La IA està trencant el mercat del videojoc? Dades i exageracions

This is a PlayStation 5. It came out in

2020 at $399. And now, even though it's

6 years old, it costs $599. Nintendo's

announced a price hike to their Switch,

too. The Xbox has raised its price three

times since 2025. And the scariest part

is not even the extra money. It's what's

happening around it. Because at the same

time, PlayStation announced it's going

to stop shipping physical game discs

entirely. Xbox has axed five of its big

game production studios and fired

thousands of people in what's being

called one of the biggest single layoffs

in gaming history. All while Nvidia has

started capping how many hours a month

you're allowed to play when using their

services. The craziest part, everything

I've just mentioned is linked. This is

actually all part of a single chain

reaction that's already started in the

gaming industry and I don't see where it

stops.

To understand what I mean, if we were to

take apart this PlayStation 5,

inside you would find 16 GB of RAM or

memory, which it needs to be able to run

games. A single AI chip from Nvidia, the

Blackwell Ultra, requires 288 GB of

memory. 18 PlayStation 5's worth of RAM.

Now, it is a fancier type of memory than

what's in your PlayStation, but it's

made on the same production lines by the

same companies. So every gigabyte that

goes into this is a gigabyte that can't

be made for a PS5. [music] And the

problem is when AI companies buy chips

for their data centers, they don't just

buy one. Chips are sold in racks,

[music] each containing 72 of those AI

chips. So one rack equals 1,300

PlayStation Fives. Oh dear. And they

don't just buy one rack. Racks are

purchased in clusters. Last year,

Microsoft switched on their first big

cluster to help power the growing needs

from OpenAI's Chat GBT models. That

cluster was 64 racks in one go, 83,000

PlayStation Vives. And here's where it

gets truly terrifying. Even that was

barely a test run compared to the scale

on which these new servers are being set

up now, just a year later. OpenAI is

currently building out the Stargate

campus that will reportedly hold 100

times the number of racks as that first

purchase. 8.3 million PlayStation 5's

worth of memory in one company's one

site. That's almost enough PlayStations

for every single household in the entire

continent of Australia. And so when you

factor in that there are also other AI

companies, Meta and their even larger

Prometheus site, XAI's Colossus,

supposedly the world's most powerful

data center of Amazon, Google, and every

other big tech company who's galloping

head first into the AI wars. We have

reached a point where AI data centers

are now estimated to be swallowing up

70% of the world's memory output. 70% is

going into building services that we'd

barely heard of 5 years ago. And that

has left everything else on the planet

that needs memory. Every phone, every

PC, every car, every console having to

now fight over the small and rapidly

shrinking pool that's left.

Why don't they just make some more

memory, you ask? Well, I don't think

they want to. See, the entire world's

memory supply comes from largely five

companies. And if we're talking about

the specific type of memory used to make

RAM, that's only three companies.

Samsung, SKH Highix, and Micron. And

these three companies could choose to

invest tens of billions into new

factories to be able to produce more,

but that would take three to four years

to build. And if there were to be an AI

crash in that time, they'd have spent it

all for nothing. And so, why take the

risk when they're currently raking in

cash? These companies are currently

lapping up 70 to 80% margins on their

memory compared to the historical norm

of 30 to 40% because of one simple fact

that their new favorite customers big

tech companies will pay absolutely

anything for it. We are in a very unique

situation where basically for the first

time since the.com bubble some of the

richest companies on the planet like

Microsoft, Amazon, Google are not even

behaving like businesses. They're

spending more money than they're even

making from AI because the fear of

losing the AI race has actually become

bigger than the fear of debt. This is a

very precarious situation for the world

to be in. And it puts these memory

companies in such a powerful position

that it feels like they've just decided

to forget entirely about the consumer

with Micron actually quietly shutting

down its consumer memory brand. Crucial

to focus on these data center business

customers. Now, new factories are

coming. Elon Musk and Intel are building

a giant AI complex in Texas, for

example, that will also make some

memory. But none of it produces [music]

anything meaningful before 2028. Plus,

almost all of that new capacity is being

built for, you guessed it, the AI

customers anyway, because well, you

already know now. So, how much more

expensive has this memory really become?

