So...I watched more stuff on the steam controller, and I see a lot of influencers acting like the price is reasonable. I understand that I've been out of the console market for a good 15 years now, and over in PC land, it's a lot harder to pull one over on us due to our market behaving more like an actual market, but I also acknowledge console rot has been ruining things as well.
Consoles....are walled gardens. As I discussed not long ago, consoles are just glorified PCs with closed operating systems and proprietary peripherals. They're cheap up front, and appeal to people with little technical know how or patience to trouble shoot their own problems, so they "just work." However, in exchange, you kinda get screwed in other ways. I got out of that market because of micro$oft charging for Xbox Live. Nowadays, all 3 big companies charge for online, and everyone sees it as normal...except PC gamers. But that's the point. When you're in a closed ecosystem with limited competition, these companies can do whatever they want to you, and what are you gonna do, leave? Fat chance. Except on PC....well....yeah....we will. Steam got popular not because it was forced on us, but because it offered a better service than anyone else. it's a de facto benevolent monopoly that people LOVE. like when epic games tried to break it, most gamers hated it because it was like "screw off EGS, we just wanna buy games on steam, we dont care what you have to offer." And when they relied on forced exclusivity to force us to use them, those games sold rather poorly, and most of us resented using the store. Even now, I literally only use epic to collect free games. And that's how it is for most of us.
But yeah. Push comes to shove, alienate us, and we're gonna be more resistant to push back against stuff. Charge more for a controller, and while some might buy, most are still gonna buy the cheaper ones. I mean if you look on amazon right now, while the xbox elite controller is on their top list for $150, most of it is dominated by $20-70 offerings, with $50 being about the average I'd say. And to me, that's the range I'd say is reasonable. Below $20, you get into the boots theory of economics zone. Above $70, it's like....yeah, while there's like ONE premium controller people will flock to for people into that sorta thing, most of us will top out around $60-70. As I said, if you take a $35 dual shock from the PS2 era and adjust for inflation, you get around $65. You take a $40 wired Xbox 360 controller, about the same thing. And even then, there's clearly a market for less.
Me? I dont think much about PC peripherals. I try to spend the last amount of money possible. Keyboards, any keyboard will do. Buttons are buttons, they often take a couple years to get weird enough to replace them. Get a $20-30 keyboard, I'm good for years to come. I could even get by on a $10-15 one although it might lack some features like lighting or more robust build quality, and keep in mind what I say about boots theory (for those who dont know what that is, it's the idea that if you cheap out on boots, you'll pay more long term than if you just bought a decent pair to begin with).
Mice is where boots theory REALLY comes to life for me. I mean, I've gamed on $5 mice. I'm not kidding. FIVE. DOLLARS. Look up like, the OM3400U or something. Yeah. Total. piece. Of. ####. 400 DPI, bad sensor, broke and had to be replaced literally once every 4 months. Then I went for a slightly more expensive e-blue cobra for...I think...$13. Much better sensor, greatly improved gaming performance, still a POS that broke in 4 months.
So then I started buying logitech mice. G400S, G502, G402, etc. I buy one every few years. They eventually develop the same double click issue that all mice get, and that is fatal to them being usable in games for me, but it takes on average...2-3 years to happen. So I spend around $45ish on average....and I replace my mice 6-9x less often. So instead of going through a bad $5 mouse every 4 months, spending $30-45 in that same time period, I just spend $30-45 on something actually good. And it has super high quality sensors that greatly improve precision. So for that, yeah, that's the one expensive peripheral I'd buy. And again...my logic is rooted primarily in boots theory. Just as you want a good pair of work boots that lasts for years and not some cheap POS you replace every few months, the same can be said with gaming mice.
Which brings me to...controllers.
Again, last time I was in the market for a controller in a serious way, was the 360 era, where they had $50 wireless and $40 wired. I had wireless that came with the 360, but they were a pain because well....batteries go dead. And honestly, I think one of my controllers corroded the last time I tried to use it from having batteries in there for years, since i play on PC. Not that it matters, since ive since rebought most games cheap on PC. Because a lot of them go on sale for $2.50-5? yeah. Steam rocks. But yeah....I go in the market looking for a cheap controller, and first time, it was like....okay, I can get a cheapo controller for $15 (logitech submarine special), something more midrange for $30, and up to $60 for an actual xbox branded controller. Since I dont use controllers often on PC, I went the super cheap route. But after getting into retro gaming again, Ive come to realize that was, in fact a cheap POS...so I wanted something a bit better. And I found out the 8bitdo wired controller for $20 is far superior. And it is. It's...actually better than the kishi that came with my edge, which was...$80 standalone. I mean, let that go to show paying more doesnt always equal quality. Like, the razer kishi on my edge is kinda finnicky, sometimes buttons dont register properly on the dpad, a few buttons feel a bit weird clicking them. it still works, but yeah, for $80, I'd expect a perfect experience and it's far from perfect. More money isnt always better.
And that's how I feel here. Like, I just want a good enough experience. Sure, you can market some fancy controller as having gyros i wont use, or bluetooth i despise using (again, i HATE wireless stuff, and peripherals? man with my limited exposure to wireless mice and controllers from the 2000s? never again). But yeah. I want something basic, wired, and functional. I dont need fancy features. I dont need steam's trackpads, since any games I'd use them Id rather just use a mouse with anyway. Idk. It seems like an overly premium product in that forbidden zone of pricing. Again, anything up to $60-70, I can see an argument for. But even that's too much for me. I'd rather keep my own peripherals in the $20-30 range, and only get something expensive if I NEED it like a gaming mouse.
So yeah. When I say $100 is too much for a controller, that's where I come from. But then I end up dealing with...the console gamers, and most of them are so dumb. Like "what do you mean thats too expensive? We've been paying that much for years on our platforms". Yeah. because you guys get ripped off. And I hate to whip out the whole PCMR mindset here, but a lot of us PC gamers ARE more informed consumers than console gamers. We might pay more for PCs, but we got cheap peripherals, cheap games, and we want things to remain cheap. I look at the predatory crap companies like nintendo, microsoft, and sony and pulling over on their customers and im like "wait, you people buy this stuff? wow, you guys really are being ripped off."
So...when I deal with people defending a $100 controller, I feel a culture clash coming on. In my corner of the market, we've been insulated from those kinds of price increases for a while, and when we start seeing them here in the PC space, we're like OH HELL NO. Not saying the PC space is perfect. look at GPUs and how nvidia has been conditioning us to pay more for years and how they've cultivated a class of out of touch yuppies willing to spend seemingly unlimited sums on GPUs. But given hallmarks like the 3060 and 4060 are still the go tos for many of us, I feel like more people are like me more than we are willing to admit. We just dont engage on forums as much because the upper class people trying to use their GPUs as a member measuring contest end up dominating those spaces. But yeah, we exist. And there's more of us than the forums realize, we're actually the silent majority. We just end up checking out when stuff gets too expensive and we drop out of the market. And then people are like, "oh, well they chose not to buy, so we dont need to appeal to them, let's appeal to these rich people instead." It's survivorship bias. But yeah.
Anyway, just wanted to break down my mindset.
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