Who requested for this? PC players left questioning after AI takes middle stage at CES 2026
I’ve coated CES for years and every one feels completely different to the final. Some are nice for PC players; others aren’t. This 12 months, prototypes, ideas and synthetic intelligence dominated the present, which isn’t shocking, nor completely different to final 12 months. Although I’ve seen a little bit of a development in how persons are reacting to this 12 months’s present.
From the feedback on my CES dwell weblog, to these on TikTok, to varied threads on Reddit, to our personal response on crew; players hold saying related issues.
‘Every thing is simply too costly’ is a standard response to any announcement from the present. With RAM costs skyrocketing and this being leveraged for worth will increase elsewhere, there’s a sense of existential doom throughout the complete PC constructing market. Issues aren’t that dangerous—not but—however it should be a bumpy trip for the remainder of the 12 months, if not longer, as costs are nonetheless on the rise.
I have been scrolling by CES protection on TikTok and YouTube and sticker shock—the intestine response to discovering out a product’s excessive worth—is a continuing.
The highest touch upon Razer’s TikTok video about it’s “pls inform me this is not actual.”
I stand with KingFlippyNipz, and numerous others on different subreddits voicing related sentiments. Who’s asking for this product? Or sensible gaming wearables? Or anything of the type? Are large tech corporations following within the reasoning of famously sincere man, Richard Nixon, and believing there is a ‘silent majority’ that really needs these things? Maybe the gross sales numbers disagree, however I by some means doubt it.
The high put up on r/pcmasterrace proper now’s a meme of Dr. Lisa Su and Jensen Huang repeatedly saying AI again and again, to a crowd of individuals chanting AI. However the place I am wanting, there is no crowd of individuals cheering on AI.
To be honest, there are normally quite a few feedback suggesting some curiosity in shopping for these merchandise. I simply have not seen any achieve as a lot traction as those alongside the strains of ‘why are you doing this’.
When PC gaming is prospering, as is commonly urged right now, you’d assume gaming corporations can be throwing as many core PC merchandise at clients as attainable. Counterintuitively, we are inclined to see extra of a push to disconnect themselves from gaming. When our Andy sat down within the Las Vegas Sphere for Lenovo’s Tech World CES 2026 occasion, he did not know moving into that he’d stay there for 2 hours listening to infinite speak of AI improvements.
For the file, the highest touch upon the replay of Lenovo’s Tech World @ CES 2026 on YouTube is: “Simply trying to find the Legion Go 2 SteamOS announcement and might’t discover it between all that AI bullshit.”
That is the worst factor. Lenovo did have one thing thrilling for players on the present; the SteamOS Legion Go 2, it simply did not waste any time on it that might as an alternative be devoted to AI. Nvidia and AMD did a lot of the identical throughout their occasions; losing little time on gaming bulletins—Nvidia pushing its personal right into a pre-recorded video.
AMD’s keynote precipitated fairly a stir for related causes. Granted, it was billed from the very starting as an occasion about AI, AI merchandise, and the way the world of AI revolves round AMD. The highest remark? “299 instances AI talked about. GJ guys.” Nvidia has turned feedback off on its AI love-in.
I get the frustration; even when these corporations going all-in on AI is not in any respect shocking, it adequately lays naked the dearth of PC merchandise from main gamers on the present.
I opened this text with the suggestion that, typically, CES simply has a fallow 12 months for players. The discharge schedules do not all the time line up; we’re between generations, yada yada. That is positively true to some extent right here with among the large guys, at the least. New CPUs aren’t anticipated till the top of the 12 months, if reminiscence shortages do not rain on our parade, and model new graphics playing cards had been all the time mainly out of the query.
Aside from Tremendous playing cards, which had been anticipated to launch at CES at numerous instances in 2025. No point out of these, sadly.
Although it is not all dangerous. There have been new merchandise at CES 2026 which might be genuinely thrilling for PC players.
Be Quiet! launched a new liquid cooler, two new air coolers, and two new energy provides on the present. You’ll be able to’t fault that. Corsair launched two new mice: carbon fibre and magnesium alloy variations of its wonderful Sabre V2 Professional. These most likely fall foul of that sticker shock sentiment I used to be mentioning earlier, nevertheless, being $50 to $100 greater than the usual mannequin. Corsair’s new Galleon 100 SD keyboard positively does, at $350, which even together with the built-in Stream Deck is quite a lot of money.
I do not need to be a complete curmudgeon, Asus had just a few cool issues. The holographic fan chassis? That is the sorta factor I wanna see. The twin-screen laptop computer is actually progressive. Although these, the Kojima collaboration, the Xreal glasses—I’ve stated it earlier than, and I am going to say it once more—the restricted out there and excessive worth tags of showcase merchandise makes them completely irrelevant to me. I believed the ROG Matrix RTX 5090 appeared superb when it was first introduced; it was priced at $4,000 they usually solely made 1,000 on them. With that form of price ticket and shortage, my pleasure is most positively capped.
Unusually sufficient, considered one of our most learn articles on the theme of CES is on how Dell eschewed AI all through its personal CES briefing. The corporate deciding that, whereas the enterprise world needs AI all over the place, the patron demand for AI PCs or AI-powered merchandise is not there.
“They don’t seem to be shopping for based mostly on AI,” Dell head of product, Kevin Terwilliger stated in a pre-briefing. And but Dell seems considered one of few corporations to see issues this fashion.
Intel additionally placed on present. One thing my colleague Jeremy additionally famous. Admittedly, the corporate is all in on AI, however the promise of Panther Lake’s iGPU, codenamed B390, did stir one thing optimistic inside me. The ensuing beef between Intel and AMD additionally gave me a smile—rival corporations should not get alongside and make investments billions of {dollars} in each other within the identify of AI—they need to be at one another’s throats.
At the very least one product class appears to be thriving in right now’s local weather. Largely unaffected by AI (although not fully), gaming screens have gotten extra inexpensive with higher panels and real innovation. Each LG and Samsung have new RGB stripe panels on the way in which, together with among the latter in gaming screens.
Although these gems really feel few and much between. With AI reaching fever pitch, excessive costs, and a way of recent merchandise being considerably unobtainable have made the present a little bit of a joyless watch at instances. I suppose I need to come away from CES with a way of seeing the imaginative and prescient for PC gaming all year long to return. And that is one thing I am missing proper now. Whereas I’m searching for gamer’s feedback to again up my very own assumption, I by no means needed to look far to search out them.
I will not say I’ve a way of dread for the approaching 12 months—as I’ve stated earlier than, there’s loads to get enthusiastic about in 2026—however a basic unease? Yeah, that is about proper.