[Gigachad]

Not sure the hostility is required here. Gamers don't need nvidia GPUs, they just need GPUs.

Nvidia happens to have been the best option for a long time. But there are many alternatives, game consoles for example aren't particularly tied to the Nvidia/amd market and the ARM space offers tons of options. Apple makes a powerful GPU for their macbooks that isn't dependent on either of the major two.

Valve, Sony, and Nintendo are in a good position to move away from AMD in the future if they aren't providing competitively priced GPUs. Valve has been working on an x86 emulator for ARM for their Steam Frame which would pave the way towards PC games running on ARM chips.

This whole situation is largely like this because demand for hardware spiked rapidly. Processes and production take a long time to change, and no one knows if these prices are long term or if it's going to crash back to normal in a year. If the elevated prices remain for the future, competitors will move in. But they aren't going to develop new products and production in the case where it all crashes back to normal and nvidia continues selling affordable GPUs to gamers.

I just don't see any scenario where nvidia remains the only option while also not selling their GPUs to consumers and requiring them to rent them. By the time that happens the competition would have crushed them.

[simoncion]

> Not sure the hostility is required here.

There's no hostility. I'm of the opinion that you're ignorant of the wider political and economic factors that have lead to us being in the situation under discussion. I know it's uncommon for the younger generations to believe that one can say "You're either ignorant or willfully blinding yourself to the entirety of the situation." as a statement of plain fact rather than an insult, but everyone would be better off if they'd permanently load that possibility into their brains.

Regardless, there's nothing two Internet Nobodies can say or do that will have any meaningful effect on the situation under discussion... so I guess we'll wait and see if -in five or ten years- "market forces" have made it so the overwhelming majority of "P"Cs are Chromebook-esque thin clients that are pretty much exclusively used to access subscription -or ad-laden- SAASes.