>>1791 You won't.

>>1807 Okay, why? What would I "need" with a digital ID for?

>>1808 food

>>1809 What would be taking place that would "require" things to even get to that point?

>>1811 Nothing. One day the state will just tell you that you need to have your digital ID tied to your bank account and then get rid of cash altogether for "national security". Just like how they're doing for the whole age verification bullshit. It's already getting like that in UK.

>>1812 >One day the state will just tell you that you need to have your digital ID tied to your bank account and then get rid of cash altogether for "national security" That isn't how it works. You have to piecemeal this shit. People are not suddenly going to stop accepting cash just because the government says it is "illegal". You're just asking for mass civil unrest that you cannot control in any capacity. And especially when we've seen this all before, and people are constantly coming up with new methods of monetary exchange for the expressed purpose of escaping that. From such a scenario being the exact reason why crypto-currency was even conceived to the rise of Goldbacks over the past few years. >It's already getting like that in UK. That's the U.K., a country that arrests people for making mean tweets and doesn't give a shit about it's own citizens. Especially after the citizens voted for Brexit and the government spent the next several years making that vote almost pointless.

>Hardware sales and physical game spending in the US just had the worst November in 30 years https://archive.ph/uRu7i <That’s according to the latest data from market research company Circana, which tracks hardware and physical / digital software sales in the US. <1.6 million units of video game hardware were sold in the US in November 2025, which is the lowest total since 1.4 million back in 1995. <Monthly hardware spending last month was $695 million, which is a 27% drop compared to last year and the lowest hardware spend in a November in the US since 2005. The article tries to dismiss the game sales numbers as everything "mostly" being digital these days and hwo Circana doesn't account for those, but I don't buy it. So apparently there is a global chip shortage... >Nintendo’s shares slid as much as 4.7% to their lowest level since May, weighed down by concerns that rising component prices, including memory chips, will erode its profit. https://archive.ph/65Iwp >VIDIA is reportedly planning to cut GeForce GPU production by 30–40% in early 2026, citing memory shortages (including GDDR7). >Mid-range cards like RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and 5070 Ti may be hit first, potentially leading to shortages and higher prices for gamers. https://archive.ph/jBEEJ

>>1826 AI Datacenter Niggers are buying up all of the ram and . Put Sam Altman's head on a fucking pike. They're also the ones buying up all of the HDDs and SSDs too and the consumer ones have doubled in price since 2020. Cruical left the consumer market recently to just serve their business offerings.

>>1826 >>Hardware sales and physical game spending in the US just had the worst November in 30 years This is something that anons around here have figured, but it's nice to have some more numerical proof for it. Of course, various media sources and journos will have their reasons for pushing whatever answer they figure is true, either out of ignorance or because of outside influence. But the answer is simple: video games are too expensive of a hobby now. The prices to get into the hobby have gone up steadily over years and years and has evidently reached a breaking point. Theoretically, if one was to do a survey of potential customers, one would find that they are either scrounging up a little more cash to buy a mid level PC instead of a video game console, or they have just decided to try out another hobby. Some may also choose to stick to their old consoles that they feel nostalgia for and just replay old games. The average gamer used to pick up a console to play a few games a couple times a week, maybe to keep up with trends and to have something to talk about with their buddies. But when a certified refurbished PS5 costs $399, and a new one can cost between $500 and $750, the average consumer will hesitate to spend a significant portion of their paycheck just to play games. On top of that, there are no games to play. Nintendo only seems to be doing better because its competitors are doing a lot worse. Their staunch decades long quest to keep their IPs exclusive is the only thing keeping them going because their overall product quality is mediocre. Most likely, this trend will continue into next year and the years after. Even if the economy gets better and people find more money in their pockets than before, it is doubtful that they will see a $750 console in the shop window and buy it. If anything, normalfags will buy the latest smartphone, because even though most of the time the price is clearly a ripoff, at least an iPhone can make calls and fit in your pocket. The Switch 2 is an overpriced Pokemon and bing bing wahoo box, the PS5 is good for letting you play as a little robot jumping on blocks, and according to marketing your smart fridge and bidet are Xboxes now. <vidrel It's interesting how these vtubers all have the same way of speaking, the same cadences and patterns. It's probably a mix of copying each other because talking that way gets views, and the fact that all these girls are of similar personalities behind their avatar (introverted, people pleasers, uses the internet for 99% of their day, etc.). If someone told me an animated 2D png of an anime girl would be calling people cucks live on stream 10 years ago, I would have thought we were in some kind of bizzaro world.

