Hardcore PC Gaming Is About to Die

The future is looking pretty bleak for PC gaming, unfortunately. Gaming has always been a really expensive hobby, thanks to games costing $60 or more, consoles costing upwards of $400, and recurring costs like online subscriptions. However, you also get a lot of value out of the hobby. Games can be replayed for years, free games like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone make things accessible without restricting players, and a lot of games justify their cost with tons of content that keep you occupied for dozens, if not hundreds, of hours. However, things are only getting more and more expensive, making it harder to buy-in or support the hobby.

Earlier this year, gaming companies like Xbox and Nintendo flirted with the idea of $80 games, a $10 increase from the $70 price point that became standard back in 2020/2021. While that hasn’t really caught on across the entire industry, it wouldn’t be shocking to see it in a year or two. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate’s cost also jumped to $30/month, making it one of the most subscriptions out there. Then the hardware itself became even more expensive, with price hikes on PS5 and Xbox, the latter suffering the most after the Xbox Series X hit a retail price of $650. However, consoles aren’t the only ones hurting.

PC Gaming Is Starting to Price Players Out

PC has always been the most premium place to play, but it is highly rewarding. You get total control and customization over not just what’s running your games, but how you play your games. There’s a wide variety of platforms out there, from Steam to Epic Games Store; it’s a great platform for gaming. However, an already expensive, but worthwhile platform is starting to head toward unsustainable pricing.

Unlike Xbox and PlayStation, PC is an open platform. That means there isn’t one mega corporation building every PC that has to answer to investors and stay somewhat reasonably priced for customers. Pre-builts exist, but a lot of people buy their parts a la carte and build their rig themselves. Unfortunately, if you don’t already have a PC or haven’t upgrade it in a long time, the cost to stay in the ecosystem may be too much to bear.

A lot of the most crucial components for building a new gaming PC, particularly GPUs and RAM, have jumped in price. I built my PC in August 2023, and my GPU (an NVIDIA GTX 4070 RTX) was $639.99. It’s now $949.99. According to Amazon’s price history, it has jumped $150 in the last 90 days alone. RAM is now skyrocketing as well, with some sticks now being double their original price. Why is this happening, though?

GPUs have been driven up over the years and heavily scalped for cryptocurrency mining, but now the AI boom is requiring an excess of RAM. AI companies are now being prioritized over the average consumer so people can generate AI images, videos, and ask riveting questions to ChatGPT that could easily be answered without AI. It’s frustrating for everyone trying to build a PC, especially those who may be pivoting away from console after seeing their prices spike and the hikes on subscriptions. Even Xbox may see a price hike due to the RAM issues.

Not only that, but it is rumored that NVIDIA is planning to outright significantly scale back its production plans for its GPUs, with reports claiming that it could cut as much as 40% of GPU production. According to Board Channels, NVIDIA may even reportedly temporarily discontinue the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB. This is due to the memory shortage, as AI companies are eating up all of the supply that not even the companies making other PC parts have enough memory to go around.

As you’ve likely heard a million times before, AI isn’t going away. Maybe RAM prices will go down eventually if manufacturers can keep up with demand, but is that likely with how AI continues to become more widely adopted? It doesn’t seem like it would happen anytime soon, if ever. The one saving grace here may be the Steam Machine, Valve’s console-like PC, though it will likely still be more expensive than the average console. Even so, it will still be a relatively open device that can be used like a traditional PC.

Either way, it does feel like the accessibility of hardcore PC gaming is being squeezed hard. It’s only getting more and more expensive, the components are getting harder to acquire because companies don’t even have the resources to produce them, and gamers are becoming increasingly unhappy with the entire thing.

“I can’t believe I won’t be able to upgrade my GPU because some asshat wanted a video of a giant fu–ing sushi roll,” said Reddit user Sperium3000. Others have equated building a PC prior to the RAM shortage to catching the last chopper out of Vietnam. All in all, it’s a mess and it seems like things are just getting worse. RAM manufacturers don’t really have a reason to care because they are still making boatloads of cash off of this. NVIDIA is still going to sell through the bulk of its stock as well, even if it can’t produce as much as it would like.

It’s becoming less accessible, more expensive, and increasingly annoying to build a PC, let alone upgrade it. Maybe someone will solve the issue, but it feels pretty hopeless at the moment. For years, the number of new PC gamers has grown by 3 – 4% each year, but we may see that number decline in the coming years if this keeps up.

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