At the end of this month, household negotiations over buying a PlayStation 5 will enter their 600th day of deadlock. Arrival at this milestone may well bring all parties back to the table, but a breakthrough still feels a long way off.

Part of the delay is that global economic forces are playing havoc with stock, of course. But this is by no means our first version of this argument. As each enchanting generation of console (particularly those of Sony and Nintendo) has come along, the question of the new machine’s cost-to-justifiability ratio blazes around several talking points.

Is it really that much better than the one you’ve already got? (Absolutely, yes, the existing model is now decade-old tech and just look at game X.) OK, but is it worth $500 when the games also cost $60? (Well, yes. See previous answer.) Really? And yet you whinge about the cost of the kids’ trainers. (Yes, but that’s totally different.) And so on. The support, this time, of a naggy 12-year-old in my lobbying effort has been useful, though not decisive.