>>1842 >If anything, normalfags will buy the latest smartphone, because even though most of the time the price is clearly a ripoff, at least an iPhone can make calls and fit in your pocket. Even that's questionable because there's been a rising trend of people looking for "dumdphones" for one reason or another: >The Dumbphone Boom Is Real https://archive.ph/repbJ >Is America headed for an age of dumb phones? https://archive.ph/4IBuL >Why Gen Z is ditching smartphones for dumbphones amid a retrotech renaissance https://archive.ph/vF6Es >Dumbphones in demand as parents fight social media access https://archive.ph/cmC3y And I can vouch for this as I've been using a Nokia 2780 (See pic) for the past couple years as my personal phone.

>>1842 >Some may also choose to stick to their old consoles that they feel nostalgia for and just replay old games. >there are no games to play This is me. My best friend has both a PS5 and Switch 2 and is buying games all the time, but they all suck. I simply see no reason to own a new console. Why would I spend a ton of money for games when they have just been getting worse for the past 5-10 years?

>>1842 Buying a used mid-range or even a low-range laptop has near-infinitely more value than a game console nowadays. You get access to an entire library that runs without hitches starting right from the Atari 2600 about up to the PS2 era. Not to mention the whole list of old PC games that you can buy or pirate, and a large selection of contemporary indie games that are lightweight enough to run. Did I mention it can do your taxes too?

>>1842 >vtubers It's basically women trying to be a "pickme" girl to get popularity and money all over again, but this time the theme is terminally online zoomers. Vid related.

>>1845 >used laptop Don't believe this bullshit. t. using a used laptop right now and its one of the worst experiences I've ever had with a computer, period. Plus, anyone who actually knows anything about game consoles knows about hacking them to unlock their potential, and you can get most game consoles on the cheap.

>>1849 >hacking them to unlock their potential Which usually require modchips. Not happening.

>>1851 >Which usually require modchips No, they don't unless you're dealing with an Xbox. All the PlayStations and Nintendo's consoles are easily capable of softmodding.

>>1849 It's usually a smooth or semi-smooth experience once you install a linux distro with wine on it. Most emulators upto the PS1 era would run just fine. If you want more speed, replacing the HDD with an SSD goes a long way. Adding RAM too.

>>1853 >most emulators up to the PS1 era would run just fine why the fuck would you buy a used laptop, waste your time installing and configuring loonix and wine along with these emulators (and running under the assumption that drivers would exist for the laptop's hardware) in question, only for something that a Vita can do in a much better, cheaper, and easier package?

>>1854 >more than a decade old >no physical keyboard >no mouse >can't run age of empires 2 >probably can't run modern chrome >doesn't have much realistic advantage over a modern phone except for hardware controls >small screen >doesn't have hdmi or vga output (easily) and most of all >can't do my taxes Loonix support is really good nowadays

>>1855 >>small screen Of course it has a "small screen", it's a portable gaming device. It's suppose to, you know, fit in a pocket.

>>1856 The post was trying to compare a used laptop to a psvita. Even against modern phones it falls short.

>>1857 >The post was trying to compare a used laptop to a psvita. A Vita is a lot more portable than a laptop. >Even against modern phones it falls short. In what way? It's a portable gaming device with a touch screen, that can also function as a camera, an MP4 player, and a PDA. What else do you want it to do?

>>1858 >It's a portable gaming device with a touch screen, that can also function as a camera, an MP4 player, and a PDA. That's the point. A phone can do all of that and make calls too if you want, and they're still in production unlike the vita. The only thing phones fall short on is the lack of hardware buttons and the jewgle/apple botnets, which you can partially circumvent by flashing them with custom ROMs. I suppose it boils down to a matter of taste and how much effort you're willing to put into your device. I'm perfectly fine with leaving all of my gaming to a desktop and sometimes a laptop when I'm travelling. It's a very rare occasion for me to pull out my phone or any other handheld to play a game on it because the screens are small.

>>1859 >the only thing that phones fall short on is the lack of hardware buttons You mean one of the most important aspects for any sort of gaming? Good luck trying to play any real-time game on a phone emulator without buying a separate overpriced accessory controller. >the only thing phones fall short on Most phones are exorbitantly expensive, most don't have an SD card slot anymore so their storage space is limited, and their native libraries are shit. (And Apple's handling of emulation is disastrous so you really only have android to choose from if you don't want a million headaches or jailbreaking, and apple phones have it even worse in terms of prices and hardware fuckery, not to mention the literally planned obsolescence built into them). The Vita has a native library whose emulation progress is still nascent, its ergonomics are great, and its small screen isn't an issue because most games made for it are made with that resolution in mind (and it ends up having a far better PPI than every non-4k laptop anyways). With emulating retro consoles on a laptop, you'll need to either majorly upscale or excessively stretch the pixels for the game to fill your screen. Plus, last I checked most laptops don't have an OLED screen, period, and good luck trying to find a used one with an OLED screen at a reasonable price. >>1855 Most of these have no relevance to emulation or most kinds of gaming, or worse, have negative impact on emulation because nobody with a brain is using a mouse (or worse a touchpad) and keyboard for playing games that would be better off with a controller. Also, the only thing stopping people from developing an AoE2 port is either time and effort or a lack of existing resources. Its already got shit like HoMM2 and Diablo on it and a billion other sourceports and homebrew games.

