Break Nvidia up and you'll end up with more competitors on the market. It's as simple as that. Government broke up robber barons' oligopolies in late 19th-century, Roosevelt stopped the formation of the NSC and broke Standard Oil into 3 competing companies under the Sherman Act back in 1911... Same thing needs to happen to tech giants today. They have obtained way too much social and market power.
The government also broke up Ma Bell in 1982, look how well THAT turned out. Instead of 1 monopoly, it was 4, now 3, that control parts of the country and abuse their position to charge relentless amounts of money.
Also, the GPU industry is not the oil industry or the telecom industry. There is nothing stopping, say, samsung or intel from creating their own GPU contenders. Turns out making a good GPU is REALLY REALLY HARD, and the market for hgih end models is not large enough to incentivise other companies to compete.
Yea everyone is free to do whatever they want until it start affecting you and your purchasing power, because yes as I said we live in society and a complex economy that are tightly linked, if the majority start to consume foolishly and selfishly we might as well reach a point of no return, I mean people rolling on debts because "hobbies" and the reasonable one's paying the bills with them...
Dude, calm down, its a graphic card. If it gets too expensive you get to miss out on the latest cash grab from AAA studios. People are stupid with their money, and have been stupid with their money, ever since money was a concept. No level of societal control will fix that.
Well I'm not sure about that. If you speak of 'inflation'... isn't Moore's Law supposed to counteract that, and then some?
Year over year, the same performance is still becoming (much) cheaper with every release of products. Corporate and commerce wants you to believe everything is more difficult and they present new hurdles for their products to chew on, but reality still is that its super cheap to game at a very playable resolution, at high FPS and high settings with nothing more than a lower midrange card. Let's face it, the game's no different at 1080p which we already consider 'High Definition'.
As I said... I'm gaming on 3440x1440 now and while I don't play the latest greatest right away at launch, I can still push comfortable FPS in most games with a measly 1080 - the high end of 4 years ago. If its an isometric game / not full 3D viewport, I can even keep 100+ FPS with no issues in most games. Its all about balancing out your wishlist with your budget and performance on tap. Ergo: Timing.
I'm attributing the whole fuss about scalpers and limited supply/high demand to the current day fashion of 'everyone is special' / 'Entitlement generation'. Everyone must have the latest greatest, because otherwise you don't count or you're a lesser person, or something. I'm not sure how people expect to keep up that rat race and keep a healthy financial situation. That only happens on social media (or 'Teevee').
And commerce is the primary enabler. They feed us with new carrots. The ultimate question is whether you're the horse chasing it, or just sit back and pick up the carrots when they're no longer the object in focus. Experience taught me its much easier to pick those up without sweating one bit - and its the exact same carrot, minus the early adopter woes. Games are no different. The frontline of technology is utter shite to consume, let it age.
FOMO is powerful, and peopel fall for it hook line and sinker.
I still play at 1200p, I hate narrow widescreens. My vega 64 can max out everything today at playable framerates with room to spare. I also hav eused a 4k screen before, and it isnt the end all be all of gaming. People act like you need the cray supercomputer to play tetris these days....
People are upset because of the current prices, maily because the 2000 series completely failed to improve price/perf at all, so we've been stalled for 4 years now. And people act like the prices are outrageous, forgetting 15 years ago where the 8800 ultra retailed for over $800 and AMD FX processors were pushing $1000.