2021 might almost be over but the situation with low stock of consoles and high-end PC graphics cards won’t get any better next year.
If you’ve missed out on getting a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X this year, then your chances of finding one next year are not necessarily going to be much better.
That shouldn’t necessarily be a surprise, as Toshiba warned of exactly that back in September, but now Intel has confirmed that the semiconductor chip shortage, which is at the root of the problem, will still be going on in 2023.
‘Covid disrupted the supply chains, causing it to go negative’, Intel boss Pat Gelsinger told Nikkei. ‘Demand exploded to 20% year-over-year and disrupted supply chains created a very large gap … and that exploding demand has persisted’.
If Covid ever ends then that will help the situation but the industry is also investing in new factories, to increase production, with Geslinger making his comments at a new plant in Malaysia.
‘It just takes time to build this capacity to respond to the spike’, he said.
The most high profile victims of the chip shortages have been the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, which have suffered stock shortages ever since their launch last Christmas.
The Nintendo Switch has also been affected though, especially the newer OLED model. At the same time, high-end PC graphics cards such as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 have endured similar problems, which have been exacerbated by people wanting them for use in cryptomining instead of games.
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The problem affects all electronics but issues such as server shortages are also impacting gaming, with Square Enix recently unable to buy enough new servers to cope with increased demand for Final Fantasy 14.
This will also inevitably affect attempts to expand video game streaming, as Microsoft and others struggle to source the components they need.
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