A man with a headset on is sitting at his gaming PC in a black office chair looking frustrated

Is Gaming Becoming Inaccessible?

Written by: Beth, Contributing Writer for Coolection

Published on October 23, 2026

Time to read 5 min

It’s no secret that gaming has become an expensive hobby. Over the past six years we have seen the rising prices of AAA games, RAM, storage, and consoles. In a world where prices on rent and groceries and gas are spiking, gaming has served as an escape from the chaos. But have these price hikes made it so that gaming as a hobby is now inaccessible to the average household?

IT STARTED WITH GAME PRICING

It seems like forever ago, but there was a time when AAA games were below $60. Some will be too young to remember what that was like, or may have missed it altogether. The price hike to a $60 average came in 2005. It was a bit hard to swallow at the time, but gaming was becoming more popular as a hobby, consoles were taking big steps forward in hardware, and people who were already invested weren’t going to stop because of the price change.

The $60 price tag stayed around an impressive amount of time – about 15 years (GamesIndustry, 2020). In 2020, with the release of the PS5 and Xbox Series, AAA games rose to $70. Although a $10 increase doesn’t seem that bad for 15 years of technological advancements in the gaming industry, it is harder to contend with when it comes all at once, and when everyone is looking to gaming as a means of staying sane during the COVID pandemic. Now here we are in 2026, 6 years after the last price hike, and we are already seeing AAA games hit $80, not to mention the plethora of deluxe editions. GTA 6’s “Ultimate Edition” was announced at $99.99 (IGN, 2026).

$80 per game is already a difficult thing to budget for on most people’s salaries, but if it were the ONLY rising price to contend with, it might be doable. The bigger issue is that it didn’t happen in a vacuum.

PC Gaming Pricing Got Crazy

We live in a world that is constantly changing, learning, developing, evolving – so I guess it should be no surprise that AI has been a subject of keen interest in the 2020’s. That being said, I don’t think many of us were expecting such rapid growth and commercial adoption, nor the bigger impacts it has been having. With AIs rise in popularity and adoption came the demand for more resources, which led to data centers. And those data centers led to where we are today: RAM and storage availability going down and prices going way up.

An image of a graph with a steadily rising line and a hand on the right with its finger on the top of the graph line

Image from MotionArray

Do You Remember RAM?

It wasn’t all that long ago that RAM was readily available for PC gamers to pick up for a quick but meaningful upgrade, or for a brand new build. You were guaranteed to find something at your local Best Buy or Microcenter. But in 2025, things began to change. AI development demands spiked, and with it, RAM pricing. RAM availability began to fall as more large companies pivoted their manufacturing to provide for AI corporations rather than individual consumers (Wikipedia, 2026). RAM pricing has more than doubled since 2025, even for the older DDR4 (pcpartpicker, 2026).

RAM is a critical piece of hardware in both PCs and consoles. Although people often associate graphics cards (GPUs) with gaming performance, RAM plays a big part in that as well. It is also an important piece in PCs built for intensive workloads, such as video editing and graphic design.

Now We've Got a Storage Shortage

The RAMpocalypse didn’t come alone – it brought a friend with it. Demands for RAM increased the strain on storage as well. Western Digital, a well known manufacturer for hard drive disks, had its 2026 supply of hard drives booked for “enterprise applications” prior to February (Wikipedia, 2026). Like RAM, we have seen most prices more than doubling. These changes are seen with 2.5” SSDs, M.2 SSDs, and 3.5” HDDs (pcpartpicker, 2026). Where do we install our 120GB games if we can’t buy an SSD?

CONSOLE PRICING FOLLOWED SUIT

Gamers were already fatigued and frustrated by the price hikes on games and PC parts, but the turmoil was not over yet. Sony and Microsoft had to throw their hats in the ring too (and Nintendo wasn't far behind them).

You Go First, Sony

The PS5 was first released in November 2020 with the standard edition being priced at $499 and the digital only edition priced at $399. Typically, we see consoles – and just hardware in general – reduce in price over time. But who wants “typical”? Sony raised its prices on all PS5 editions by $100-$150 each in April, bringing the PS5 Pro up to a staggering $900 (tomshardware, 2026).

Microsoft, You're Next

The Xbox Series S and X also released in November 2020. The S was priced at $299 and the X at $499. In 2024, several other Xbox Series options were released: the Galaxy Black Special Edition Xbox Series X for $600, the 1TB All-Digital Series X for $450, and the 1TB white Xbox Series S for $450 (Wikipedia, 2026). As of August 1st, the pricing on all Xbox Series models increased by $100-150 and the Xbox Series X 2TB edition was axed (tomshardware, 2026). This wasn’t their first price hike, either.

It's Your Turn, Nintendo

It’s no surprise that Nintendo decided to join the party, although it kept the price hike down to a more palatable amount of $50. On September 1st, pricing on the Switch 2 went from $450 to $500 (tomshardware, 2026). Granted, a $50 increase isn’t as harsh, but keep in mind that its starting price point of $450 was already way ahead of the original Switch (which released at $300).

HAS PRICING MADE GAMING INACCESSIBLE?

Amidst the price hikes of games, PC parts and consoles, we have also seen increases to pricing that is simply unavoidable, like housing, groceries, gas, electricity, internet, etc. We’ve also seen prices rising in other areas of entertainment, like streaming services, movie theaters, restaurants, etc. Meanwhile, mass layoffs have hit hard – especially in the gaming industry, unemployment numbers are still high (when including those who are underemployed), and employment rates have dropped below 60% (tradingeconomics, 2026). In other words, the perfect storm.

With so much economic turmoil happening at the same time and the median salary (in the US) being barely over $65,000, I think it is fair to say that modern gaming, as a hobby, is becoming inaccessible to the average gamer. Gamers will have to look more and more to their older consoles, existing game libraries, and retro finds to continue this hobby without sacrificing in another area of life. Those who have been exclusively PC gamers may need to expand into last gen consoles. Demand for indie titles is likely to rise as AAA games become more out of reach.

It’s going to be a bumpy ride for gamers for quite some time, between the price hikes, studio closures, game cancelations, and the death toll for physical games, but I would like to end on a positive note. Here is the silver lining: it’s a great time to catch up on your backlog.