Well, to give you an idea, within just 3

months at the end of last year, the

price of a single 16 GB stick of RAM

rose almost 300%. According to Tom's

Hardware's RAM price index, Asha Sharma,

CEO of Xbox, has said the price we paid

for console storage components was over

two times as high as we paid last fall.

These costs have since doubled again.

And as we plan for the 2027 holiday

season, we expect another significant

increase, taking us over five times the

prices we paid only 2 years earlier.

Five times. Memory is getting so

expensive that according to a report

from Trendforce on some high-end

graphics cards, the memory that's on the

card, known as the VRAM, now accounts

for up to 80% of the total cost. Let

that sink in. The actual clever bit of

the graphics card that you should be

paying for, the GPU chip that companies

like Nvidia spend billions designing, is

on some cards now costing less than the

basic memory that's soldered around it.

Here's where it starts to get

problematic. The implications from these

higher prices are bigger than they first

seem because when the prices go up, of

course, fewer consumers buy. Like if we

take PlayStation [music] in May 2026,

just after the price hike, Americans

bought fewer PlayStations than they had

in any May since the year 2000. That's

before the PlayStation 2 had even come

to America. Xbox had the worst May in

its entire history. And it's much bigger

than just PlayStation and Xbox. any

company that makes any type of computing

hardware. I was speaking to the director

of one of the big Windows handheld

companies, the companies that make this

kind of stuff. And his words were, "Man,

Windows gaming handhelds and computers

are dead now. No company will launch new

products if the memory prices continue

to rise. It is crazy now. How bad do

things need to be for a director of a

currently operating business to call

their own business dead?" Even like

Valve, typically the strongman of value

gaming, just launched their Steam

Machine, a box that's barely as powerful

as the 6-year-old PS5 for $1,049.

It's not going to be the next Steam

Deck, put it that way. So, all of a

sudden, the home console, the bastion

that for 30 years has been the

affordable way to game, the thing your

mom could buy you at Christmas, is

quietly drifting away from a staple to a

luxury purchase.

Now, gamers aren't going to stop playing

games, right? But are they going to have

to start changing where they play them?

Very possibly. And that's where things

get concerning. If the PlayStation 6,

for example, launches at 2 and 1/2 times

the base price that the PS5 did, $1,000,

which sounds like an outrageous

prediction, but is actually what the

current latest rumors are suggesting.

Then it's not a crazy thought that far

fewer people are going to buy a PS6. And

you might think, okay, I mean, that's

fine. I'll just wait. I'll buy it

pre-owned. But [music] it's not about

just us, the individual. See, the entire

console gaming industry relies on

momentum. These companies have to sell

tens of millions of these consoles right

out the gate to prove to developers that

their new platform is worth developing

for. It means that a new console is

basically either all or nothing. You

either sell tons of boxes, have

developers flooding to your platform to

make games for those users, and then

even more users buying your console

because of those games. The Nintendo Wii

is a great example of forward momentum

like this with the console eventually

hitting 101 million sales or you bottle

it at the start. You don't manage to get

that initial launch trajectory. Game

devs don't want to take the risk and

then pretty much nothing you do is going

to save your platform like the Wii U

which came just after the Wii and in its

[music] entire lifetime has only hit

13.5 million. So, my question is, how on

earth are Sony or Xbox going to build

any kind of momentum with their nextG

consoles if they're priced at $1,000? If

the PS6 launches and only 5 to 8 million

people buy one in the first year,

whereas 80 million people are currently

on PS5s, which platform are developers

going to prioritize their games for?

