Normally, competition is good for consumers. In this case with AMD/Intel and Nvdia they bring the prices up.strange industry this is.
How so? With the increasing R&D costs and the cost of making ICs on a cutting edge node, the cost of each part is going to have to go up every year, or are you expecting these "for profit" companies to sell their parts at cost or below cost?
To be honest, I'm not surprised that prices are going up. However, the rate at which some prices (*cough* Nvidia *cough*) have increased is a bit surprising.
It's clear some companies are taking advantage of being the industry leader, by quite a large margin compared to the cost of the actual hardware.
I think the industry as a whole has lost touch with their customers and we've ended up in a strange place where people seemingly strive to buy $1,000+ pieces of hardware, which I agree is strange, but it's not strange that we see more expensive hardware, as it's also a lot more capable and a lot more complex.