Hot on the heels of Nvidia reportedly raising the price of its graphics cards and memory units comes word that rival component manufacturer AMD will do the same.
That’s according to industry scrutiniser Harukaze5719 (via PC Gamer) who said AMD had actually been waiting for Nvidia to bump its prices before it bumped its own. “This was to avoid the risk of declining product competitiveness and market share loss from a hasty price adjustment during a period of demand pressure,” Harukaze5719 shared on X.
The report said AMD had already notified manufacturers of a price increase of “at least 10 percent” across all products, and that the price increase would take effect from the beginning of August. “The price positioning is expected to be similar to that of the Nvidia series graphics cards,” Harukaze5719 wrote.
It was reported last week that Nvidia would bump the price of its graphics cards and associated components by 20 to 30 percent. The same report suggested Samsung would raise the price of its memory units by similar amounts, too. Sigh; it’s really not a good time to be buying into gaming hardware.
The cause of all of this is, primarily, rampant component demand by AI datacenters and lucrative deals those companies are making to hog component stock being produced. Harukaze5719’s analysis also highlighted a current “weak recovery phase in the consumer graphics card market”, “high price sensitivity at the end-user level”, and “existing inventory still needing to be digested” as reasons why prices were rising.
The knock-on effect of this is felt in console gaming, too, as we deal with the unprecedented situation of console prices rising after launch rather than falling. All three platform holders – Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft – have raised the price of their consoles since they were released, often multiple times, and they’ve warned they might do so again in the future. The cascading effect could mean we’re looking at next generation consoles in touching distance of £1000 for the first time. It’s a pricing crisis that’s far from over.
