The median EU retail price of an RTX 5090 rose from €5,900 to €7,730 between 19 September and 19 October 2026 — a +31% move across about 20 tracked EU shops. On a fixed 11-card basket, the price index is up 84% since 25 May, with roughly 10% in the last week alone.
So AAA gaming is basically dead, right? There might be a few gamers with current systems that they bought before all of this and some rich guys, but the majority will not pay those sums to play games. And that means that it will be economically insane to target a small group of gamers with a multimillion dollar budget
You don’t need a 5090, 5080, or even an NVIDIA to run games with very detailed graphics.
This means AAA game developers will need to actually sit back and optimise their games, rather than keep producing badly written code and bloated graphics.
What’s going to be down is the consumer segment at NVIDIA, because it’s not making them the money they’d like it to. Last time I read, the consumer segment was far below 5% of their income.
I hope you’re right because as someone who was insane enough to pay $1800 for a 4090 at launch, I intend on this card lasting me until at least the late 2030s. It was already $1000 more than what I’d consider reasonable for a high end GPU; no way am I paying $5K+ for a 50/60/70/8090.
So AAA gaming is basically dead, right? There might be a few gamers with current systems that they bought before all of this and some rich guys, but the majority will not pay those sums to play games. And that means that it will be economically insane to target a small group of gamers with a multimillion dollar budget
You don’t need a 5090, 5080, or even an NVIDIA to run games with very detailed graphics.
This means AAA game developers will need to actually sit back and optimise their games, rather than keep producing badly written code and bloated graphics.
What’s going to be down is the consumer segment at NVIDIA, because it’s not making them the money they’d like it to. Last time I read, the consumer segment was far below 5% of their income.
I hope you’re right because as someone who was insane enough to pay $1800 for a 4090 at launch, I intend on this card lasting me until at least the late 2030s. It was already $1000 more than what I’d consider reasonable for a high end GPU; no way am I paying $5K+ for a 50/60/70/8090.