Who asked for this? PC gamers left wondering after AI takes center stage at CES 2026
SOURCE:PC Gamer|BY: Jacob Ridley
AI and fears of further price increases have made for a strange CES for gamers.
(Image credit: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
I've covered CES for years and each one feels different to the last. Some are great for PC gamers; others aren't. This year, prototypes, concepts and artificial intelligence dominated the show, which is not surprising, nor different to last year. Though I have seen a bit of a trend in how people are reacting to this year's show.
From the comments on my CES live blog, to those on TikTok, to various threads on Reddit, to our own reaction on team; gamers keep saying similar things.
'Everything is too expensive' is a common response to any announcement from the show. With RAM prices skyrocketing and this being leveraged for price increases elsewhere, there is a sense of existential doom across the entire PC building market. Things aren't that bad—not yet—but it's going to be a bumpy ride for the rest of the year, if not longer, as prices are still on the rise.
I've been scrolling through CES coverage on TikTok and YouTube and sticker shock—the gut reaction to finding out a product's high price—is a constant.
(Image credit: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The top comment on Razer's TikTok video about it is "pls tell me this isn't real."
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I stand with KingFlippyNipz, and various others on other subreddits voicing similar sentiments. Who is asking for this product? Or smart gaming wearables? Or anything else of the sort? Are big tech firms following in the reasoning of famously honest guy, Richard Nixon, and believing there's a 'silent majority' that actually wants this stuff? Perhaps the sales numbers disagree, but I somehow doubt it.
The top post on r/pcmasterrace right now is a meme of Dr. Lisa Su and Jensen Huang repeatedly saying AI over and over, to a crowd of people chanting AI. But where I'm looking, there's no crowd of people cheering on AI.
To be fair, there are usually a number of comments suggesting some interest in buying these products. I just haven't seen any gain as much traction as the ones along the lines of 'why are you doing this'.
When PC gaming is thriving, as is often suggested today, you'd assume gaming companies would be throwing as many core PC products at customers as possible. Counterintuitively, we tend to see more of a push to disconnect themselves from gaming. When our Andy sat down in the Las Vegas Sphere for Lenovo's Tech World CES 2026 event, he didn't know going in that he'd remain there for two hours listening to endless talk of AI innovations.
Lenovo Tech World @ CES 2026 | Live from Sphere - YouTube
That's the worst thing. Lenovo did have something exciting for gamers at the show; the SteamOS Legion Go 2, it just didn't waste any time on it that could instead be dedicated to AI. Nvidia and AMD did much of the same during their events; wasting little time on gaming announcements—Nvidia pushing its own into a pre-recorded video.
AMD's keynote caused quite a stir for similar reasons. Granted, it was billed from the very beginning as an event about AI, AI products, and how the world of AI revolves around AMD. The top comment? "299 times AI mentioned. GJ guys." Nvidia has turned comments off on its AI love-in.
(Image credit: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
I get the disappointment; even if these companies going all-in on AI isn't at all surprising, it adequately lays bare the dearth of PC products from major players at the show.
I opened this article with the suggestion that, sometimes, CES just has a fallow year for gamers. The release schedules don't always line up; we're between generations, yada yada. That's definitely true to some degree here with some of the big guys, at least. New CPUs aren't expected until the end of the year, if memory shortages don't rain on our parade, and brand new graphics cards were always basically out of the question.
Except for Super cards, which had been expected to launch at CES at various times in 2025. No mention of those, unfortunately.
(Image credit: Be Quiet!)
Though it's not all bad. There were new products at CES 2026 that are genuinely exciting for PC gamers.
Be Quiet! launched a new liquid cooler, two new air coolers, and two new power supplies at the show. You can't fault that. Corsair launched two new mice: carbon fibre and magnesium alloy versions of its excellent Sabre V2 Pro. These probably fall foul of that sticker shock sentiment I was mentioning earlier, however, being $50 to $100 more than the standard model. Corsair's new Galleon 100 SD keyboard definitely does, at $350, which even including the built-in Stream Deck is a lot of cash.
I don't want to be a total curmudgeon, Asus had a few cool things. The holographic fan chassis? That's the sorta thing I wanna see. The dual-screen laptop is certainly innovative. Though these, the Kojima collaboration, the Xreal glasses—I've said it before, and I'll say it again—the limited available and high price tags of showcase products makes them totally irrelevant to me. I thought the ROG Matrix RTX 5090 looked amazing when it was first announced; it was priced at $4,000 and they only made 1,000 on them. With that sort of price tag and scarcity, my excitement is most definitely capped.
Strangely enough, one of our most read articles on the theme of CES is on how Dell eschewed AI throughout its own CES briefing. The company deciding that, while the business world wants AI everywhere, the consumer demand for AI PCs or AI-powered products isn't there.
"They're not buying based on AI," Dell head of product, Kevin Terwilliger said in a pre-briefing. And yet Dell appears one of few companies to see things this way.
At least one product category seems to be thriving in today's climate. Largely unaffected by AI (though not entirely), gaming monitors are becoming more affordable with better panels and genuine innovation. Both LG and Samsung have new RGB stripe panels on the way, including some of the latter in gaming monitors.
Though these gems feel few and far between. With AI reaching fever pitch, high prices, and a sense of new products being somewhat unobtainable have made the show a bit of a joyless watch at times. I guess I want to come away from CES with a sense of seeing the vision for PC gaming throughout the year to come. And that's something I'm lacking right now. While I am looking for gamer's comments to back up my own assumption, I never had to look far to find them.
Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog, before graduating into breaking things professionally at PCGamesN. Now he's managing editor of the hardware team at PC Gamer, and you'll usually find him testing the latest components or building a gaming PC.
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