The Future of Gaming 2026: PC Building Woes, RAM Prices, and the Rise of Linux

Please, for the love of God, optimize your game.

Optimize early.

Optimize it often.

Optimize your game.

I don't even care if you use AI, just optimize it.

Expect AAA studios to keep on hurting and not figuring out their budget issues because they can't figure out that probably about half of the employees need to be gone.

Expect Microsoft to continue to lose in the gaming industry because they can't figure out how to actually make coins, quality games, or how to manage their own developers.

Expect no Man's sky to keep on updating and giving value and giving the middle finger to every developer that can't figure out why no Man's sky is so popular.

Mmm, that's good.

Hey, welcome back to Digital Coffee Gaming Brew.

I'm your digital barista, Brett Dyster.

Today we're chatting about what 2026 has in store for gamers.

Crazy RAM prices, older games, making a comeback, and why optimization is more important than ever.

Grab your favorite brew, get comfy, and let's dive into the future of gaming together.

Let's get the elephant out of the room.

It is basically not great for building a PC.

No matter which way you slice it.

It is pretty much terrible.

It is not good.

And so we're going to have to deal with that issue for a few years, unfortunately, until a bubble finally burst in the AI sector, which it will.

Do not think that they are immune to bubbles popping or anything like that.

It is going to eventually happen.

No, no one really knows exactly when it's going to happen, but there's always a certain point where it's just not sustainable anymore and there needs to be a course correction is probably the best way of saying it.

So it's going to suck to buy a PC, build a PC, do anything with that, even phones, tablets, laptops, consoles, we're all going to be hit by this.

Even the Steam machine is not, probably not going to be as cheap as it should have been.

So this is where we're at on this specific time for that one.

But with that out of the way, there is some bright spots with it this time.

Developers are actually going to have to optimize their game for low end to high end systems.

It's not going to be like, oh, we're just going to use dlss, FSR and everything will be good.

And we don't have to really optimize it.

Nope, you're going to have to optimize it.

I'm telling you developers right now, you're going to have to Optimize it for all gamers because we're not going to be buying or updating our systems for quite a while now.

This is the reality of it.

It's unfortunate that this has had to happen and we all get excited to actually build a new PC, but we're not going to be building new PCs for quite a while.

The only thing I recommend actually upgrading is either your cpu, your motherboard, or your psu.

Everything else leave alone in your case.

You can upgrade the case too if you need to.

Everything else leave alone.

Just don't touch it because it's not worth it.

Even DDR4 RAM is getting expensive.

No RAM is being untouched.

I know, we're like, oh look, we still have our DDR4.

Nope, that's.

That's going to be expensive too.

So developers, heed my warning.

Please, for the love of God, optimize your game.

Optimize early.

Optimize it often optimize your game.

I don't even care if you use AI, just optimize it.

What I'm also looking forward to, well, seeing what Battlefield 6 will do.

It's unfortunate that Vince lost his life last year.

It's very unfortunate thing.

He will be sorely missed and it is a huge gap within the leadership team within ea, especially since he oversaw Dice and Battlefield.

He also oversaw Respawn, which is his original development studio once he left Activision.

And so we'll see what Apex is going to come up with.

Battlefield is going to come up with because to be honest, it is.

It's.

It's not good.

It's unfortunate and it's not good.

So I'm excited to see what's going to actually happen, but I just, I'm not quite sure how long it's going to take until we kind of see how or what Vince's vision was and how it may have drifted.

But at least for season two looks promising.

There is several old maps coming with Metro, Strike of Kirkhand and Gulf of Omen and I think another one I can't remember and Wake island coming back as well.

They're going to have new maps as well.

So I hope the old maps have the old map feel and they're not condensed or shortened and need to stop doing that because Firestorm was great because it was a big map with long sight lines and you could actually deal with the snipers on the hill without having to snipe back.

But I digress on that one and I think we're going to see a bigger rise in more prominence of Independent AA Studios because of just how terrible AAA Studios have been, how terrible their games have been, and just not good at all.

We're also going to see Linux have its day in the sun because of what Steam is doing or Valve is doing.

I should say Steam Machines, Steam Deck.

That is all in a good positive direction for Linux.

