Support NeoGAF

[kazuyamishima]

Sony and Nintendo secured some RAM but don't know for how long.

The only ones fucked in the very short future are PC Gamers and Microsoft with Xbox Series.

 

[BennyBlanco]

For the hundreds of millions of gamers allegedly on Steam, the income is very low.

Last real data was 2021 because a trial, and it was 2 billion for Valve, so probably some 7-8 billion overall. Since then it's probably a bit more, specially adding Steam Deck sales and all. 10 billion, 12 maybe. For having like 200m active users monthly and getting that after Newzoo half the playtime comes from GAS, it's not so much. Oh, and the gambling with loot boxes.

I think that's why the other poster said that, they spend big money in the rig, but then play the uncle scrooge or jack sparrow game about buying games. Selling anything over 25 is very hard on Steam, some other publisher said these days.

I mean, in the Newzoo report it was stated only 5% of Steam users buy games released in the current year and at full price or nearly.

Most users wait for heavy discount sales, buy very old games, or buy pirated keys in those online stores and then activate them on Steam as part of their library.

Pirated keys huh?

 

[SolidQ]

 

[Deficit]

I'm holding onto my backup 2x16DDR4 kit for a longgg time.

 

[Griffon]

So that's how we get fucked by shitty cloud gaming... People will gaslight themselves into thinking it's just as good (like some morons did here sometimes)... enjoy your input lag, shitty uneven framepacing and compression artifacts.

Fuck...

 

[LazyParrot]

What's with all the people thinking consoles won't be affected by this? Same thing happened in another recent discussion about AMD and Nvidia focusing on AI chips over consumer graphics hardware.

Where do you think the hardware in your consoles comes from?

 

[Magic-DEI-Hire]

Anyone want to start raiding these AI data centers (ARC Raiders style)?

 

[Magic Carpet]

Anyone want to buy my old 2X8GB DDR5? 16GB just sitting in a box not being used for anything.
It will only cost you the price of a PS5 Pro. Pretty good deal I say.

 

[Hector Hall]

Pirated keys huh?

Well, most keys are pirated by definition. Many developers/publishers have expressed clearly that they prefer piracy to those key stores, at least with piracy no one is getting rich robbing them.

 

[LQX]

Honest question, what can be done? Unless you want to nationalise consumer ram production then these companies are going to follow the money regardless of who loses out.

I honestly don't know, but we have the FTC and its laws which are ideally there to protect consumers/economy from price collusions, mergers, etc., so maybe we also need one where a company crucial(pun intended) to the consumer market like Micron or even NVidia, cant pivot away from it or abruptly just abandon it solely for more profit. This going to fuck consumers over just for AI which is also fucking consumers over.

 

[forsakkenSoul]

It's a hot take, but PC gamers are pretty terrible customers. They pirate games and are constantly looking for the cheapest option in an open market.

If there's no way to capture a customer on PC, then companies will just move on to where the money is.

For the hundreds of millions of gamers allegedly on Steam, the income is very low.

Last real data was 2021 because a trial, and it was 2 billion for Valve, so probably some 7-8 billion overall. Since then it's probably a bit more, specially adding Steam Deck sales and all. 10 billion, 12 maybe. For having like 200m active users monthly and getting that after Newzoo half the playtime comes from GAS, it's not so much. Oh, and the gambling with loot boxes.

I think that's why the other poster said that, they spend big money in the rig, but then play the uncle scrooge or jack sparrow game about buying games. Selling anything over 25 is very hard on Steam, some other publisher said these days.

I mean, in the Newzoo report it was stated only 5% of Steam users buy games released in the current year and at full price or nearly.

Most users wait for heavy discount sales, buy very old games, or buy pirated keys in those online stores and then activate them on Steam as part of their library.

Jesus Christ. The amount of stupidity I've just read is immeasurable.

 

[OverHeat]

Damn my ram is now 3X in price what I paid for

 

[ReasonBeing]

I wish we could all collectively decide to reject these brands when they undoubtedly come crawling back to the consumer market when the AI bubble pops.

 

[Sethbacca]

What's with all the people thinking consoles won't be affected by this? Same thing happened in another recent discussion about AMD and Nvidia focusing on AI chips over consumer graphics hardware.

Where do you think the hardware in your consoles comes from?

