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The story
On 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board, a discussion heated up after memory prices quadrupled and SSD prices tripled, sparking claims that “PC gaming might really be over.” Some pointed to the graphical quality of Nintendo’s Ocarina of Time remake and argued that “a handheld like the Switch 2 is good enough,” while others countered that the PC market is on a completely different scale from the Switch 2. Still others noted that since GPU makers aren’t releasing budget-tier models, even if the number of PC owners doesn’t decline, the number of “people who actually game on PC” might shrink — and the thread split over how seriously to take the impact of the price hikes.
What people said
Guess Switch 2 is the only option left.
and just watch videos of it instead — turns out quite a few folks on overseas Nintendo-focused news sites do exactly that, lol.
Lmao, they're so pissed off they're posting stuff that has nothing to do with the thread.
Probably means if you watch a let's-play, see the Ocarina of Time remake's graphics, and think "a handheld's fine with just the Switch 2," then there's no reason to splurge on a more powerful handheld.
Got a source for PC users going back to consoles?
Switch 2 is nothing but a loser platform with a market size that's garbage next to PC's.
Even "Chameleon" (nickname for a certain hit game), which sold 20 million copies on PC, bombed with only 300,000 copies on Switch 2.
I'd bet the younger you are, the less likely you are to buy a huge rig like that.
At this rate, maybe not. NVIDIA isn't putting out any low-end cards at all.
Even if the number of PC owners doesn't shrink, the number of PC gamers definitely will.
so of course things feel like they've lost steam.
It's the same as how PC gaming hit a growth ceiling after only expanding in certain directions — the whole PC market has hit its growth ceiling too.
It's just that growth in China and developing countries is propping it up.
Don't talk like indie games never even existed.
Back in the day smartphones weren't much of a thing yet, so during the MMO heyday there were tons of PC owners.
Right now it's really not something you'd recommend to anyone.
Not really. Honestly the best timing was right around when Wilds got judged as mediocre and the playerbase thinned out.
It's a special case, but the RTX 5090 has dropped below 400,000 yen.
The real winners are the ones who bought before memory prices started spiking, around last summer.
And that's where a residual-value installment plan ("zankure," a common Japanese financing scheme) comes in — you can buy it cheap, at least upfront.
Even I have to laugh at this one, lol.
Honestly the cheaper one down there is just better.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The price surge in memory (DRAM) and NAND-type SSDs traces back to AI data centers’ explosive demand straining production lines, driving up global component prices since the second half of 2025. This isn’t unique to PC gaming — it’s part of a broader semiconductor market squeeze that also hits smartphones and home appliances, which runs a bit counter to the thread’s underlying premise that “PC alone is getting the short end of the stick.” Also, when people argue about “market size,” whether PC or the Switch 2 comes out bigger depends heavily on which metric is used — hardware units sold, software units sold, or player population — so the conclusion shifts easily depending on that choice, and part of the thread’s disagreement comes from people talking past each other without aligning on which metric they mean. “Number of people who own a PC” and “number of people who play high-spec games on PC” are two separate metrics, and the point that only the latter might shrink first is a perspective worth keeping in mind when thinking about where the market goes from here.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “[Sad News] PC Gaming Might Really Be Done For“.
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