"These price increases have multiple intertwining causes, some direct and some less so: inflation, pandemic-era supply crunches, the unpredictable trade policies of the Trump administration, and a gradual shift among console makers away from selling hardware at a loss or breaking even in the hopes that game sales will subsidize the hardware. And you never want to rule out good old shareholder-prioritizing corporate greed.
But one major factor, both in the price increases and in the reduction in drastic “slim”-style redesigns, is technical: the death of Moore’s Law and a noticeable slowdown in the rate at which processors and graphics chips can improve."
I don’t agree. It is capitalism, but not in a bad way. Simply put it is economy logic. Chip market has shifted from consumer market to the enterprise market.
So because the supply is limited, the demand has gone way up, and enteprise market has a lot, a mean a lot of money to spare buying, because it is an investment for them and not entertainment.
Also some bad capitalist tacticts in other areas, hard drives for example, that the big players reduced production to keep prices from falling. They cotribute to the problem, but they are not the major factor.