Obviously it's going to impact bottom line pricing of consoles, I think most people are just thinking that large corporate customers like Sony and MS will have the ability to continue to source their modules. It will have a MORE direct impact on people buying ram modules because they're gonna get fucked directly by the supply not meeting the demand.

 

[ReasonBeing]

Well, most keys are pirated by definition. Many developers/publishers have expressed clearly that they prefer piracy to those key stores, at least with piracy no one is getting rich robbing them.

I don't think you know what the term "by definition" means

 

[CentralScrutinizer]

I wish we could all collectively decide to reject these brands when they undoubtedly come crawling back to the consumer market when the AI bubble pops.

The AI bubbling ain't "popping." When they start burning through investor money they'll start burning through tax payer dollars when the government bails them out with our money. Governments WANT AI to succeed.

 

[LordCBH]

Damn my ram is now 3X in price what I paid for

 

[Zathalus]

For the hundreds of millions of gamers allegedly on Steam, the income is very low.

Last real data was 2021 because a trial, and it was 2 billion for Valve, so probably some 7-8 billion overall. Since then it's probably a bit more, specially adding Steam Deck sales and all. 10 billion, 12 maybe. For having like 200m active users monthly and getting that after Newzoo half the playtime comes from GAS, it's not so much. Oh, and the gambling with loot boxes.

I think that's why the other poster said that, they spend big money in the rig, but then play the uncle scrooge or jack sparrow game about buying games. Selling anything over 25 is very hard on Steam, some other publisher said these days.

I mean, in the Newzoo report it was stated only 5% of Steam users buy games released in the current year and at full price or nearly.

Most users wait for heavy discount sales, buy very old games, or buy pirated keys in those online stores and then activate them on Steam as part of their library.

Absolute nonsense. Over half of Capcom's revenue comes from PC. 20 games released this very year had a CCU over a 100k.

Well, most keys are pirated by definition. Many developers/publishers have expressed clearly that they prefer piracy to those key stores, at least with piracy no one is getting rich robbing them.

That's bullshit. With these keys the publisher gets 100% of the revenue, often times making more money than they would from Steam. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of these keys come from sources like credit card fraud.

 

[lh032]

seems like more and more companies leaving the PC gaming hardware market.

Evga left, and now crucial.

Something is going on now.

 

[mckmas8808]

yeah, no.

crucial is a subsidiary of Micron, and they use micron memory in a lot of their products.

further more, consider it this way. let us say (hypothetically) that crucial makes up 10% of the home market.

They are not going to free up their supply of chips used for the home market so that someone else can use it to make memory for the consumer market. . They are going to repurpose them into enterprise, decreasing the amount of available memory in the consumer market.

Which will lead to higher prices to memory.

 

[Pejo]

This type of news just makes me more eager to see the eventual AI bubble pop. I don't know when it will happen, but I have a feeling in my gut that it will. It's looking like an endless money printing machine to a lot of people, meanwhile OpenAI doesn't see any possibility for profit in the near to mid future. Interesting times ahead, either way.

 

[JimmyRustler]

just hope nothing breaks in the next 2 - 3 years.

I have 2 years warranty. Should be good I think. Just hope I have no starter issues...
Also, I do not game that much and usually not more than an hour at a time.

Well, we'll see.

 

[Zathalus]

seems like more and more companies leaving the PC gaming hardware market.

Evga left, and now crucial.

Something is going on now.

No? There are far more PC hardware companies right now than there has ever been. GPU AIBs haven't moved much, EVGA left but ASRock stepped in. Chinese based AIBs are also way more popular like Yeston.

If you look at things like controllers, keyboards, and mice the number of options dwarf what was available even 10 years ago. A lot thanks to China but western brand like Fractal are also more popular.

Crucial leaving the market has got nothing to do with PC gaming, and everything to do with AI. Not that they were even a PC gaming focused brand to begin with. No more than something like Dell is.

 

[Zacfoldor]

Hey Siri, remind me in 12 months so we can all laugh at how this post aged.

Just a quick check on prices to make sure my math is mathing. Switch 2 launched in June 5, 2025 for $449.99 MSRP in the USA.

I just checked a g.skill kit on amazon that costs $89.99 on June 6th 2025. Today that kit costs $329.99.

The key to me winning this is going to be the starting date. You should not put your timer 1 year from today. Put it 1 year from the launch of Switch 2. June 5th 2025. Then compare price increases of building a PC to buying a Switch 2 and you think the Switch 2 will go up more or the same as a pc? What are you predicting? Consoles may go up some but clearly the biggest price increases will be felt on the consumer memory market and not the console market.

