RAM price hikes: the latest on the global memory shortage

SanDisk has announced an expensive way to boost the PlayStation 5’s storage capacity. The company’s new Optimus GX PRO 850P NVMe SSD is an officially licensed PS5 accessory in capacities ranging from 1TB to 8TB. The largest option can store up to 200 PS5 games (based on average installation sizes) SanDisk claims, but thanks to the global memory shortage, it will cost you $2,959.99 when it’s eventually available through the company’s online store, discounted from $3,699.99.

Even after you take into account Sony’s recent console price hikes, you can buy three PS5 Pro consoles for the price of just one of these 8TB sticks. But the smaller capacities are similarly expensive. The 4TB version is $1,499.99 (discounted from $1,874.99), while the 2TB option is $759.99 (down from $949.99) — still $100 more expensive than the standard PS5.

If you’re thinking about upgrading your phone, “the best time was yesterday,” according to Nothing CEO and co-founder Carl Pei, echoing a message we heard during MWC. As Android Authority reports, Pei said in a post on X that the RAM shortage has already impacted Nothing’s less expensive mid-range phone: “For Phone 4A , memory costs doubled between when we decided to build the device and when it launched. They’ve doubled again since.” He warned that “Phone prices are going up, and they’ll keep going up into next year.”

Pei says RAM can now account for over 50 percent of the cost of a new phone. Nothing’s just the latest phone maker to warn of looming price hikes — Samsung and Google are both expected to raise prices on their phones as a result of higher memory costs.

The RAMageddon crisis has got Microsoft rethinking its Xbox console hardware business. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Xbox strategy chief Matthew Ball have both revealed this week that Microsoft is reevaluating plans for its next-generation Project Helix console and exploring “radically different” console business models in the meantime.

“We are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about Helix, which is a console we are committed to shipping, and we are very cognizant of the ways in which we need to change as a company to make sure it is affordable, to make sure that it’s flexible,” said Ball in an interview with The Game Business earlier this week.

Valve has significantly increased the price of the Steam Deck — but now, it’s also in stock. The 512GB Steam Deck OLED now costs $789, up from $549, while the 1TB model costs $949, up from $649. As I write this, both models are available to buy on Steam with an estimated delivery date of three to five business days.

The company says the price increase is because of “rising memory and storage costs.” Nothing about the Steam Deck has changed, but “these new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole. We’ll keep you updated if anything changes.”

Nubia has announced the international launch of the Redmagic 11S Pro, its new flagship Android gaming phone. It’s not a significant change from the 11 Pro, which launched internationally last November, but has been upgraded to the overclocked Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version.

Otherwise things look similar. There’s a large 7,500mAh battery, fast 80W charging, and a 144Hz screen with an under-display camera. The company’s AquaCore cooling returns, combining a 24,000 RPM fan with a true liquid cooling system — not the simple vapor chamber found on other phones. The big downside to the 11S Pro is that the RAM caps at 16GB and the storage at 512GB, with no sign of the 24GB+1TB configuration available for the 11 Pro. Blame RAMageddon.

Details have emerged about a tentative deal struck between Samsung and semiconductor employees who had threatened to strike. The deal reportedly makes some workers eligible for average annual bonuses of $340,000.

The proposed 18-day strike had hinged on Samsung’s bonus cap for employees in the semiconductor division and followed a substantial rise in the possible bonuses available to employees of SK Hynix, another South Korean chipmaker enjoying a boom thanks to demand for AI components.

More than 47,000 Samsung Electronics workers were gearing up for an 18-day strike after bonus payment negotiations between the company and its union collapsed. The strike was set to start on Thursday at Samsung’s domestic chipmaking plants, raising concerns around the already constrained production of memory chips amid the ongoing shortage.

Later on Wednesday, both parties announced that labor and management had reached a tentative agreement. On its website, the union confirmed strike plans have been suspended until further notice, pending a vote on the deal.

It’s been a real good news / bad news week for Nintendo. Out of nowhere on Wednesday, the company announced a lush remake of Star Fox 64, jolting the dormant franchise to life and helping to fill out a relatively sparse lineup for the Switch 2 for the rest of the year. But then on Friday, Nintendo announced news that had seemed inevitable, but is nonetheless significant: the Switch 2 is getting a price hike and will soon cost $50 more. Nintendo was the last holdout in a console space that has been ravaged by rising costs thanks to a combination of tariffs and the global memory shortage. And with the Switch 2 getting more expensive, console gaming is continuing its slow and steady march toward becoming a niche, luxury good.

