PC Gaming

When did it come to GPUs specifically anyway? 660 was there as your example, and so we rolled with it. But if you want - by spending $250 in the 600 series times, I didn't have to settle down for "well, it kinda runs, not on high, but it does". I could go all the way to Ultra. Why not now?

And yes, I'm speaking from experience. Is it bad, or is it not valid? I know plenty of gamers share my sentiment, and it plays into the bigger picture that many more relate to.

At this point I personally need to upgrade my entire PC: CPU, RAM, GPU, motherboard - you name it. Only storage and PSU are still good to go. And I know I'm not alone.

And prices now and prices then are two very different beasts. "Crises" are used to pump the prices up only to never get them down. The current RAM shortage is just one in a long string of such "crises".

Market didn't evolve, it just learned to squeeze ever more money from the gamers - either in hardware or in subscriptions. All in the name of numbers going up, of course.

My problem is not with gear that I cannot afford - I never targeted the enthusiast segment of the market - it's with the fact that the gear from the same price bracket gets ever more expensive generation after generation. Sometimes it is reflected in the MSRP, sometimes it's done more covertly by blaming it on temporary externalities that just happen to persist through the entire market cycle of the product. In any case, it's the users that get screwed.