Do you think the console will go up some but not as much as the PC? Because that is what I'm saying and...an obvious thing to me, but maybe you know more than I do. If I told you I only count the Switch 2 would you still be confident I'm wrong? Remember part of my reasoning in this is that console makers will absorb some of the costs, so there can't really be any excuses about stuff like that. I spelled out my reasoning very well in my other post so if I'm wrong it will be very easy to see where I went wrong. I try not to post guesses without also posting the reasoning, you just get better replies.

I added this under my original post but did not change any text before the edit, "It isn't fair to take 1 year from today since RAM prices are already up 500% for PC gaming right now according to google ai. Instead we would need to use a date for comparison from before ram prices began to increase. For ease of calculation I suggest the console we use to verify this is the Switch 2 and we should use its launch date June 5th 2025 when it had a MSRP of $449.99 in the US. If we really want to test this we should compare the MSRP of base Switch 2 in the US on June 5th 2025 and June 5th 2026 and get a price difference. If the price difference is zero it will just be zero. Then we look at a set of g.skill high end ram on newegg on on June 5th 2025 and June 5th 2026 and compare those prices and see which one goes up the most."

 

[mckmas8808]

Unless the bubble bursts, cloud gaming will be the only option in a few years whether you like it or not.

But wouldn't the price of cloud gaming go up too, on a per month basis to cover their increased cost?

 

[Durin]

That's pretty crazy, and unfortunate to hear. I have a 4tb Crucial nvme ssd in my PC because of their solid pricing, and 2 smaller ones for cache in my older NAS.

It would be a great marginalization technique for PC gamers to use to say that this affects everyone(I am not accusing you of having an agenda, to the contrary I know you do not) but just pointing out to others reading who may have seen this stated across the web.

There are some people that will platform war about it, along with console users thinking no price increases are in their future. PC is more effected because there are consumer components that can be snatched up for direct use, but vram + ssd storage is used in all these devices, and the foundries not meeting demand will drive up costs for everything. Sony was the smartest in the room for stockpiling the most.

 

[Deficit]

seems like more and more companies leaving the PC gaming hardware market.

Evga left, and now crucial.

Something is going on now.

One step closer to your wet dream. Of sony being the ONLY gaming platform avaliable to gamers.

 

[DeepEnigma]

But wouldn't the price of cloud gaming go up too, on a per month basis to cover their increased cost?

That's a given. Subs stay raising prices while stripping QoL features.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

In a general sense, if you've got any plans to upgrade your electronic crap in the next year, you might want to pull your plans forward now while stuff is still cheap during the current holiday shopping season

I overhauled my gaming PC when there were some BF deals going on last week

I upgraded my PS5 to a Pro with a trade in because I expect console prices must increase next year too

I'm thinking about upgrading my Macbook Pro since I have a 5 years old M1 (first gen Apple Silicon) MBP and there's a deal at Costco right now

I bought a new phone earlier this year so I'm good there

 

[RafterXL]

Can we stop pretending that this is just a phase and will go away if we ignore it? This is the first domino and it's going to keep happening and PC gaming got hit first but it's coming for everything. I constantly see people acting like this is some boogeyman, but it's happening, it's real, and it's going to get worse...buckle up.

 

[mckmas8808]

In a general sense, if you've got any plans to upgrade your electronic crap in the next year, you might want to pull your plans forward now while stuff is still cheap during the current holiday shopping season

I overhauled my gaming PC when there were some BF deals going on last week

I upgraded my PS5 to a Pro with a trade in because I expect console prices must increase next year too

I'm thinking about upgrading my Macbook Pro since I have a 5 years old M1 (first gen Apple Silicon) MBP and there's a deal at Costco right now

I bought a new phone earlier this year so I'm good there

I hate when people like this say AI is a big pyramid scheme. Like bro.....AI is real and it's not a scheme.

 

[willothedog]

PS5 uses Micron unlike the other two consoles, what will they do now?

 

[Deficit]

In a general sense, if you've got any plans to upgrade your electronic crap in the next year, you might want to pull your plans forward now while stuff is still cheap during the current holiday shopping season

I overhauled my gaming PC when there were some BF deals going on last week

I upgraded my PS5 to a Pro with a trade in because I expect console prices must increase next year too

I'm thinking about upgrading my Macbook Pro since I have a 5 years old M1 (first gen Apple Silicon) MBP and there's a deal at Costco right now

I bought a new phone earlier this year so I'm good there

I wonder if I should trade my PS5 slim+series x for a pro? I already have a 3080/5700x3d. Just looking at backup options I suppose.

