European here. I’m pretty content with my setup (Ryzen5 3600XT, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060… I play in 1080p) for the games I’m playing at the moment, and I don’t plan on playing many AAAA games in the future. BUT. With the recent tariffs flying around, China denying rare earths, etc etc I fear we might see an increase in hardware prices like we had with covid, so I was thinking on upgrading at least CPU+VGA; more than FOMO let’s say is Fear Of Being Overpriced. What do you think, should I upgrade now that things looks a little more relaxed? Will the whole mess involve only the USA or everyone cause globalization?
i dont think amd or nvidia wont do it as explicitly. its already known that at the moment, some locations in the EU are aleady seeing msrp 5070 sitting on shelves because its not a highly desireable product, while they get bought up in the US faster at a higher price because the stock of everything else is non-existent
They won’t, Nintendo is one of the few companies who can get away with saying it.
But just because other companies won’t say it, won’t mean they won’t do it.
The alternative is they sell less and make the same profit margin. That means profits don’t just fail to increase by the desired percentage, profits could go down. Profits must never go down, because the global economic system is a house of cards and it could cause a healthy company to make very stupid decisions due to stock price and spiral into bankruptcy.
Stock price is only random people’s opinion at the end of the day, they won’t risk profits going down, everyone will see higher prices to compensate for a reduction in the American market
Nintendo can just say it because you can’t play Zelda or Mario Kart anywhere else than their hardware, in a way they’re a monopoly.
The console manufacturers will raise prices globally to cushion against the US tariffs, because the calculus is that by keeping the costs low for the US - they can make up the difference with game sales over the console’s lifetime.
I think something similar will happen to smart phones and tablets also, because of the trailing revenue.
Hardware like CPUs and GPUs lack that additional revenue stream, so it will depend on if AMD & nVidia determine it’s better to push the tariffs exclusivity onto US consumers, or spread them out globally and dampen the impact.