Memory pricing set to double again by 2027

[GStratos]

I was watching this Kira video about some statements Sony put out regarding a lawsuit on digital/physical media. Among various things, Kira also explained that some Microsoft analysts predict memory prices will double from where they are now (i.e., already 3x or 4x what they were in price compared to a year ago) by 2027. Here's a source confirming the claim. This comes at around the same time as a similar warning from Valve engineers stating that "what people are seeing on retail shelves right now, from our observations, is lagging what we're seeing from a bulk supply by at least three to six months." As widely known, this was the main reason for the lack of availability for the Steam Machine as well as its steep increase in price.

What this means in practice is that most parts for consoles and PC alike are about to get much more expensive real fast. Buying new SSDs or GPUs will become even more unaffordable, and consoles will also see new increases in prices for hardware - I would not be surprised to see another Nintendo announcement for a Switch 2 price increase in the near future. It also means that new consoles from Sony and Microsoft are apparently going to be delayed because they simply cannot afford to buy the necessary parts to get these consoles out without them being prohibitively expensive for the consumers.

All I know is that I'm going to buy a new SSD this month and weather the storm until at least 2030, waiting for better times to come, assuming they ever will. Things are very grim in the hardware and gaming space right now and gamers are very quickly being priced out of the market. This is a crisis of unprecedented levels.

[GStratos]

I just bit the bullet and purchased a new 4TB SSD. It wasn't cheap, but I'd rather pay this money than having to pay even more by the end of the year...

[GStratos]

Well, the SSD arrived and is working just fine - I should be free from any storage woes for quite a long time. Just as well, as I was reading this article yesterday:

There’s an unprecedented wave of investment in building AI systems and data centres, based on the belief that they’re going to have a really transformational role in the economy, and the scale of the economic opportunity there means they can outbid the entire entertainment industry for all the components. We should expect there’s just going to be a continual supply crisis for all gaming-relevant hardware for the next three years. We’re getting the short end of the stick, and the prices of RAM and storage are quadrupling, and not necessarily stopping there. Video game console sales have been down across the board, with July proving the lowest month for gaming hardware spending since the COVID-19 pandemic caused supply chain shortages. Prices for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch 2 have gone up due to RAM shortages. Epic's Tim Sweeney added that there are also “internal dysfunctions” that are contributing to the industry’s woes, such as the ballooning cost of AAA game development.

Playable Worlds CEO Raph Koster argued the same. “I think the first time I spoke about, ‘Hey, cost is going to kill us’ was in 2005,” he said. He previously said the cost of AAA game development goes up about tenfold each decade. According to his analysis, when adjusted for inflation, it cost around $1 million to make a big-budget game in the mid ‘90s, $10 million in 2005, and $100 million in 2015. While that rate has slowed down a bit, with Sweeney saying higher-end games cost between $250 million and $400 million, these budgets are arguably unsustainable because financial resources are “the great constraint that never gets expanded,” as former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden put it. He argues that games need to shrink in scope. “Do you need to model an entire world that takes 45 minutes to walk across? If there’s not a reason for that – if it’s not pushing the experience or story forward – that’s just a party trick. You’ve spent a bunch of time – which means money – on something that doesn’t mean anything.”

Both Koster and former Tencent business development director Amir Satvat argued that AI won’t solve these problems. “AI is not a platform reset, where costs get lower. AI is just a computer getting bigger, and so the gas will keep filling it,” Koster said. “It is actually incredibly expensive, in the end, so most of the benefit flows upwards. AI is changing things very rapidly, and it also doesn’t matter.” “Are you actually getting a measurable productive gain in what you’re doing because you’re using these tools?” Satvat added. “I’ve seen firms that made staff reductions because they thought they could, due to AI, and are now realising that they cut too many people and are hiring back.” Satvat put the massive cuts to the game industry in perspective, saying, “I think this is as bad as the ’83 crash if you’re a game developer based in North America or Western Europe, in a traditional AAA studio. That is ground zero for destruction.”

Bad times ahead if you want to get into gaming as a hobby these days...

[VideoGameCritic]

Not so bad if you want to get into RETRO gaming however...

Funny how the one type of media totally unaffected by these chip shortages are... discs...
the ONE THING THESE COMPANIES ARE FIGHTING SO HARD TO GET RID OF!!

[Miles Prower]

Not so bad if you want to get into RETRO gaming however...

Funny how the one type of media totally unaffected by these chip shortages are... discs...
the ONE THING THESE COMPANIES ARE FIGHTING SO HARD TO GET RID OF!!

Unfortunately, this is going to drive up the cost of retro gaming through the roof as more and more people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s with disposable income look to reacquire their old games and systems because modern gaming is so frigging expensive. I guess hobbies are only for the bourgeoisie now.

[GStratos]

Yeah, retro gaming with physical media is becoming more and more expensive over time, as most of the games or even hardware you could find for 50€ or less before has shot up in price massively due to collectors and YouTubers jacking up the price. Granted, it's for a very different reason than the memory crisis, but considering we're talking about games that were produced in limited quantities, there's just naturally going to be less and less of them as time goes on, even with reproduction carts and whatnot flooding the market recently.

Of course, emulation and general-purpose gaming remain on the relatively cheap side so long as you have any kind of computer or handheld device that can support it, but that is the initial stumbling block for those. These days I basically emulate anything that's not a PS4/PS5/Switch 2, and my wallet is definitely thankful for it!

[GStratos]

An article on Tech Insider is talking about the likely Playstation 6 price and has this to say:

Sony has not confirmed a release date or a price for the PlayStation 6. But the numbers already leaking out of its supply chain are doing the talking. A component-cost estimate tracked on the NeoGAF forum and reported by Brazilian outlet Mix Vale on September 7, 2026, puts the PlayStation 6’s bill of materials at roughly $960, up nearly $200 since March 2026. That single figure, more than the retail price of a fully loaded PS5 Pro, captures why Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki has spent most of 2026 refusing to say when PS6 will launch or what it will cost.

The culprit is not a new GPU architecture or an ambitious spec sheet. It is memory. DRAM contract prices rose 93% to 98% quarter over quarter in the first quarter of 2026, according to TrendForce data cited by CNBC, then climbed another 55% to 63% in the second quarter. J.P. Morgan Global Research now estimates DRAM prices will have risen more than 400% between the start of 2024 and the end of 2026. That is not a console story. It is an AI data center story that happens to be crushing the console business as collateral damage.

I saw this shortly after seeing a truly staggering price for a new 5090 GPU (granted, a very expensive 32GB VRAM model):



It's going to be a very long winter...

[Stalvern]

I don't know why anyone has a problem with this. The free market has spoken. This is the most efficient, effective, and fair distribution of resources. Anybody who doesn't like it needs to take some personal responsibility and understand that they aren't entitled to everything they want.

[GStratos]

I don't know why anyone has a problem with this. The free market has spoken. This is the most efficient, effective, and fair distribution of resources. Anybody who doesn't like it needs to take some personal responsibility and understand that they aren't entitled to everything they want.

You forgot "and if they don't have bread, let them eat cake"