To be fair it’s not really further innovation at this point. Selling under spec 5800x3d’s as a lower model just makes economic sense. AMD has been doing that since the phenom days with unstable x6 cpus being core locked and sold as x4.

People out here acting like AMD is looking out for the poor when they are justing rebranding a cpu to prevent losses.

Just wait til steam deck 2 drops quicker then expected and all these fomo buyers are gonna be taking another loss to sell their oled.

In a way steam is kind of forced to get something out quicker because competition is coming and higher performance is getting cheaper and cheaper. ROG ally and Legion Go is a good example of this competition. Most handheld pcs with their specs were $1100+ until they came out.

Steam doesn’t have the benefit someone like Nintendo has, who controls massive IPs on their platform. Hence why Nintendo can get away with selling a 6 year old glorified android tablet with an oled screen for $350. Anybody with a handheld pc can run steam and steam games.

I was 11 when MGS:3 snake eater came out. It was like 8pm on release night (saw it advertised on g4tv) and I went to my local eb games with the money I saved up. The two guys at the counter looked at me when I asked for it, whispered to each other, then sold me the game without my parents there lol. Even threw in an eb games employee tekken shirt that I still have. Played the shit out of that game for months on end.

My experience as a kid at eb games was far from scarring. Those employees were fucking awesome.

WOW was also a different era and it’s timing was impeccable. It came out before social media and smartphones, but during the rise of pc gaming and the internet. It was a novel way to connect and socialize with people all over the world on the ever expanding internet. It was just as much a social platform as it was a game.

WOW could never be recreated or toppled because it was the industry leader during those pivotal years…and those years are long gone. The younger generations have so many ways to connect with people nowadays that MMOs past novelty just doesn’t matter much anymore.

Back then there was a sense of exploration of this never before seen interconnected world. There is no way to recreate that since it’s already past.

There will never be another WOW.