Steam owner and gaming gadget maker Valve has warned of further deterioration in the global RAM market. According to the company’s experts, current retail price tags for PC components do not yet reflect the real jump in prices in the wholesale segment that will appear on store shelves in the coming months.
Steam owner and gaming gadget maker Valve has warned of further deterioration in the global RAM market. According to the company’s experts, current retail price tags for PC components do not yet reflect the real jump in prices in the wholesale segment that will appear on store shelves in the coming months.
Valve engineers told this in an interview with Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreyer, reports PC Gamer. As noted by the company’s engineer Yazan Aldehayat, the trend towards higher RAM prices will continue in the short and medium term.
«Honestly, the situation is still getting worse. What people are seeing on store shelves now, from our observations, lags behind what we see in wholesale supplies by at least three to six months,» Aldehayat stressed.
The shortage of components is already directly affecting the production capabilities of the tech giants. A clear example is the limited supply of Steam Machine devices. Another Valve engineer, Pierre-Loup Griffe, confirmed that the shortage of RAM has become the main factor holding back production: «We are essentially producing everything we can. We are definitely limited by the amount of memory available.»
The semiconductor market is set to remain tense for a long time to come. According to hardware market analysts, RAM prices will continue to rise until at least 2027. RAM prices are not expected to return to lower levels or stabilize until 2028.
Supply constraints and the crisis in the component market have affected not only ordinary users of the console, but also consumer electronics manufacturers. For example, Microsoft increased the prices of its Xbox consoles by $100 to $150, Apple adjusted prices for its entire hardware line, and Valve Corporation was forced to reconsider the pricing policy of its Steam Machine portable devices, since the initial goal of making the device as affordable as possible became unrealistic. The price hike also affected consoles from Sony and Nintendo.
Recall that earlier the three largest global manufacturers of random access memory (DRAM) were at the center of a lawsuit. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are accused of colluding to regulate supply volumes and artificially inflate prices in the market.
