TRADE CHAT This cannot go on. It will not go on
IT’S NOT EVEN NEWS to point out that PC graphics card pricing is ridiculous. And yet to merely complain about over-priced graphics boards fails to capture the disconnected, unhinged state of the GPU market. The way AMD and Nvidia priced their new cards makes no sense. It cannot go on.
How we got here is well documented. It was a perfect storm of spiraling crypto-fueled demand, multiple Covid-induced market shocks and distortions including supply chain disruption, stay-at-home induced consumer behavior, and a new generation of GPUs that delivered a big boost in performance after several years of relative stagnation. That explains why Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30 Series and AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 went through the roof following their launch in late 2020.
It all made sense, even if didn’t make paying three to four times the RRP for a graphics card any more fun. But here we are at the end of 2022, crypto has crashed, the influence of the pandemic is shrinking and the latest new generation of GPUs is a mixed bag. Yet both AMD and Nvidia are pricing their new cards as if 2021 is the new normal. Well, it’s not. The obvious exception is inflation, currently blighting pretty much every major economy. But inflation nowhere near justifies Nvidia’s attempt to price the new RTX 4080 at $1,199, a ludicrous 70 percent price hike over the RTX 3080.
Of course, it took two years for any 3080s to actually hit their $699 official MSRP. That literally only happened in the last month or so. But, once again, there were clear reasons for that. Moreover, by the time you read this, Nvidia will probably have launched either the RTX 4070, the RTX 4070 Ti, or possibly both. Almost certainly you’ll be looking at a price of no less than $700. And that is for a thirdor fourth-tier GPU.
Nvidia and AMD aren’t just ripping off gamers, they’re hurting their own businesses.
AMD’s new cards are no better. The Radeon RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX at $899 and $999 would have been priced even higher had they offered more competitive p e r f o r ma n c e . Along with Nvidia’s new-gen cards so far, they simply beg the question of what the mainstream PC gamer is supposed to buy. AMD and Nvidia seem to have forgotten that PC gaming is a mass market pursuit.
Graphics cards aren’t, say, boutique supercars that can be made in their handfuls and bought by a few ultra-wealthy clients. PC gaming as an industry depends on accessibility. The only reason it makes sense for game developers to invest huge sums in developing modern titles is the potential market of millions of gamers with compatible hardware. But in terms of both pricing and reports of relatively low production for these new GPUs, the philosophy seems to be low volumes at much higher prices and margins.
Because millions of PC gamers can’t afford $700 for a new graphics card, let alone $1,500 or more. That’s never been the case in the past and it hasn’t become the case now. Only the laziest observer would conclude that was even the case at the height of the cryptoCovid GPU craze, ignoring the highly unusual combination of an acute shortage of GPUs combined with a higher-than-usual demand.
Put simply, there is no way that PC gaming as a mass pursuit can thrive in an era of $700 mid-market GPUs. Prices are, therefore, going to come down. The only question is exactly how long it takes and how much damage is done to PC gaming in the interim.
It’s an incredibly short-sighted way to go about things from Nvidia and AMD. They’re not just ripping off gamers, they’re hurting their own businesses. The longer they stick at this nonsense, the smaller the remaining market of PC gamers is going to be when they come back to their senses.