Like most PC gamers, I’m not thrilled about the sharp increases in PC parts pricing over the past year. Indeed, it seemed we had only just begun recovering from the skyrocketing GPU prices of the COVID-19 era when the cost of SSD and RAM started to rise at alarming rates.
A report from PCPartPicker illustrates just how dramatic these price hikes have been. For instance, the average cost of two 8GB sticks of DDR4 RAM hovered around $40 in July 2024; by November 2025, that average price had risen to $140. The rise in SSD pricing has been less extreme, but still notable: PC Gamer reports that the Western Digital Black SN850X 2TB SSD, an extremely common model, increased from $130 in August 2025 to $221 in December 2025.
What’s more concerning about SSD and RAM pricing is the supply shortage the components are facing as a result of en masse data center construction. These higher costs are troubling for a number of reasons, one of which being that the next generation of gaming hardware could be delayed.
Why RAM and SSD Shortages Could Mean a Longer Wait for New Gaming Tech
Consoles Sell at a Loss, Kind Of
Sony and Microsoft absolutely want people to buy their consoles, but perhaps not for the reason you think. It’s often said that modern consoles are sold at a loss, and this is partially true. While testifying as an expert witness during the 2021 Epic Games vs. Apple trial, Xbox business development VP Lori Wright claimed that the company has never profited from the sale of a console. Sony reported that it began turning a profit on PS5 Disc Edition consoles about a year after launch, though data about the console’s digital version is murkier.
It should be noted that Sony profiting from PS5 Disc Edition sales less than a year after launch is a bit unusual. Typically, console revenue only begins to surpass console production costs several years after initial launch, if at all.
The point is this: consoles make money from software sales, subscription services, and peripherals, accepting the losses on console sales as the cost of doing business. It’s more imperative to get users into a controlled ecosystem, which leads to these users generating revenue through digital purchases and accessories. But of course, these companies would rather not lose money on console sales, and they try to mitigate their console production costs as much as possible.
With the shockingly fast rise in SSD and RAM prices, it’s possible that this careful balance could be upset. It could very well make more sense to keep the current generation alive for longer, rather than incur far greater losses with the mass production of a brand-new console with the latest gaming hardware. This would also track with the console market’s current standings. PlayStation has completely outsold Xbox at this point, with the former likely not worried about the latter’s shrinking market share, and the latter knowing that it probably won’t outsell the former any time soon. The Nintendo Switch 2 has just been released, but Nintendo has never been bullish about tech advancements anyway. As such, it’s mostly exempt from the conversation at this point.
PC and Console Hardware Could Use a Breather
Sony’s PS5 sales might be through the roof, but consumer sentiment about console gaming certainly isn’t. There are a few reasons for this, though the chief one among them could be the incremental advancements between generations, where there used to be huge leaps. Consider the differences between the last few games on the PS1 and the first few on the PS2; they were night-and-day. The differences between the last few PS4 games and the first few PS5 games were virtually indistinguishable. A similar point can be made about the leap in capability between a 40-series NVIDIA GPU and a 50-series one.
Additional RAM, load times via an SSD, and general processing power are important, but these elements often do little to sway the emotion of the player, which is most crucial for any game. In other words, the awe that players may have felt about something like photorealistic graphics has plateaued over the years, not matching the sharp rise in component pricing. It may actually be a smarter fiscal decision for major publishers to focus on non-hardware-related points, such as novelty, narrative, or mechanical depth, when selling their upcoming games.
There’s also the matter of game streaming, which further disincentivizes customers from upgrading their console or PC setups.
The Good News: It’s Time for a New Perspective on Console and PC Hardware
The latest and greatest video game tech is no longer what it used to be. By and large, it would seem that consumers are drawn more to interesting experiences than cutting-edge hardware, as evidenced by 2025’s biggest games: of the six games nominated for Game of the Year at The Game Awards, only one—Death Stranding 2—can be realistically called “cutting edge” from a visual or technological perspective.
This isn’t to say that developers should stop trying to push technological boundaries, but both hardware manufacturers and consumers seem to be placing more value on games themselves rather than where they are played. What were once considered big-ticket advancements—ray-tracing, 4K, 60FPS, and the like—are now simply par for the course. And precious few consumers are making the case that 60FPS isn’t enough, or that 4K doesn’t offer a crisp enough image, for instance.
This is to say nothing of the undeniable success of low-spec games like Hollow Knight Silksong and Hades 2, which are below the technological par for modest PC builds and current-gen consoles. If SSD and RAM remain so expensive, both for consumers to purchase and for console manufacturers to use in their builds, more, better, lower-spec games will likely hit the market over the next few years. Audiences may have to make due with the current generation of consoles and PC kits for now, but that could translate to a greater abundance of better-optimized games, which play to the strengths of popular hardware instead of trying to chase the dragon of constant advancement.