Obviously, the old one. Sure, they'll

make a version that runs at a higher

resolution for the latest hardware. But

any sensible developer who's going to

have to spend maybe half a decade

pouring everything into their next game

is going to do everything to make sure

that it's PS5 users who are getting an

optimal experience because that's where

the money is. So now there is even less

reason to upgrade and the spiral

descends. Because here's the thing, Sony

more so than Xbox is a little bit

protected in the short term. If no one

buys a PS6, then they do still have this

giant PS5 install base to sell

subscriptions and games to. But the

install base of a console is like a

melting ice cube. Consoles break, they

get sold, they get retired, and players

do slowly lose attachment and stop

buying games for it across its lifetime.

They drift over to PC, phones, or just

out of the hobby. Normally, the thing

that replenishes this pool of active

users [music] is the nextG console. So,

if the PS6 ends up too expensive to do

that, then the paying population for

companies like Sony is going to shrink

every year with nothing refilling it.

So, if these companies want to continue

to maintain their profits, they have to

claw back money from other places. And

as far as I can see, there are four ways

that they could do this. The first lever

they can pull is subscriptions. I think

these companies will raise the price of

subscriptions and will make it feel more

essential to pay a monthly fee to get

the experience. I mean, Xbox tried an

enormous price increase at the end of

last year to its Game Pass, then

realized they went a little too far and

pulled it back a bit, but it's still

more expensive than it was. And

Nintendo's already started jacking up

online costs 2 months ago in Japan. So,

who knows how long till that becomes

global. Lever 2 is game prices, and

we've already been seeing a lot of this

before the memory crisis. like $60 was

the default price for a game for 15

years. Then it jumped to $70 in 2020

only to now start another jump to $80

just 5 years after. If things carry on

like this, we might be seeing the $100

video game sooner than we'd like to. The

third lever is control. This is what

we've just seen happen with Sony

announcing that from 2028 onwards,

they're going [music] to seize

distribution of physical discs. And this

might seem completely unrelated to

what's happening here, but the key thing

that this move achieves for Sony is

rerooting a lot of the money in the

gaming market that wasn't previously

going to them back to them. Because it

means that you can't sell your games

anymore. When games are digital, they

are tied to your account, effectively

shutting down the entire secondhand

market. It means that if your friend

wants to play the same game you're

playing, you can't just lend it to them.

They can't just pop over to eBay and

grab it for $20. they have to make an

entirely new, maybe $80, maybe $100

purchase direct to Sony. And if that

doesn't already sound like a problem,

look at this. On my PlayStation right

now, if I want to buy, say, Immortals of

Avian, a game that, safe to say, flopped

pretty hard, Sony is currently selling

that for £69.99.

That exact same game I can pop onto my

phone, go on to CEX, and order the

physical edition for £5. It is crazy

[music] to think that this second option

could just disappear. And crazier still

that this is how Sony prices games while

these other options still exist. What

are they going to do when there's no

other option? To clarify, when Sony

access the discs, you will still be able

to buy their games at other retailers.

But you'll be buying a download code

that still has to go through the

PlayStation store to get you the games.

>> I don't know what I expected.

>> So Sony will control the price more so

than they ever have been able to with

discs. I wouldn't go as far as to say

that Sony axed the disc because of AI,

but I do think that Sony axing discs is

a sign of a squeezed, desperate

industry, and that squeeze is largely

brought on by this AI boom. And even if

these discs don't officially die till

2028, it feels like the beginning of the

end is now with GTA 6, maybe the biggest

game launch in history, but the only

physical thing about the physical

edition

is a download code, at which point they

might as well just be digital only. And

Nintendo, too. Because their game

cartridges rely on the same type of

flash memory that's rocking up in price.

Publishers on Switch 2 are increasingly

shipping datalless game key cards. Like

Elden Ring, it's a cartridge in a box

that doesn't actually have the game on

the cartridge, just a key that downloads

it. So, when you put it in, you're the

one who has to download it, and you're

the one using up your internal storage

instead of theirs. And the fourth lever

that these companies can use to recoup

their costs, the darkest one I'm getting

to. But for the time being, can you see

how it's already getting more expensive

and just worse to be a console gamer?

