Yeah absolutely. Tbh if it wasn't the fact that I mainly only play DCS with a bit of Post Scriptum from time to time, honestly I would already have done. Shudders at the thought
For people who want to play the latest "big" games, perhaps. Most of what I play on PC simply isn't available on console, i.e. modded games, older games, emulators and WoW. But then none of that stuff requires the latest and greatest GPU, or anything close to it in most cases. There's plenty more to do than play the latest AAA slop. Persona 5 Royal will be my next obsession in a week's time and the recommended specs for that are a GTX 760 or HD 7870. Seems once again PC gaming's death has been greatly exaggerated.
But the issue is that as these price rises get worse,at some point the PC parts need to be replaced or upgraded. Think what happens if we have multiple generations of these sorts of high prices?
As the top end goes up it starts to destroy the value preposition of mainstream parts. I generally buy only mainstream parts,like 95% of gamers I know and the stagnation is very real especially looking at what you used to see 10 years ago. I know very few who spend £500+ on a dGPU or that much on a new CPU.
It's sheer madness,that a 300MM2 die area Ada part starts at over £900! The GA106 in the RTX3060 is almost the same size as AD104.
Many on here throw money at the hobby with unlimited budgets,so see nice gains. Its not the case if you are more of a normal gamer.
It also causes the costs of secondhand parts to go up too. The mainstream dGPUs are getting more and more expensive,as is all the other parts like needing a better CPU,etc. So you can hold off upgrading for years and end up still paying a lot for a relatively mediocre PC.
For my none gaming stuff and oldish games a decentish laptop would do the job perfectly fine. The only reason I upgrade or even have a desktop is mostly for running newer games - so if the cost of mediocre parts are getting worse and worse(which can't even run most of the effects well),then what is the point of paying so much for a mainstream PC?
A console will do the job,especially as most people have only a limited amount of gaming time,so even if the games cost more,it's still cheaper longterm. Consoles are increasing supporting mods,etc too.
In any normal situations companies seeing billions in lost revenue,tanking share prices,etc would think reducing prices to get more sales would make sense. But not for greedy tech companies such as Nvidia,Intel and AMD who feel the need to jack pricing up even more because of the availability of cheap credit. They seem to be banking on PCMR whales. I hope the financial situation gets worse for them,because the era of cheap credit is over.