Price hikes have become common for gadgets, and consoles are perhaps the most visible example. Historically these devices have become cheaper over time, but now the opposite is true. Microsoft raised the prices of the Xbox and its various accessories last spring, while the cost of a PS5 has risen multiple times over the last year. Even budget devices like the Nex Playground now cost more. What makes the Nintendo news notable is that the company appears to have been holding out for as long as it could. The Switch 2 is less than a year old, and the company clearly didn’t want to mess with its initial sales momentum. So it started out by finding places to claw back some lost revenue around the edges. That meant raising the price of the original Switch, a few accessories, and even oddball devices like the Alarmo alarm clock. But the company clearly wasn’t happy about any of it; Nintendo is currently suing the US government over its illegal tariffs, demanding a “prompt refund, with interest.”

Sony sold just 1.5 million PS5 consoles in its most recent fourth fiscal quarter, down 46 percent year over year. The slump in PS5 sales comes after Sony raised the price of its PS5 consoles twice over the past year, pushing the price of the regular PS5 from $499.99 all the way up to $649.99.

Sony blamed “continued pressures in the global economic landscape,” for the price hikes in March, amid an ongoing memory crisis and pressure from the war in Iran. Sony now forecasts that annual gaming revenue will drop 6 percent, but these forecasts could be impacted by ongoing memory costs. “We plan to base our PS5 hardware sales in FY26 on the volume of memory we can procure at reasonable prices and we expect hardware profitability to be essentially the same as FY25,” says Sony.

Nintendo is raising the price of its Switch 2 console globally, “in light of changes in market conditions,” and is now forecasting a drop in sales over the next year. Starting September 1st, the Switch 2 will cost $499.99 in the US, up from its current $449.99 price.

At the same time, prices will also increase by $50 in Canada ($679.99, up from $629.99) and €40 in Europe, bringing it to €499.99 (about $587). The price increases in Japan go into effect sooner, on May 25th, and impact a greater range of Switch products. The Switch 2 will increase from ¥49,980 (about $318) to ¥59,980 (about $382), with similar increases being applied to the original Switch, Switch OLED, and Switch Lite models.

The MacBook Neo might lose its most appealing trait thanks to the ongoing RAM shortage. According to analyst Tim Culpan, Apple could discontinue the budget-priced $599 base configuration of the Neo, leaving only the $699 model with 512GB of storage. Earlier this week, Apple similarly stopped selling the most affordable configuration of the Mac mini, effectively bumping its starting price up to $799. In March, Apple removed the option for 512GB of RAM in the Mac Studio, likely also as a result of RAM shortages.

Ironically, the MacBook Neo could face similar pricing changes because of its huge initial success. The Neo arrived right as the RAM shortage is pushing up prices for competitors’ laptops (and just about everything else), and the laptop has been such a hit that there’s currently a two to three-week wait for it to ship on Apple’s website. In response to this, Culpan says Apple is doubling production for the Neo to 10 million units, rather than the 5 to 6 million it initially planned for.

Google’s next round of Pixel phones could be a downgrade compared to the Pixel 10 lineup due to the ongoing RAM shortage. Leaked specs for the Pixel 11 lineup shared by MysticLeaks include a possible starting configuration with only 8GB of RAM, rather than the current 12GB, as Android Headlines reports.

According to MysticLeaks, Google may also add a second configuration for the Pixel 11 Pro, Pro XL, and Pro Fold with 12GB of RAM, down from the current 16GB in each model. There will be 16GB configurations available for each, but adding a lower-spec model could mean the 16GB version is getting a price hike. However, the silver lining is that the specs from MysticLeaks also include camera upgrades and brighter displays for the Pro models.

Apple’s Mac Mini now starts at $799 after the company pulled the $599 option with 256GB of storage from its online store, as spotted earlier by MacRumors. The model’s discontinuation comes just one day after Apple CEO Tim Cook said during an earnings call that a chip shortage will impact its Mac products in the coming months.

“If you look forward to June, the majority of our supply constraints will be on several Mac models,” Cook said. “We think looking forward that the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio may take several months to reach supply-demand balance.” He added that both devices saw “higher-than-expected demand” as well, with many people buying up the device to use with AI agents like OpenClaw.

There may be a long wait before the end of the RAM shortage that’s driving up prices on everything from phones to gaming handhelds. During an earnings call on Thursday, Samsung predicted that the severe memory shortage, driven by demand from AI data centers, will not only continue next year, but likely get worse, as reported by Reuters.

As Samsung memory chip business executive Kim Jaejune stated during the earnings call: