My first hard drive upgrade was a 80MB HardCard - an ISA hard disk for my PC XT 286. I recall it cost clost to $1,000.
There's always going to be the top tier storage that costs an arm and a leg - that just means two steps down gets affordable. Optane pricing will drive down NVME which will drive down SATA SSD.
The main issue is that video gamers don't see any benefits to NVMe NAND drives. So the "hardcore gamer" market is beginning to stall out on SATA SSD drives.
Why pay 2x more for NVMe NAND if your video game load times aren't any better?
There's always going to be the top tier storage that costs an arm and a leg - that just means two steps down gets affordable. Optane pricing will drive down NVME which will drive down SATA SSD.