The gaming market has had a rough go of it this decade – first COVID slowed down the rollout of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, then the crypto boom vacuumed up available GPUs, now AI has made RAM chips the new gold.
This has led to smartphone makers rising prices, but PCs and consoles are just as affected – the PS5, the Xbox, the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch all got more expensive. And that’s just some of the more high-profile products. Services are feeling the pain too – Microsoft wanted to raise the price of Game Pass, but changed its mind after loud complaints from users.
Things are so bad that Nvidia is re-releasing the GeForce RTX 3060 (originally from 2020), AMD is re-releasing the Ryzen 7 5800X3D (from 2022) and Intel is reportedly looking into new designs that will work with DDR4 RAM.
Smartphones rarely re-use old silicon, though it has been known to happen. The problem is that cutting-edge nodes are pricey, so flagships and high-end gaming phones are getting more expensive. And now mid-rangers are seeing price increases too.
All of this had us wondering – what do you all use for gaming? A PC or perhaps an x86 handheld? An ARM handheld, be it the Switch or otherwise? A home console or a game streaming service? A tablet or a smartphone?
Note: you can pick more than one option.
