Things Are Only Getting More Expensive

Last month, when the Steam Machine came out, its $1049 price tag without a controller hit like whiplash for a lot of folks, but that price wasn’t especially surprising. Hardware across the PC landscape has been getting more expensive all year, and it’s even hit consoles, which have traditionally been immune from this kind of memory-induced price increase. The worst part? It’s only really getting started.

Over the last weekend, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier sat down with Valve engineers, who told him that the RAM crisis isn’t slowing down any time soon, and that it’s, in fact, worse than it seems. Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat said “Just in case people are not aware. What people are seeing on retail shelves right now, from our observations, is lagging what we’re seeing from a bulk supply by at least three to six months.”

Valve isn’t alone. Even Microsoft is feeling the pressure from the high memory prices, with CEO Asha Sharma claiming that the costs to manufacture Xbox consoles will end up around five times higher than they were by the end of 2027. And, if you apply the three-to-six month delay that Aldehayyat was talking about, it’s entirely possible that the Xbox Series X ends up costing just as much as the Steam Machine by the end of the year. After all, the 1TB model just went up to $800.

Right now, it’s hard to have any kind of optimism that gaming hardware will ever be affordable again. There are a few bright spots here and there, with a Class Action lawsuit being filed in California against the big three RAM manufacturers (Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix) accusing them of price fixing – something that has happened before, by the way. There’s a chance that lawsuit ends up doing something to the current supply crisis, but even if it does, it’ll probably be a few years before we see any kind of impact from it.

In the past, my advice would be to just ride out this shortage. Usually, when there was a RAM shortage or a GPU shortage or whatever else, you could upgrade other parts of your build until things got back to normal. But with the way the AI gold rush has caused prices on everything from RAM and SSDs to CPUs and GPUs to go up, it might be a while before anyone can get a reasonably priced upgrade.

Really, my recommendation is to just stick with the hardware you already have. If you already have a decent gaming PC, handheld or console, it might be the best move to just keep playing games there until this is all over – no matter how long it takes. Now, that might mean that you won’t be able to turn up all the eye candy in the latest games, but I’ve been surprised at how well new games run on low-to-mid-range hardware this year.

PC Gaming Actually Feels Good Right Now

Over the last six months, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to tinker with games more, seeking out the optimal graphics settings to get them to run well on lower-end hardware. What I’ve found is that the biggest PC games this year have been surprisingly well optimized. Even Crimson Desert, which wouldn’t even run on Intel graphics cards at launch, ran extremely smoothly on pretty much everything I ran it on, even if it had some weird visual glitches.

The same can be said for games like Pragmata, Forza Horizon 6 and the new Black Flag remake that just came out. I haven’t really had any problems getting games to run on lower-end hardware, and that, at least, is a welcome respite in an environment where everything is more expensive.

From the outside, it makes a lot of sense, too. After all, it doesn’t take a very keen eye to notice that hardware prices have gone way up over the last six months, and I’m sure game developers have noticed that folks are playing games on older hardware. At least until prices normalize – if they ever do – it just seems smart for devs to optimize games to run on more attainable systems.

I’m sure there will be some games over the next year that are going to punish lower-end hardware. For instance, the system requirements for The Blood of Dawnwalker are incredibly steep, and I’m sure Metro 2039 will have brutal requirements too. However, I’d love to see more games that can run just as well on a handheld as on a full-fledged gaming PC. And I haven’t been disappointed so far this year.

I don’t know if I’d recommend anyone actually get into PC gaming right now, just because hardware is so expensive. But, there are plenty of people who already have some type of gaming PC handy. If that’s you, my advice is to take care of your rig and keep it running smoothly. It seems like PC games are getting easier to run as the current generation of consoles starts entering its elder years. So, if you can already run games pretty well right now, you’ll probably be able to make it a few more years before you really need to upgrade.

And think about it this way: part of the magic of PC gaming is tweaking your games to get them running just right for your hardware. Right now, that’s easier to do than ever, as more developers add more robust graphics options to their games. As long as the trend of well-optimized games continues this year, and I hope it does, some light tweaking is going to go a long way.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra