AMD's latest top-end RX 6900 XT GPUs vacuumed up in minutes... maybe even by some actual gamers Geeks hoping to grab AMD’s latest and most powerful gaming graphics card, the RX 6900 XT, were left in the dust after available stocks were sucked dry from online stores minutes after the gear was launched on Tuesday. AMD CEO Lisa Su touted the RX 6000 family in October, presenting gamers with a cheaper alternative to Nvidia’s …
Gamers seem willing to put up with an awful lot. AAA titles which are broken on release. Micro-transactions and pay-to-win loot boxes. Constant multi-GB patches. Endless reskins of the same title. Paying over the odds for brand-new state-of-the-art hardware is just another burden to bear.
> Gamers seem willing to put up with an awful lot
You could say the same about sports cars, motorbikes, designer fashion, mobile phones, penthouse apartments...
Humans like shiny things, and a significant percentage like to have brand new shiny which they can wave at the Jones next door, even if it means accepting compromises and/or vastly inflated prices.
Thankfully, I've (mostly) worked that particular little foible out of my system - these days, I generally buy stuff that's either used or mid-tier. Either way, the prices tend to be less than half of the top-end new shiny, and that gives me more money for going to the pub...
"after available stocks were sucked dry from online stores minutes after the gear was launched on Tuesday."
Stolen by bots for scalpers. This needs sorting out.
Trying to build a gaming PC currently - with a RTX 3060Ti - and no stock and no date on when that stock will come back in stock (and even if it did - it would probably be grabbed straight away)
If you only want a nice card as an upgrade for a 780GTX, you can get one in a few days.
It's people who want the absolute latest only-released-in-the-last-few-weeks cards who are out of luck. If you're using a 780, I reckon the "official" retail prices for these are unlikely to meet your "reasonable or semi-reasonable price" criterion (never mind the scalpers' prices).
Fair point. It was an honest mistake on my part about the latest Nvidia cards. I can only say that what with... <waves at outside world> ...September feels like only a few weeks ago.
I'm also not the target market for these. Any gaming I do is on linux via Steam (and Proton), and I'm not interested in most of the recent titles which benefit most from this generation of cards. Everything I play seems to run just fine on my four-year-old card, possibly with a few settings turned down.
When the budget versions come out next year? Maybe, but I'm not desperate for one.
I'm not a target for two reasons. Firstly, I've got an NVidia card (AMD's range 4 years ago was not as good). Quite why NVidia's not supported I've no idea, and I suspect that it will shortly be fixed. Secondly, and more importantly, I'm firmly in the "50 quid for a sodding game?! It'll be half that in 3 months!" camp. Steam's sales (and Proton) mean that, like most of their users, I've got a bit of a backlog. No sense in buying it on launch day when I won't get round to playing it for months.
I've reported a few scalpers to Amazon - I am not alone in doing so, as these sellers get many comments calling them all sorts.
None of them taken down. See also Ebay
And what tech hardware shops have put up anti bot measures?
The sad truth is filthy lucre. They don't care how the money comes in or who, or what, it is for.
Just those with pockets deep enough to pay the scalpers.
This sort of scenario has been a problem for a long long time when it comes to things like music festivals and gigs.
Sadly, it's been difficult to get any traction on resolving the issue, not least because at least some of the ticket agencies also have their fingers in the resellers market.
And similarly when it comes to game consoles - Sony's PS5 may be scarce atm (and the Xbox Series X is nearly as bad), but the Nintendo Wii/Wii Fit were like hens teeth when they first came out.
You can also bet that there'll be some MBA types twitching at the thought of Sony/Nintendo/Nvidia/etc selling their wares at a price point below what the market is clearly willing to bear. And/or to rise up in protest at any attempts to implement anti-scalper mechanisms...
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