SSDs came out after CPUs started to slow down on doubling (single threaded) performance every 12-18mo or so.

So it was the only way to get that visceral improvement in user experience like CPU and platform upgrades were in the mid 90's to very early 00's.

The experience of just slapping a new SSD in a 3 year old machine was similar to a different generation of computer nerds.

Nothing could really match the night and day difference of an entire machine being double to triple the performance in a single upgrade though. Not even the upgrade from spinning disks to SSD. You'd go from a game being unplayable on your old PC to it being smooth as butter overnight. Not these 20% incremental improvements. Sure, load times didn't get too much better - but those started to matter more when the CPU upgrades were no longer a defining experience.