Remember how graphics card prices tripled several years ago, and never came back to sane prices?
Sigh.
I feel your pain :(
Yeah, but that affected only gamers, now it’s all computer nerds (corpos can switch to thin clients).
Only? That makes it seem as though gaming were a negligible fraction of the world’s entertainment time. It wouldn’t surprise me if it surpassed movies before long, if it hasn’t already.
I think I see your point though: RAM prices affect even more people than that.
I thought it surpassed it a long time ago, but I was surprised by how much:
The gaming industry has quietly become the world’s most dominant entertainment force, generating $184 billion annually — nearly double the combined revenue of movies ($33.9 billion) and music ($28.6 billion).
Edit: lol. That’s almost triple, not double. Whoever wrote that at Medium likely misinterpreted a ~200% increase to “double”.
PC gaming is about ¼ of that:
Mobile gaming is the largest segment by far – mobile games generated about $92 billion in revenue in 2024, 49% of the total market. Console games make up roughly 28% ($51B), and PC games about 23% (~$43B). (Newzoo, 2025).
But $43B is almost ⅓ more than the entire film industry. Wild.
A lot of PC gaming is happening on low-powered devices, though. About 1 in 8 PCs that participate in the Steam hardware survey have under 16GB of RAM, and the most common videocard is the laptop 4060.
(Granted, there are a lot of problems with making grand statements based on the Steam hardware survey.)
So I doubt RAM prices will impact PC games revenue too much—tonnes of games run on modest hardware, including some of the highest grossing (like Fortnite). So many amazing indie games run on a potato. Most will just use their old computer for a bit longer, or game on a laptop/console/Deck/whatever.
I’m totally happy with the Steam Deck, and play on it about 20× more than my PC (with an i5 12400, 6650XT 8GB, 1440p, and 32GB RAM—hardly beastly, but a fairly recent midrange build). 90%+ of my play time is small indie games, fwiw.
Interesting.
Do note, though, that I said entertainment time, not entertainment industry revenue.
It must far exceed, no? Not many people are watching back-to-back films for hours, but lots of people play games for huge stretches of time. The flip of that, too: lots of people pop their phone out in small bits of downtime (or even while “watching” a film, lol.)
I have no objective evidence, but I would find it easy to believe.
I’m more curious about how the hours spent watching movies and TV shows combined compare to the hours spent on video games, and how the two are changing over time in various countries.
If it stays high it well affect everything that uses RAM.
Oh no, my fridge!!!
I love GN for what they do, but I just can’t get into the video format for tech hardware news or reviews.
For some topics, I totally understand the strength of the video format, but for others it just doesn’t make sense to me. A review is much quicker to process with commentary text and relevant charts for benchmarking. I would argue the same for less in-depth news and analysis.
I also wish GN had a peetrube channel!
Is there an actual incentive for any for-profit channel to have a peertube channel? It seems like it would just reduce engagement that they actually get paid for.
You could still do sponsorships and Patreon, which for quite a few YouTubers are the main revenue sources. But of course if viewers don’t demand it there is no incentive to switch either.
Couldn’t they do both YouTube and another means of distribution?
Unless they’re getting paid directly, like through something like Nebula or their own service like a Dropout or Viva sort of thing, why wouldn’t they want their views to be somewhere that drives more meaningful numbers? Peertube isn’t going to bring them new users, and from what I’ve seen a lot of what’s on peertube seems to just be unauthorized reposts that pull away views.
Like, if I enjoy a creator who’s on YouTube, I’m not going to watch their stuff somewhere that doesn’t give them any meaningful recognition. Something like Patreon is great, but driving up their numbers on Peertube isn’t going to bring them to a wider audience the way driving up their engagement on YouTube would, and those numbers bring more people to their Patreon.
Why do work for free. Are you willing to pay for it? Or do you work for free?
FWIW, I do subscribe/scheduled donate to media sources (news/tech) and some YT content (not GN, because of the aforementioned preference for text, I only watch some of their videos).
Should GN move to PeerTube, I would consider a scheduled donation subscription purely to help kickstart the ecosystem.
I strongly believe that subscriptions/scheduled donation are the best way forward for media. Simple focus on sources that one uses regularly (more than once a week).
The best reason to watch his very long videos is if you like his specific kinda sarcasm and energy. Which, I do, but it is very whiny.
If building a PC does in fact get too expensive for individuals, I wonder what that will do for the sale of the Steam Machine which should (theoretically) get people into PC gaming for much cheaper. Maybe all-in-one pre-built PC’s like the steam machine become the norm…idk
It’s an interesting scenario.
I’d posit that the possibility mostly depends on the aquisition of RAM by Valve before the memory market implosion.
If Valve is able to successfully sell Steam Machines then other SIs and manufacturers might revisit the gaming market.
Based on Micron’s action of exiting the consumer market (by killing off their Crucial division) I’d imagine that most manufaturers are considering doing the same as the demand from AI hyperscalers has become obnoxiously enticing for most corporate entities.
Why is the steam machine not going to be subject to the same costs? Why then would we believe that valve will just eat that?
Your intuition is correct that the steam machine will go up in price but I think It’ll still have an edge over building your own PC for a couple of reasons:
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Valve has economies of scale and can make contracts directly with Dram manufacturers/distributers
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The Steam Machine is just already cheaper to make than a pre-built because it has a custom APU (rather than a standalone graphics card). Not to mention running Linux means not having to pay for a windows licence
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The Steam Machine only has 16 GB of RAM. Most everyone I know building gaming PCs with DDR5 are using 32 GB
The steam machine is not a cutting edge device, but its lower end capabilities may become normalised if building a new PC becomes cost prohibitive. It may force the whole gaming industry to take a step back for a few years. And I mean, the steam Machine can play Cyberpunk 2077 at 4k 60 fps with FSR upscaling so its got enough performance for lots of consumers
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Same as consoles. Sell at a loss to increase game sales and earn more on the backend.
Steam already rakes in cash due to being in a dominant market position on pc. Selling at a loss doesn’t get them much.
Consoles are completely locked down so there is only one store you can buy from. Consoles are a safer bet that lost hardware sales would lead to making it up on games.
But, Steam Machine is a PC. Not only can you install games from outside the Steam store. You are able to completely replace the OS. You can have a completely Steamless experience on it.
I wouldn’t mind if this led to devs stopping the constant push for heavier graphics in games and instead moved to making sure they run well with how upgrading is looking to be less and less feasible for more people.
I think economics would basically push things that way. If most people cannot or will not buy the latest hardware, the investment of 600 million dollars or more into a AAAA game that hardly anyone can run won’t happen.
I also think this would be positive honestly
I wonder what that will do for the sale of the Steam Machine which should (theoretically) get people into PC gaming for much cheaper.
Valve said they won’t subsidise the cost of the Steam Machine, it will be roughly the same price as a regular PC.
I think that quote says it would be cost competitive with equivalent PC parts, which is cheaper than buying a prebuilt computer, fwiw. (And you’ll get a compact GabeCube instead of a big tower).
I expect GabeCubes might be my kiddos first desktops. CachyOS should run like a dream on 'em, so they’ll work great as both computers and entry-level gaming rigs.
The explanation from this article made more sense to me: Sam Altman’s Dirty DRAM Deal, than DRAM manufacturers colluding to decommoditize PC computing.
That is not to say they did not willingly take advantage of the situation, they definitely did.
I also agree with GN that micron taking public money and then doing something against the public interest is a bad thing.
Corrupted memory? Happens a lot with my RAM. How unfortunate their memory has corrupted.
