TokyoSony forecast a ¥30bn hit from memory prices this fiscal year.
AI datacentre buildout crowded out chip supply in Q1; new production lines take a year to commission despite billions in pledged investment.
Japan’s Sony secured 2026 supply but warns prices persist; Nintendo raised Switch 2 prices $50 in the US.
Sources: CNBC, 毎日新聞, Economic Times, CNA
DRAM VS HBM
Standard DRAM is the commodity memory in PCs and consoles. HBM — high-bandwidth memory — stacks DRAM dies vertically with through-silicon vias, delivering 10× the bandwidth at several times the price. AI accelerators need HBM; consoles use DRAM. They share the same fabs.
THE OLIGOPOLY
Three companies make virtually all the world's DRAM: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. When AI buyers bid up HBM, the same fabs reallocate capacity away from commodity DRAM, tightening supply for everything downstream — phones, PCs, consoles.
WHY FABS TAKE A YEAR
A leading-edge memory fab costs $15-20bn and takes 18-24 months from groundbreaking to first wafer. Even adding a new line in an existing fab requires extreme-ultraviolet lithography tools with multi-year lead times — ASML in the Netherlands ships maybe 50 EUV machines a year worldwide.
THE CONSOLE BUSINESS MODEL
Consoles are sold near or below cost; the profit comes from game royalties (typically 30% of every sale) and subscriptions. When BOM costs spike, manufacturers can't pass the full hit to consumers without crushing the install base that funds the software economy. Sony eats the margin; Nintendo just raised the price.
THE 2017 PRECEDENT
DRAM prices doubled in 2016-17 as smartphone demand outran supply. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron later paid hundreds of millions to settle US and Chinese antitrust claims of coordinated under-investment. The pattern — three suppliers, lagging capacity, sudden demand shock, price spike — is the structural feature of the industry, not a bug.