This is even leading to some insiders

claiming that while Sony originally

planned to launch PS6 in 2027, that it

has now been delayed to 2028 or later.

And whichever way this turns out, there

is absolutely no doubt that we're about

to see slower progress in games becoming

next generation. And there's even a

supposedly leakly claiming that the

nextG consoles will ship with less RAM

than originally planned and a lower

speed bandwidth. As if there weren't

already enough reasons to be concerned

about them. I was originally wondering,

one upside of AI is that maybe you don't

need that new hardware. We've already

seen with Nvidia's DLSS5 tech that AI

has the ability to massively upscale the

resolution of games, make them run

smoother, and even improve the lighting

in real time. But alas, most of this

tech can only run on new compatible AI

hardware, which the current gen consoles

are just not.

Unfortunately, it's not just gaming

companies and gaming consumers who are

losing out in this spiral because the

final lever that brands like Sony and

Xbox are going to have to pull is cost

cutting. Like I mentioned, Xbox has

actually divested five big game studios,

including the people behind massively

popular titles like Hellblade and

Psychonauts, and in the process also

axed around 3,200

jobs. This is one company's one set of

layoffs. And still, it means 3,200

potentially talented level designers,

graphic designers, voiceover artists who

were previously working on the next

generation of games who there's a very

good chance are just not anymore. key

word talented. Reportedly, the layoffs

even include around half of the team at

ID Software, the studio that basically

invented the first person shooter with

Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, and more. Now,

imagine if on top of everything else,

the higher prices, the dirtier tactics,

the reduced focus on next generation,

that we also start getting fewer big

budget games, too, because there's fewer

people to make them. From an industry

trade analysis in May 2026, a higher

hardware entry price changes the shape

of the next install-based cohort and

feeds directly into the lifetime value

assumptions that justify a green light

decision at the publisher level. Or in

English, publishers decide whether to

make a game based on projections of how

many consoles are going to exist in the

future to sell it to. This memory price

surge has reduced the future projected

install base, which means that games are

being killed at the pitch stage right

now because of RAM prices, and we're not

even ever going to know which ones. And

I think there's a very good chance that

this also affects the innovation in

games because doing new things is a

risk. When projected install bases

shrink, it means that the threshold for

something to become green lit is going

to become tighter. So, the games that

make it through that are increasingly

going to be those easy, safe wins. Games

like the new Assassin's Creed Black Flag

Reynct, a beloved 13-year-old game

that's been rebuilt cheaply, targeted at

hardware people already own, and

absolutely filled to the brim with

in-game monetization. Or for another

example, Jason Shrier recently reported

that Obsidian, one of the other top game

devs, they're ending work on a new

unannounced RPG game to work on the next

iteration of Fallout, the safe known

entity. These are dark times for video

games. I mean, EA is even going all out

right now on trying to create a new

standard for how in-game advertising

works. And they're not scaling them

back. They're actually building a

platform that would let advertisers in

almost real time buy ads that will then

appear onto billboards and objects that

you will see while trying to play your

games. Now, you would hope that there

will be limitations on what can be

advertised where, but I am horrified by

the idea of dropping the big bucks on

Ghosts of Yote, being kneede in feudal

Japan, katana drawn, cherry blossoms

falling, only to turn around and see a

giant sign for car insurance discounts.

And even if it doesn't go that far,

think about it. As soon as there becomes

a monetary incentive to show game as

adverts, how could that not start to

change how game worlds are designed and

even what types of games are made and

how permanently online they need to be

connected

now. A lot of the issues that we've

talked about game publishers getting

greedier, the layoffs has been happening

already in the background for years. I

mean, especially after co when companies

realized that they couldn't sustain the

revenues that they had when all we were

allowed to do was basically play video

games. So, they've been finding all

sorts of ways to recoup those costs both

in-game and also by culling employees.

