Three pieces of news about hardware price increases or announcements in three days, and all three have met with open rejection from the public. Valve confirms that its new console costs more than 1,000 euros (or much more, depending on the model). Apple raises all its Macs and iPads by 20% on average. Microsoft announces the third Xbox increase in fourteen months. And they all give the same reason, which has been causing the tech industry to convulse for months. The worst: at the moment there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
The prices. This past Monday, June 22, Valve wakefulness the final price of its long-awaited Steam Machine: 1,039 euros for the 512 GB model without controller. And that is the economic option. On Thursday morning the 25th, Apple updated their online store with increases of 15 to 20% on all Macs and iPads; The MacBook Air went from 1,099 to 1,299 euros, and the MacBook Neo, the entry-level laptop that the company introduced in March at $599, rose to $699. hours laterMicrosoft: Xbox Series S and Series The reason, which has now become sadly familiar: the RAM and storage crisis.
Who is to blame. Neither Apple, Microsoft nor Valve are responsible for this situation. They are the three manufacturers that produce 90% of the world’s DRAM: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. They have all made the same decision: prioritize contracts with artificial intelligence data centers over the consumer market. Micron, for example, closed its consumer division in 2025 (the Crucial brand) to redirect its capacity towards industrial customers. SK Hynix, Nvidia’s main supplier, stated that Its production for this year was completely sold.
The pressures. A Valve spokesperson described it bluntly in an interview: “They give us a price every month and then they say ‘you can buy this amount’ and it’s a yes or no. And if we say no, they never talk to us again.” It is the same scheme for all companies, just with different consequences depending on the size of the order. Apple has room to negotiate because it sells tens of millions of units a year. Valve, not so much: its hardware volume is incomparably smaller. But the result is similar: the costs have been shot until they cannot be absorbed internally. Tim Cook acknowledged it before the announcement: the situation is already “unsustainable.”
Why consoles pay more. Significantly, consoles are especially vulnerable to this crisis. Unlike a MacBook or a phone, consoles have historically sold below their manufacturing cost, assuming that lRevenue from games and subscriptions will cover the difference over time. Microsoft explained it very light: “Unlike phones, computers and other devices, consoles are generally not sold at a profit, but for less than it costs to make them.”
That model works when component costs are predictable, but if RAM rises without being possible to anticipate, the market is thrown into chaos. For example, Nintendo is paying 41% more for 12 GB of RAM which includes each unit of Switch 2 with respect to the original projections. Maintaining the sales price in that scenario would mean a loss of $50 per console sold. The case of Xbox is even more striking because it does not stop accumulating increases. The first in May 2025, the second in October of that same year and now this third. According to Microsoft, the cost of console storage and memory “has increased more than 2.5 times” since the last revision.
Valve in trouble. The component crisis applied to consumer hardware has hit Valve with particular fury. The Steam Machine was announced in November 2025 pricelesswith internal projections that placed it around 700-800 dollars. The company explains which was based on years of data on the evolution of PC hardware prices, which “tend to go down over time as new technology arrives.” But just the opposite happened: when DRAM manufacturers redirected their capacity towards AI, Valve stopped getting stable prices for its components. Every month a new price arrives; either it is accepted or there is no supply.
There is one detail in the launch that illustrates the precarious supply better than any figure: some Steam Machine units are shipping to analysts with a single 16 GB RAM module, while others arrive with two 8 GB modules. The situation has reached the point that the same type of module is not always available.
How long will things last? Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said it no room for optimism in the Q3 fiscal 2026 earnings report: “We expect shortage conditions to persist beyond 2027 as a result of AI-driven demand across all segments, coupled with structural supply constraints.” He added that even with a gradual improvement planned for 2028, “there is currently no visibility on when memory supply will be able to catch up with growing demand.” Microsoft, for its part, expects “another doubling” of console storage and memory prices by fall 2027.
The consequences beyond the current moment are already beginning to become clear. sony consider delaying the launch of PS6 until 2028 or 2029which would make this period between PlayStation generations the longest in its history. And even when the shortage moderates, no price drops expected: the new level of costs will tend to stabilize, not reverse. That is to say, the week we have just experienced, more than an occasional tsunami, is the advance of a new pricing structure for consumer hardware.
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