{"id":23760,"date":"2026-07-01T14:37:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T12:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/01\/no-console-flation-how-the-thirst-for-ai-chips-is-sending-games-console-prices-soaring\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T14:37:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T12:37:18","slug":"no-console-flation-how-the-thirst-for-ai-chips-is-sending-games-console-prices-soaring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/01\/no-console-flation-how-the-thirst-for-ai-chips-is-sending-games-console-prices-soaring\/","title":{"rendered":"No console-flation: how the thirst for AI chips is sending games console prices soaring"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI datacentres, memory scarcity and factory capacity are costing consumers \u2013and console makers<\/p>\n

\u2022 <\/strong>Don\u2019t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

It was once a truth universally acknowledged that an ageing console in possession of good revenue must be in line for a price reduction. Those days may be over. In March, Sony announced a price increase of \u00a390 for the PS5, while last month Microsoft informed gamers<\/a> that it would be charging at least \u00a375 more for the Xbox Series S and X consoles from August. All three were first released back in 2020. <\/strong>The Switch 2 will also be more expensive globally from September.<\/p>\n

The main culprit, of course, is AI, or more specifically the exploding demand for semiconductors and memory to power datacentres. Console manufacturers could once source these components cheaply, but now they\u2019re in high demand and manufacturers can\u2019t keep up, so deals are being struck. \u201cInitially, the wave of price increases seen in gaming were driven by tariffs imposed by Donald Trump early last year,\u201d says Andy Robinson, editor in chief of gaming news site VGC. \u201cThen, in October, OpenAI announced a deal with Samsung and [Korean chip manufacturer] SK Hynix to acquire a huge portion of their DRAM output for datacentres, causing prices to increase by almost 200%. According to Xbox, those prices have since doubled again, and they\u2019re not expected to come back down any time soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nAI datacentres, memory scarcity and factory capacity are costing consumers \u2013and console makers
\n\u2022 Don\u2019t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here
\nIt was once a truth universally acknowledged that an ageing console in possession of good revenue must be in line for a price reduction. Those days may be over. In March, Sony announced a price increase of \u00a390 for the PS5, while last month Microsoft informed gamers that it would be charging at least \u00a375 more for the Xbox Series S and X consoles from August. All three were first released back in 2020. The Switch 2 will also be more expensive globally from September.
\nThe main culprit, of course, is AI, or more specifically the exploding demand for semiconductors and memory to power datacentres. Console manufacturers could once source these components cheaply, but now they\u2019re in high demand and manufacturers can\u2019t keep up, so deals are being struck. \u201cInitially, the wave of price increases seen in gaming were driven by tariffs imposed by Donald Trump early last year,\u201d says Andy Robinson, editor in chief of gaming news site VGC. \u201cThen, in October, OpenAI announced a deal with Samsung and [Korean chip manufacturer] SK Hynix to acquire a huge portion of their DRAM output for datacentres, causing prices to increase by almost 200%. According to Xbox, those prices have since doubled again, and they\u2019re not expected to come back down any time soon.\u201d Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AI datacentres, memory scarcity and factory capacity are costing consumers \u2013and console makers \u2022 Don\u2019t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here It was once a truth universally acknowledged that an ageing console in possession of good revenue must be in line for a price reduction. Those days may be over. In …<\/p>\n

No console-flation: how the thirst for AI chips is sending games console prices soaring<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":23761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23760"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}