see eye-to-eye with my internet friends about this  I did say "without reasonable substitutes" and "a near doubling of prices" though. The secondary market prices I'm seeing for the consoles don't approach the markups I'm seeing on GPUs, and, with admittedly a pretty cursory search, restock updates seem to be pretty frequent for the consoles, which are being sold at MSRP. And, supplies of the competing Switch seem fine. Likewise for much of 2020 certain AMD CPUs were hard to find, but other AMD models and most Intel models were prevalent. 

My experience matches T-Hawk's - I don't think I've ever seen a product have this sustained of a shortage and this much of a secondary market markup. I've bought my share of difficult to find items in the past, from early generation launch-week iPhones, to my own Switch, to my NES and SNES classic editions, to various concert and sporting tickets, and all of those products had various stories online about difficult supply, and all of them were ultimately available at or close to MSRP if one was willing to either wait a few weeks or work the phones to check stock. 

Meanwhile with GPUs the best I'm seeing for current stock are last-gen products with a 100% market over launch MSRP, and it's been that way for months...

I'm honestly surprised you think this is limited in any way to GPUs! In the case of the PS5, I'm pretty sure retailers are contractually prohibited from selling above MSRP, so retail prices are not really a fair 1-to-1. Just anecdotally, I perused facebook marketplace just now. PS5s listings are asking around 60% above MSRP, and GPUs are asking like 100% above. They're in the same neighborhood even if GPUs are undoubtedly a little worse (and crypto is probably a piece of that). The Switch shortage last year was pretty remarkable. It was a 3+ year old product that had just one marquee game release all year and 0 price decreases, and yet they moved ~20M units and could not keep them on the shelves until like December. Demand was sky high. If crypto disappeared tomorrow but miners did not flood the market with their used GPUs, I would bet you could still not walk into a store and buy one for awhile.


And on the supply side, the electronic shortages are pretty real:


https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news...-the-year/


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/busin...biden.html


https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/11/how-covi...akers.html


Or to think of a completely different market, have you tried buying furniture or appliances recently? As someone who's having to do a lot of that right now... It's more doable than buying a GPU, but things are wonky and the actual availability is all over the place. "You can have this model today and maybe that model in 4 months" is how that's going right now.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Did I accidentally perform the Missingno summoning ritual in Planescape Torment?  Now much of the text is corrupted.  Inventory menus are illegible, and even parts of some dialogue and character names are fading into gray blocks.  Reloading earlier saves didn't help either.  The glitch may have begun after selling some items in the curiosity shop.


I shouldn't be surprised given all the glitches I run into while playing RPGs.  Baldur's Gate 1 sent me to a nonexistent Chapter 8.  Irenicus once failed to take my solo character to Hell with him in Baldur's Gate 2.  My Etrian Odyssey Nexus playthrough ended when the game kept crashing during the Boiling Lizard battle.  The funniest one was the "endless final battle" of Tales of the Abyss where neither the boss nor the party could damage each other since they forgot to load the ending.  (Tales of Vesperia worked fine despite other people having crashes, though. . .)


If any of you have played Immortals Fenyx Rising or Ni No Kuni:  Wrath of the White Witch, please tell me your opinions.  The Switch versions are currently on sale on Amazon, and I'm considering one of them.


EDIT:  Tried the Immortals Fenyx Rising demo.  It felt like Breath of the Wild. . .if it were mediocre.  Ni No Kuni seems like the way to go unless I find something else.

[Cheater Hater]

... Except for the NES and SNES classic, which are a different story (the scarcity was artificial, only if you wanted official Nintendo hardware; there's any number of ways to do emulation with the same functionality.)&nbsp; I did buy those.&nbsp; The SNES I got by camping an online product tracker for Target a few times a day, and ran out from work over to the store right away when it showed up.</p><p><br></p><p>The NES classic was a fun story.&nbsp; I saw on Reddit that Best Buy online was supposed to be getting in a shipment on a certain day.&nbsp; (This was the original release in 2016, not the 2018 rerelease with more supply.)&nbsp; I logged on and hammered the site like everyone else, which was throwing errors constantly.&nbsp; But I'm a programmer, so I went in to the browser developer tools, and saw each service call that was failing, and kept retrying only that service call instead of having to reload the whole page and restart the entire checkout process.&nbsp; After a few dozen iterations of that, I got the order all the way through, and Best Buy did indeed ship it as promised.<br></p>

It wasn't that artificial, only in the sense that it's almost always right to underproduce than overproduce--Nintendo saw the crappy Genesis microconsoles sit on the shelf, produced something in similar quantities as a stop-gap while in the awkward post-Wii U pre-Switch space, and then it became a surprise hit.

(and whenever emulation is mentioned with regard to microconsoles, you forget that not only does the target audience have no clue how to set one up, the licenses to the games themselves are worth something as well)

[scooter]

But I'm a programmer, so I went in to the browser developer tools, and saw each service call that was failing, and kept retrying only that service call instead of having to reload the whole page and restart the entire checkout process.&nbsp; After a few dozen iterations of that, I got the order all the way through, and Best Buy did indeed ship it as promised.

Well done . This reminds me. Story time.



I actually landed a Series X on launch day via a more conventional in-person adventure. I didn't preorder or anything because I was on the fence, but on launch day I decided to try my luck at getting one in person because it was obvious these consoles would be difficult to find for awhile, and it was my best bet. I tried a Meijer (midwest Walmart but better) first. My thinking was people would swarm electronics stores and forget grocery storers. When that failed, I tried a Target nearby that according to online inventory checkers had a dozen in stock, but according to Target's website were completely unavailable. This likely meant they were preorders waiting to get picked up, but I went in anyway.


I walked over to the electronics section and just sort of observed what was going on for a few seconds. I intentionally sought out the youngest worker there and asked if he happened to have any more in stock. "You're lucky, I think we do" and he wandered back to the warehouse. He brings one out, rings it up, I pay, and he bags it. I'm sort of stunned, but keep my mouth shut and just be polite. As he hands me the bag, he asks "Hey, can you check on our website on your phone and tell me if it says we have any in stock?" I take it and answer that no, it said they're all sold out, but I had just decided to ask anyway. His face visibly sinks and he's clearly realized he screwed up. I quickly blurt out a thanks and power walked out of there bag in hand. 90% sure that guy accidentally sold me someone's preorder. Apologies, random person.

[Old Harry]

I favour the brute force method.

To get Glastonbury tickets one year in the early 2000's there was a particularly flakey website to negotiate. I went into the office, logged into six PC's and set them all to continuously try to load the ticket website on the Sunday that they went on sale.

Eventually, after 40 mins or so, one got through and I ordered tickets for me and some friends. 20 minutes later all 100 000 tickets were sold out.

Back on cryptocurrency - the security (and colossal energy cost) comes from the complexity of the encryption. Presumably the crash comes when someone figures out how to break that encryption? Anyone know how long that'll be?