Every analyst I spoke to said that gaming hardware costs were only going to keep rising, with most analysts giving an estimate of somewhere between 2027 and 2029 before prices began to ease, if they eased at all. As Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, explains, "The increases happening now are lagging indicators, not the peak. Platform holders and manufacturers run on long-term supply contracts and inventory buffers that initially shielded retail pricing. As those contracts expire, companies are renegotiating component costs at today's inflated rate, and that pressure is industry-wide."

And there doesn't seem to be a definitive ceiling for these prices. Elliott continues, saying that pricier hardware is only an issue for platform holders "when it chokes off a pipeline of new, spending users. And right now, that pipeline is still healthy. [PlayStation and Steam's] ecosystems are still growing, and the PS5 generation will also be extended by a long cycle of cross-generation games."

It's a little different for handheld gaming, though, especially with Nintendo just having entered a new console cycle. "While console manufacturers can and will continue to subsidize the cost of their hardware, components costs continue to rise faster than the rate by which they are subsidizing – this is especially true for Nintendo," says James McWhirter, senior analyst at Omdia. "We expect further increases to the price of Switch 2 in 2027."

Mat Piscatella, senior director at Circana, says there is a price ceiling. It's just that no one will really know what it is until someone hits it. "Some very tough choices with long-ranging impact will have to be made by all hardware manufacturers both now and in the coming months when it comes to pricing and production," he says. "Yes, at some point there is a viable price cap. What that cap is, however, is still a bit of a mystery, and dependent upon numerous factors, both quantifiable and not so much. This market has never before been in this position, and we're learning many things about it as we go."