>>1859 >The only thing phones fall short on is the lack of hardware buttons Not if you get an Xperia Play. >I suppose it boils down to a matter of taste and how much effort you're willing to put into your device. The way that I look at modern technology is that I'm tired of how every device focussed being an "all-in-one" toy that does everything in a mediocre fashion instead of focussing on doing one of two things well. Or that these devices have so many features that you never end up using that only drive up the price.

>>1860 >a separate overpriced accessory controller. Why does it have to be overpriced? I played SNES and PS1 games on my last phone for years with a cheap $20 controller. Granted, when I played on my phone I limited myself to games that didn't require reaction time like JRPGs. >Most phones are exorbitantly expensive So are "most cars" these days. Just get a cheap one. The phone I used to play games on a decade ago was like 200 bux. I didn't even get it with the intention of playing games.

>>1854 Way to tell me you know absolutely nothing about Linux. >>1860 If you honestly think the Vita's 2011 OLED screen is worth a damn, then you're a retard.

>>1868 Not to mention, wouldn't they all have major issues by now? All the early OLEDs died pretty quickly.

>>1974 My LG V10 was one of those "early" OLED devices and it still works fine (Making this post one it) Only problem I have is the screen burn-in, but that's been a problem since Day 1, and it's temporary.

>>1978 >LG V10 2015 is not 2011, anon.

>>1868 >If you honestly think the Vita's 2011 OLED screen is worth a damn, then you're a retard. It still is, solely due to the fact that the Vita is more portable than it's current competitors with better screens(except for the Odin Mini). Something like the Retroid Pocket 4/5 would be nice if the triggers didn't stick out of it.

>>1868 >>1974 The Vita's OLED screen is fine, the fuck are you fags talking about?

>>2062 Stop being a retard, nigger.

>>2088 >cannot comprehend technology still functioning after time has passed >calls other people niggers Wew.

Didn't know where to post about this. So I found another fine example of outright developer incompetence in how these people display that they do not know how to fucking code. However this example is from 2010. I give you the Wii version of Call Of Duty: Black Ops. For those that don't know, the Wii version of Black Ops is rather infamous for being the "worst" version of the game to play. Not because it's on the Wii and the "sacrifices" made to make it playable, but because this version of the game literally breaks the console. You see, because of the Wii's limited amount of RAM (64MB compared to the PS3's 256MB and 360's 512MB), one trick the developers did to make the game playable on the system was that it had the console's laser constantly reading data from the disc so that it read in new data and discarded the old as fast as possible to keep the game going for the player without interruption. Where the problem sets in is that none of this data was localized in one single place. One trick game developers have done in the past since the dawn of using discs, to reduce load times and work around the even more limited memory of past systems, is have the game data burned to a disc in such a method that disc laser moves as little as possible to so that it can read the most amount of data in the smallest amount of time. This is where many past disc games developed a lot of junk data, with some accounts of games even having pirated TV shows on the disc for the expressed purpose of getting this optimization out of how the system processed reading discs. That didn't happen with BLOPS for the Wii. Instead, the data is all over the disc and so laser is constantly bouncing trying to grab all the information it needs in order to keep the game running. And it's this process that resulted in the game literally breaking the consoles as the laser eventually gives out and stops working.

>The PC version of 007 First Light requires lots of expensive RAM and VRAM to run at recommended settings https://archive.ph/sT8dO <IO Interactive just revealed minimum and recommended specs for the PC build of 007 First Light. The company recommends 32GB of RAM and 12GB of VRAM. In a normal world, this wouldn't be news, as modern NVIDIA GPUs certainly have more than enough VRAM. However, we live in a world where AI companies gobble up lots of memory. <This has caused newer cards to tick up in price, with more hikes to come. Older cards like the RTX 3070 just won't cut it, as that one ships with 8GB of VRAM. Standard RAM is also getting much more expensive, putting that 32GB out of reach for many gamers. In other words, playing the James Bond sim at max settings will likely cost a pretty Moneypenny.