The DeanBeat: Black Friday lets us enjoy the low cost of computing and entertainment

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
November 29, 2019
Updated June 20, 2025
5 min

I’ve done some conspicuous consumption already during the holiday season, even though Black Friday is barely upon us. A series of unfortunate incidents have befallen my electronic life, and I had to rectify the situation immediately. And all I have to say about that is thank heaven for Moore’s Law, the continuously falling price of electronics, and the cutthroat entertainment wars.

During one of my overseas adventures, I managed to lose a lot of dearly beloved electronic items in a very short space of time, and I had to replace them quickly. And now I find that I’ve got a cornucopia of choices on what to do with my new gear and how to entertain myself.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.