 

[DeepEnigma]

I hate when people like this say AI is a big pyramid scheme. Like bro.....AI is real and it's not a scheme.

Oh, it's real. Doesn't make it any less a big player (vehicle) in an overall global scheme. See my post on the first page.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I hate when people like this say AI is a big pyramid scheme. Like bro.....AI is real and it's not a scheme.

Some of the circular investment stuff is pretty sus TBH but the reality that the majority of AI investment isn't like that and it's mainly Big Tech companies who have money to burn which are investing so it's not like they will be worried if it doesn't work out for them

OpenAI is probably already dead though. You didn't hear it here first. Customers are starting to abandon ChatGPT for better options like Gemini, Grok, and Claude

 

[Unknown Soldier]

“PC Manufacturers Are Helpless With Memory Shortages,” as a Supply Chain Source Claims That Newer Products Will Be Much More Expensive

The PC supply chain has begun to react to the memory shortage, as a new report indicates a massive price hike wave is approaching gamers.

wccftech.com

Just so you realize your prebuilt desktops and laptops on the market now were already built with cheaper memory. Next year though......

 

[mckmas8808]

“PC Manufacturers Are Helpless With Memory Shortages,” as a Supply Chain Source Claims That Newer Products Will Be Much More Expensive

The PC supply chain has begun to react to the memory shortage, as a new report indicates a massive price hike wave is approaching gamers.

wccftech.com

Just so you realize your prebuilt desktops and laptops on the market now were already built with cheaper memory. Next year though......

So this is the real reason we don't have a price for the GabeCube yet....

 

[Deficit]

So this is the real reason we don't have a price for the GabeCube yet....

Honestly, there's no way new consoles can come out in 2027. Devs are gonna have to batten down the hatches and learn to optimize. Like how 7th gen was extended.

 

[Kadve]

Hopefully this will pass like GPU prices and Crypto mining soon enough.

 

[NeonDelta]

My only decision now is should I splurge for ps5 pro or just ride out the ps5?

I'm beginning to wish I'd gone for the pro a few weeks ago when I swapped my launch ps5 for a slim

 

[Bojji]

I hate when people like this say AI is a big pyramid scheme. Like bro.....AI is real and it's not a scheme.

Oh, it's real. Doesn't make it any less a big player (vehicle) in an overall global scheme. See my post on the first page.

It kinda is, only companies making big money on it are hardware manufacturers.

 

[onQ123]

I hope Sony continued with their ReRAM plans because right now would be the perfect time to use it in PS6

 

[Skifi28]

But wouldn't the price of cloud gaming go up too, on a per month basis to cover their increased cost?

Not at first

 

[NeonDelta]

How is anyone going to use AI when no one can afford to buy laptops/pc's/phones anymore

 

[Deficit]

How is anyone going to use AI when no one can afford to buy laptops/pc's/phones anymore

You don't want to know the answer to that one.

 

[CLW]

Ps5 Pro MASTERRACE

also when the INEVITABLE ai bubble bursts remember which companies weren't too keen on your business

 

[adamsapple]

For the hundreds of millions of gamers allegedly on Steam, the income is very low.

Last real data was 2021 because a trial, and it was 2 billion for Valve, so probably some 7-8 billion overall. Since then it's probably a bit more, specially adding Steam Deck sales and all. 10 billion, 12 maybe. For having like 200m active users monthly and getting that after Newzoo half the playtime comes from GAS, it's not so much. Oh, and the gambling with loot boxes.

I think that's why the other poster said that, they spend big money in the rig, but then play the uncle scrooge or jack sparrow game about buying games. Selling anything over 25 is very hard on Steam, some other publisher said these days.

I mean, in the Newzoo report it was stated only 5% of Steam users buy games released in the current year and at full price or nearly.

Most users wait for heavy discount sales, buy very old games, or buy pirated keys in those online stores and then activate them on Steam as part of their library.

"Buy pirated keys"

 

[RCX]

Fucking clankers.

 

[ShirAhava]

 

[jm89]

The only ones fucked in the very short future are PC Gamers and Microsoft with Xbox Series.