I think it's finally going to give Microsoft its competition that it has been sorely lacking for quite a while because Microsoft has just been terrible at creating operating systems.

Windows 11 is still not that great.

I use Stardocks, Fences, Start 11 and everything else just to make it okay.

It's still not good, so it should be interesting what that's going to entail.

Now for sales, I still foresee Eric Raiders just doing a really good job.

It has still been the number one sale since it's launched as a premium game.

So that is a very, very good sign.

The loser is going to be Splitgate is going to be a big loser.

It just has not hit or resonated with gamers and we have other games to play.

I'm also foreseeing old school type games coming back like Cleared Hot has been a pretty good successful run.

Dispatch has been a sleeper hit as well.

No one expected that to do really well, but that has done really well.

So just expect old games or old ways of doing games.

Being new again should be interesting to see.

Maybe we'll get Grand Theft Auto 6 this year.

Maybe, maybe.

Or they'll have to delay it to optimize it.

Actually for just about everything.

Expect to see consoles remain the same but since the RAM storages see those prices go up.

See prices significantly go up for GPUs see prices significantly go up for laptops see prices significantly go up for pre built which has already happened.

Tablets and everything else, it's all going to go up for the foreseeable future.

Marketers, I implore you to find a marketing language that is all about saving money for the consumer because we just do not like where this is going.

Thank you Sam Altman for screwing us all over for your erotica.

AI.

I mean seriously, the least thing you the thing you didn't need to do was that one.

But you know we all got to suffer because of the AI addiction that a lot of people have.

And it's addiction.

I'm not saying never use it.

I use AI, but I use it as a tool.

I don't use it for this weird stuff or companionship or whatever.

Get a dog.

I highly recommend it get a dog.

They're way more enjoyable than AI anyways.

Look at that.

I would say that if rebuilts or companies are looking to sell computers can find a way to do a Steam like type device that is around or below $1,000 that will probably be the best thing you can do right now.

I think we're going to see more of that and the towers are going to go bye bye for the foreseeable future.

Expect to see more AM4 motherboards coming out in 2026 just because DDR5 is hard to get but still DDR4 is not going to be cheap RAM.

It's going to be cheaper, it's just not going to be cheap.

So there's that.

Expect to see China flood the market with their RAM and GPUs because there is a vacuum which Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Samsung, Micron have left.

Expect to see just surprises in this type of market because we got to see some companies going look at there's an opportunity here to to make money.

We got to seize on it and so expect to see that.

I would also expect to see a backlash from AI just because of the prominence it's been getting for so long and people are starting to get tired of it.

Not saying that it's not going to be useful at all, but expect to see an even more fervent camp of anti AI people in game development specifically because of how uncertain the gaming industry has been for the past two to three years with all the layoffs.

I haven't seen too many layoffs towards the end of 2025, but expect to see more if they can't figure out a way to bring value to the gamer because now it's going to be about a value proposition and you're going to have to figure out how to bring value to the gamer.

We don't really care about battle passes too much anymore because the FOMO is old, very old.

If I miss it, oh well, expect to see battle passes remain forever so people can just unlock them which they should do in Battlefield 6.

Stop with this time limited thing.

It just doesn't work and it's annoying to try to have to complete this stupid stuff.

Just leave it open for everybody to to complete.

That's all you have to do really.

Expect to see some sleeper hits coming out.

I mean I can't really dictate what's going to be coming out, but I expect some unsurprise surprising games coming out that people will not expect to actually be good and be pretty good.

Expect AAA studios to keep on hurting and not figuring out their budget issues because they can't figure out that probably about half of the employees need to be gone.

There's going to be more cutting of it because of a EA went private and so they've incurred a bunch of debt to coincide with this and they're going to have to have studios say look, we do produce, we do make great games, we do make games that gamers want because that's what it's all going to be about.

Because investment groups, they do not mess around.

If you do not create a profit, if you are draining their coffers, expect you to not be around too much anymore.

I. E. Sprinkles in LA that was a surprise for weird surprise in 2025.

Sprinkles is no more so expect expect more of that.

I expect Ubisoft to be bought this year.

I don't expect them to continue doing what they're doing because they haven't really been doing very well.

So expect Ubisoft to either be part of the private equity push from other private equities, seeing the money that it can bring, or to be sold off to another big publisher if it is allowed.

