I’m thinking even for cases of like shrinkflation.
I saw an article about potentially cheaper RAM here, so it got me curious if things ever really get better on occasion.
Bowling Alleys, at least some of the ones I’ve seen lately. There was a period in the late 00s where bowling alleys thought they were the shit and started charging upwards of $20/player/lane, plus $30+ dollar pizzas. Not to mention the arcade jumping from quarters to dollar-credits.
The last couple I’ve found have all but dropped that, basically back down to the $15/lane/2 hour model with however many players and complimentary shoe rental. One even had $5 personal pizzas (that yes were just Totinos or similar heated up, but hey it’s better than $30 for a red baron).
I guess the ones that survived covid realized no one was willing to spend a nice dinner’s worth of cash on a night at what should be the second cheapest type of third space available to people.
Video games
Had a huge crash around the Atari era due to an overwhelming amount of shovelware being published. Games were also extremely expensive then
Nintendo famously reversed this crisis with the introduction of the NES and their “Nintendo seal of quality”. Consumers were able to access a curated collection of quality games, and it really turned things around and basically launched the modern gaming industry
Steam, too. It was originally unpopular DRM for Half-Life 2. It had a broken offline mode that could only be selected when already online. It had no meaningful customer service and people permanently lost their accounts with no avenue for appeal (and probably no human even involved).
