There’s so many dogshit games coming out that are riddled with microtransactions because charging $60 to $100 for a new game wasn’t enough profit. Produce a game worth a shit and requires top end hardware and I’ll consider upgrading

The stagnation of generational GPU gains hasn’t really had an effect on my interest in PC gaming at all. I just don’t really care about playing those cinematic console ports that need 8-12GB of VRAM.

They are not compelling enough for me to upgrade from the RTX 2060, I bought in 2019. That I plan to keep for the entire console generation just like my previous graphics card. For the games / emulators I find myself actually interested in, it’s still overkill and easily 4k capable in contrast to the ridiculously priced cards tech sites recommend for that resolution.

I’m not really a metroidvania or even much of a fan of indies in general but Vernal Edge might just be the best game released in 2023 for me. That’s just how disinterested I am with most of this years AAA releases. High end PC gaming is suffering more from a lack of exceptional content than from extortionate hardware pricing.

Watching someones playthrough of the original PS3 Last of Us years ago was enough for me. I don’t really find the gameplay of that type of game all that interesting.

I don’t believe it’s entirely price gouging. It’s also because the price of designing and fabbing chips skyrockets while gains diminish as the node sizes shrink past what was achievable with planar. Mobile chips have also stagnated in sustained performance so its not just PC companies.

I won’t ever move from PC gaming since the price of console games makes them far more expensive in the long run while paying for PC games is effectively optional. Running emulators / piracy on consoles requires the hassle of jail-breaking and also having a PC is useful in far more ways than just gaming. I rarely if ever watch movies or T V series as the vast majority of the content just isn’t something I’m interested in.

I don’t live with my parents anymore. Having a partner, pets, full time employment and not enough real estate for a tabletop pc makes pc gaming an impossibility for me.

Priority changes, life moves on, and I’m reasonably happy to play games on switch or simpler games on my laptop. Which runs most stuff interested in on an integrated gpu.

So… Not really much of a point to spend money on pc gaming.

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i don’t think it’s a matter of people boycotting sellers, it’s just that people are prioritizing portable stuff like laptops, tablets or smartphones rather than PCs. Prices aren’t helping, but the main thing is that nowadays it’s easier and easier to game on laptops, which have the added benefit of being portable. Unless you need a fat PC because your profession requires a lot of computing power (idk, vfx artists for example?) there aren’t many reasons to buy a pc instead of a high-performance laptop.

I used to have a pc which i built. Then i got a beefy laptop and i have been gaming on it for 6 years, and i also used it for school for example. Or to get work done while i was abroad. Yes, i have to play some games on medium settings instead of high, but the value i got from my money is just far more.

The need to build a pc is rapidly becoming more and more limited to people who care about gaming that the highest possible end or those who physically can’t met the requirements of their job with a laptop.

Look at steam’s top sellers. Most of those games can be played well enough on any laptop with anything more than an Intel Iris integrated graphics card.

Another aspect imo is the proliferation of launchers. Nowadays every game needs its own launcher, be it Origin, Epic, Uplay… a lot of junk which often works terribly, isn’t convenient at all, and forces you to spend time making accounts, doing logins, waiting for them to update, fix the problems they have all the time… It was different when it was pretty much only steam, but now it’s not hard to see why the average gamer would prefer the plug and play console experience.

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You get a lot less for your money now. The $200 to $300 (new hardware) price point is not the same as it once was and the mere existence of a RTX 3050 or Radeon 7500 doesn’t compare with the value proposition of earlier generations.

The fact that a GTX 1660 ti bought new is a competitive value proposition to the RTX 3050 even today speaks volumes. Also, Nvidia just downgraded their entire product stack (4060 ti has performance I’d expect from the 4060 or 4050 ti branding, for example but priced just as high as a 3060 ti was).

My first big GPU purchase was in 2013. I splurged on a Radeon HD 7950, the second best AMD had to offer at the time and possibly the best value. It was something like $300CAD, an absurd amount of money for me at the time but with no living expenses to speak of I went for it. That was such a good GPU, and I got four years out of it before selling the PC and moving abroad. I can’t imagine I would have upgraded until it broke, had I kept the computer.

Ten years later I still can’t bring myself to go above that $300-350 range, yet there’s nothing worthwhile anymore. What happened to the $200 budget range do-it-all GPU? I’ve seen it explained as inflation but that only covers a small part of the increase in price. It may well be that 50% generational performance gains are a thing of the past, and that’s fine in itself. But when prices are going up 30% and performance only 20% people start to notice and take more time planning their next builds, if they even bother.