The answer is found in capitalism. Why are gamers, who have continually been fucked by capitalism, so blind at seeing the obvious. '80s game crash: capitalism. Day one DLC: capitalism. Micro transactions: capitalism. All the hardware being hoovered up, so software costs more at every level, increasing prices for both hardware and software: capitalism.
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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My toast falling onto the carpet with the jelly side first? Capitalism.
Joke aside, yes. But this time it's a clear enemy called AI. So people have something to blame, while evading the real culprit.
The answer lies in the stupid shit economic, social, and political systems which allowed AI to become what it is rather than what it could have been. Not just AI.
These kinds of situations are inevitable in capitalism
Pretty sure wealthy scumbags have been centralizing production and distribution to jack prices for many more years than this ai boom.
We are paying more for a PlayStation so that idiots can use ChatGPT to mislead people on dating apps – something is rotten in the state of gaming
I need people to understand, AI is the current "thing". We have an industry that produces memory for this planet that is a functional monopoly. Today their excuse is AI. But their excuse for that sudden increase changes roughly every four years. And we continue to let them get away with it, because we collectively blame the consumer.
And do know, I'm not saying AI companies get pass from me. That's not the point here. The large AI companies and us regular people are consumers of the exact same product that only three companies provide. Those three companies have been legally found guilty in several courts of law across the world of colluding to increase prices, and because there's not really any other alternative, they chalk the fines up as the cost of business and we write it off as a necessary evil.
But when we blame AI (which there's lots to blame AI companies for, again that's beside the point here) we are just blaming a consumer of a product. We are basically saying "Why do they get that thing I wanted. I should be the one who gets it, not them." Now there's a lot of industry regulation and international treaties that ensure we're at the bottom of the list and AI companies pay into keeping that status quo. But let's be real here, if it wasn't them, it would be someone else.
When we say the reason computers and technology is getting expensive is because of AI, we are actually avoiding the real culprit here. A tightly controlled market, not unlike say the diamond business of old. And should AI fade away (which math equations that represent ways to optimize pattern matching are something we've found to be incredibly helpful) that tightly controlled, highly colluded, industry remains. And then we eventually find ourselves right back where we left off and are convinced to blame something else.
Again, this isn't trying to absolve the sins of AI companies. But it's to point out that this isn't an "AI has done all of this all by itself." And when we do that, we're providing cover for an industry that largely runs corrupt with impunity.
But when we blame AI...we are just blaming a consumer of a product
We are blaming a "consumer" that is consuming the entire world's supply of a product for no reason other than to destroy the planet and mislead investors in an effort to make themselves even richer.
That supply is constrained artificially for particular markets. There's nothing that stops Samsung, Hynix, or Micron from indicating particular runs for different sectors. And if those three had not removed other competition, we would have producers to increase that supply.
Again, this doesn't absolve the AI industry in the least. But we have makers that are only making limited selections of product for pure gain and are able to do that via their manipulation of the market. We don't always have to have a good guy and a bad guy, it can bad guys all around.
So, when an AI company achieves rampant success, they can start their own RAM fabs...
Yeah. I wish we could go back 3 years before this boom started and everything cheap...
Amazon 3 yrs ago: Why are you buying 20k 16GB and 32GB DDR5 sticks?
Oh, no reason...
Bah these articles are trash. I’ve got a 5 year old PC ands still playing games on high. For console, Switch games and even DS are still great portable and multiplayer options.
Gaming is cheaper than ever because we’ve got a massive backlog of great games that you’d never catch up on even if you did nothing but game all day. Plus stuff more than a few years old gets CHEAP!
I wouldn’t mind upgrading, but even if something dies I can buy a used replacement and keep going until this bubble pops.
Tell me you didn't read the article whithout telling me you didn't read the article. The point this article is making is that AI is driving up the cost of purchasing NEW components, and that this issue is affecting console makers as well as the PC market. Additionally, consoles that have been out for several years, (PS5 released in 2020,) haven't dropped in price, since in theory, demand should be low by now, but instead the prices have risen since their original release date.
I updated my PC a year ago, because before that I was rocking DDR3 ram and a 12 year old processor and GTX1060. My old PC was struggling to render newer titles with high settings and was not win11 compatible.
Fuck the gamers that want to upgrade their rigs to play newer titles on high, or people that don't already have a PC or console and are making their first purchase, DireTech already has a PC that can play titles and a backlog of games.
Tell me you didn't read my post without replying without...you know. Where did I mention new anywhere? Yes, bubbles ruin the price on the latest and greatest. We've been dealing with it since crypto. However, we don't NEED the latest and greatest anymore and haven't for years.
Despite the bubble, this is still a better time when it comes to ability to play awesome games for cheap than ever before.
I understand what you're both trying to say and I think you're talking past each other.
A new person entering the market doesn't have the option to rely on a backlog of games and if a component in your rig failed tomorrow it would be exhorbitantly expensive to replace it even if it were a budget rig.
The more budget you go, the harder it is to replace existing components because lots of things are incorporated and solder together as a cost cutting measure.
So say you're a new gamer hoping to buy a rig. New or used you're screwed right now even if all you want to play are AA or indie games and you never touch a AAA game. Buying used is going to be expensive because theres now a high demand for used hardware because new hardware is exhorbitantly expensive.
So even if what you say is true and we can all just get by with budget hardware, that hardware is still going to be prohibitively expensive and the reason is Generative AI and capitalism.
It's going to be interesting to see how this affects market expansion to, as you mentioned, audience that currently don't have rigs or consoles.
Im in this thread's op shoes: My PS5 is still rolling and so is my Switch that I've bought during COVID. Even my shitty laptop plays the strategy game Remakes that I would rather play there. I've got backlogs on all these devices, on PS5 even some physical ones. They could stop making games and I'd have enough to do for a while. So if you're in that kind of position right now you wouldn't notice the price increase. However, if you're now entering the market it's obviously bad timing, especially in PC gaming.
I just hope they're not pumping out a new PlayStation anytime soon. Let's get some more well optimized games there instead.
But if you aren't running the newest Call of Warfare: Modern Creed 7 at 4k 144fps with a computer that costs almost as much as a used car, you can't call yourself a real gamer!
RAM.
SYaC