But expect something maybe Tencent will probably eventually just take it all over since they own quite a bit.

Expect Microsoft to continue to lose in the gaming industry because they can't figure out how to actually make quality games or how to manage their own developers.

Expect them to heavily push into AI and expect a heavily push back on that because I may not be fully against AI but I don't expect it to take control of everything.

And if you do that you are insane.

Expect some rumors or some rumblings on just Halo and what new Halo stuff's going to be coming out.

And I'm gonna say this.

Expect something new from Bethesda finally.

I think we're finally gonna it's about time to finally get something new because Bethesda needs to start making something except except for remasters upon remasters of Prime Mirror Masters.

Expect if there is going to be a Starfield 2.0 to be released this year, I don't foresee it really moving the needle anymore because of the damage done from when it was released when it was supposed to be this newly engaging game with thousand with a thousand plants to explore became a very boring slog of the same planet you explore a thousand times.

Expect no Man's sky to keep on updating and giving value and kind of giving the middle finger to every developer that can't figure out why no Man's sky is so popular, Expect embark to keep on killing it in the gaming industry.

I mean, there are former Battlefield devs and expect people to start not really liking Nvidia too much anymore.

I expect AMD's 97 series card to be more popular just because of the price point.

It'll probably do.

It'll be cheaper for the most part and still better than what Nvidia will offer because they don't offer very much because all they care about is AI.

Now this is a big wow thing.

But expect a huge significant pullback from Nvidia in the gaming market.

I don't think they care too much about us anymore.

I think we're kind of just their afterthought now because of AI.

So expect some type of announcement of pulling back on development from graphics cards or something like that, which wouldn't be a big surprise.

So expect something I think we should expect finally the 9850x3D to be out since there's been rumors upon rumors upon rumors.

So I think that will be something to look forward to.

Expect HTDS to actually come back in favor just because of.

Well, NVMEs are not cheap and HDDs are going to be the way of the future only because they're forcing it upon us.

And another thing for developers, stop forcing us to use NVMEs just to make your game faster.

Nope, you got to do it for htds now.

You got to go back to the old school way, make sure that it is optimized for either one.

And it's not mandatory to have use of nvmes.

It's dumb.

It's expensive now.

It is very expensive.

It was expensive before, but now it's extremely expensive.

So expect gamers want to be able to game on whatever way to store the data.

Either NVMEs, SSDs which are not really NVMEs, or still the SATA SSDs or HDDs.

And well, to be honest with you, I just expect the gaming industry to be the gaming industry.

It's just gonna churn along.

It's just gonna be doing what it's gonna be doing.

So some new games that are going to be successful.

I don't think Marathon's going to move the needle as much as people think it is.

I think it's just another generic extraction shooter with weird visual art styles.

Yes, they made it prettier from the Alpha, which I guess is cool.

And then expect from CD Projekt Red is, well, another DLC for Witcher 3 and another DLC for Cyberpunk 2077 even though they said they were done, they just can't say no to it, which I'm all favor for.

If they can make quality stuff still from their red engine, which I don't think they should have ever abandoned, they should try to make it for that.

I know they have a new licensing agreement with Unreal but I think it's stupid because unreal just their 5 engine has just been terrible and I think Unreal and Epic in general needs to really hunker down and optimize this thing for everybody.

Expect Steam to be dominant even this year being even more dominant with the Steam machine coming out as well.

Expect the steam machine to sell quite quickly and being around 700 $800 but having low supply and no RAM is going to be very short supply of all of that.

Expect to see more.

I would say if pre builts are smart they will follow the Steam machine model and figure out a way of utilizing RAM to its effectiveness and utilizing the small space to still make money.

And say screw you to Samsung, Skhenix, OpenAI and Micron because OpenAI sucks.

I hate them taking 40% of the global market share of RAM.

Screw you Sam Altman and expect to have no very low low supply or no supply for rams because the government just doesn't care about the regular citizen.

All in all I think we're just gonna have a mediocre year in gaming.

I don't think it's gonna be terrible, I don't think it's gonna be great.

I think we're gonna have a good snapshot of good moments in gaming.

But since we kind of have this weird thing of data centers and.