As I see it, the prices are basically what they were in 2020. Not ideal, but survivable. I had a hard drive in 2020, and probably so did you. Since 2020, they dropped in half, and then they doubled again.
There's one exception to this - HAMR added additional components, and a corresponding increase in BOM cost, but there's probably a learning curve on this.
However the recent AI data center boom is probably hitting HDDs in two ways - (a) general demand for anything datacenter-related, and (b) high DRAM prices, with most HDDs containing 256-512MB of DDR3. (I haven't physically examined the newest drives - they may be DDR4 and go beyond 512MB; also the 40TB supposedly includes NAND flash, adding yet more cost)