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.
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.
I 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
“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 my PC. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I ended up getting a Switch 2 I didn’t even order because someone at Amazon fucked up. I had just ordered some storage bins; one of them had a Switch 2 in it lol
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.
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
I thought these increases were going to be as bad as Xbox by the looks of things. $50 for PlayStation is way better than I thought vs $100 for greedy Microsoft.
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.
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.
Anyone remember Master X Master? It was a MOBA that had WASD controls as its only option, even had a jump (though it was mostly useless), it felt so much more intuitive than spamming click. I don’t think that’ll get me to try LoL again though.
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Aktywne