From Bad to Worse, NVIDIA Reportedly Will Cut RTX 50 Series Production by 30–40% in 2026 and Might Stop Providing VRAM to Its Partners

The DRAM shortage will cause less PCs to be assembled. Probably not 30-40% less, but it is likely prices of graphics cards will go up by less than you expect.
 
Price increases or straight up shortages?
Of couse price increases are due to scarcity, obvious, but are we to the point of no availability no matter the price?
 
DAPUNISHER said:
Watch how fast millions of us jump ship if they try to force us to use subscription cloud gaming. Indie games will absolutely explode in popularity and sales. They will make games to run on the hardware we are already using. The quantity and quality will skyrocket. Do you want indie to take over? Because that's how you get indie takeover.
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Aaand thats not happening.
I understand the sentiment, but it aint happening.
There will be a lot of hot air online though thats for sure.
I see the death of physical media as a more significant step than the death of hardware, yet it was enbraced without a fight, but a lot of hot air online.
Cloud gaming works and its convinient.
 
Uvilla said:
Price increases or straight up shortages?
Of couse price increases are due to scarcity, obvious, but are we to the point of no availability no matter the price?
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Temporary shortages of select models
 
Uvilla said:
Aaand thats not happening.
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It's already happening. It is not a major shift, yet. The number of new games playtime by Steam users was around 14% in 2025. I expect it will be single digits in 2026 the way things are going. Some of that is due to game length, more of it is gamers not buying the titles.
Uvilla said:
I see the death of physical media as a more significant step than the death of hardware, yet it was embraced without a fight, but a lot of hot air online.
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Different dynamics. Nor will I contend all PCMR will reject a monthly fee.

A little humor about that

how-steam-was-born-v0-yul4ky6f7a9g1.png

Uvilla said:
Cloud gaming works and its convinient.
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For the filthy casuals, yes it does. They have King Kong sized hurdles to clear if they want to win over the rest of PCMR.

Latency/lag being the worst. Some of the most played games such as CS2, Fortnite, Battlefield, CoD, are unplayable in a practical sense. Few will be ponying up every month for the present experience.

Internet speeds. With Steam and other game launchers, gamers with slow internet can queue up downloads before bed, work, school, whatever. If the connection is too slow, cloud gaming is not a very viable option.

Paying at all. Millions of gamers play on potato PCs. This sounds like a point in favor of cloud gaming, but it's not. The potato costs very little, and matched their shoestring budget. A monthly fee is not affordable; it quickly surpasses what was spent on the potato. And the games they play run great on the potato. Even if they don't look great. Cloud is the mostly the opposite right now. Often look great, but play rather poorly due to lag. This is not an issue for some, but for millions that play shooters, it is a deal breaker.

Valve and Epic alone have billions wrapped up in PC gaming. I think we would see them start subsidizing the hardware, as consoles have for so long. To get you on the delivery system. The Steam Machine is not a high end system, but it will be a far better experience than cloud for CS2 and such.
 
Uvilla said:
I see the death of physical media as a more significant step than the death of hardware, yet it was enbraced without a fight, but a lot of hot air online.
Cloud gaming works and its convinient.
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I welcomed the death of physical media, do you realize how much I hated disc based DRMs? That every freaking time you wanted to play a game you had to find its disc insert it into your drive and wait 60-120 seconds while starforce or securom tried to break your CD-ROM drive and if it fails to physically break it it might let you start the game. Digital distribution was a benefit to PC gamers, even installation times improved vastly. I suffered no drawbacks from it. On the contrary, most games I own on physical media no longer function when trying to install them from discs. Steam games work still, and I'm confident they will continue to work till the day I die.

Cloud gaming has no benefits to me, only drawbacks. It might attract those who are not already dedicated PC gamers.

Who wants
  • restricted play times, (gives me ptsd about dial-up internet)
  • outages during peak hours, when demand is high
  • waitlists to play the newest game
  • randomly assigned HW, you might get a 4080 if you're lucky or pay premium or get a 3060.
  • renting instead of owning games
  • paying a monthly fee whether you play anything or not just to not loose access to "your" library and saves
cloud, more like a puff of hot air indeed.
 
MadMummy76 said:
I welcomed the death of physical media, do you realize how much I hated disc based DRMs? That every freaking time you wanted to play a game you had to find its disc insert it into your drive and wait 60-120 seconds while starforce or securom tried to break your CD-ROM drive and if it fails to physically break it it might let you start the game.
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Me too. Digital has its own set of issues, and I do miss physical media being available — but by and large I also prefer digital distribution.

Cloud computing should be the next logical extension of that - but it’s been well covered here; the shortfalls are too steep with current technology
 
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