>> You're fired.

>> Point being, the fire was already lit.

But the AI crisis stacked on top of this

already strained industry is like the

fire brigade showing up with cans of

petrol. The problems are now

accelerating so fast that yes, there's

still a possibility that the memory

crisis suddenly starts to ease. I hope

it does. It is possible that this AI

bubble that some people are calling it

does just pop entirely. But the worrying

thing is if they don't, how much more

can console and game prices keep going

up and demand keep going down before

this entire business model for a game's

console as we know it becomes unviable?

I don't think very long at all. If the

AI industry carries on doing what it's

doing, then there's one of three things

I could see happening, and I don't

[music] think any of them are good news.

One, cloud gaming, like Nvidia's GeForce

Now, becoming a more popular

alternative, so that Nvidia can rent us

the graphics card we can no longer

afford to buy and own, and we can stream

games from their servers for a monthly

fee forever. [music] And this isn't

conjecture. The service is growing,

racking up 30 million registered users

with industry analysis actually citing

the hardware scarcity from this memory

crisis as one of the big three drivers

of that. 30 million is a huge amount of

people. Not an entirely fair comparison,

but that's basically the same number of

people that have bought the current gen

Xbox Series S and X combined. And what

makes this so depressing that it's

almost funny, Nvidia just this January

has enforced a 100h hour a month

playtime cap on paid GeForce Now

accounts. Obviously that's not going to

affect every user, but it paints quite

the picture of what the world could look

like when you don't own your hardware.

The second thing I could see happening

is older classic games becoming not just

something that you revisit because you

fancy a bit of nostalgia, but something

that you settle for because it's a whole

lot more affordable. We've already

started to see this on PC where the

majority of all PC play time now goes

towards games that are over 6 years old.

And a recent survey from Tom's Hardware,

a publication that's only really going

to be read by PC enthusiasts, finding

that 60% of their readers won't be

upgrading any hardware for at least the

next 2 years. And then the third

situation is mobile gaming becoming more

of a default. See, all tech is getting

more expensive, right? PCs, consoles,

and that includes smartphones, too. But

people are still going to buy a

smartphone because it's considered much

more of an essential than a games

console. So if the user base of the

smartphone remains steady and if

anything continues to rise while the

pool of people who can keep up with the

increasing costs and difficulties of

being a console or PC gamer falls, of

course I could see a situation where

developers are much more incentivized to

put their eggs into the mobile [music]

basket. Am I happy about that? Hell no.

Console games are held to a certain

standard that mobile games just aren't.

And it's not like you can just make

console games and then put them on

mobile. This has been tested time and

time again. Resident Evil 4, Death

Stranding, Assassin's Creed Mirage, and

commercially they largely flocked. They

cost near console money and barely

anyone bought them because mobile gaming

rewards freetoplay battle passes and

in-game currencies and adverts.

So, the future that I'm worried about is

not your favorite console game, but

smaller on a phone. It's this entire

industry where the only economically

sane thing for a game dev to do is to

build endlessly monetized free-to-play

machines. Games that are not designed

around spectacle and hardware pushing

experiences because no one has the

hardware and instead are all about just

reusing safe IPs that have worked

before. Remaster after remaster made by

fewer and fewer people. And it's about

what we lose on the way. From the games

[music] that you can no longer borrow

from your friends to the graphics cards

that you might have to borrow from your

not friends. The industry will find a

way to claw its money back from the one

group of people who can't pass that cost

on. That's us. I'm a console gamer at

heart, but I've actually noticed myself

becoming more of a mobile gamer these

last few months. I'm currently playing a

ton of Pokémon Champions on my phone

instead of the [music] Switch. And even

my second favorite franchise, Monster

Hunter. Their next game is mobile only

and it's just created yet another reason

why Surf SharkVPN, our sponsor, has a

permanent place in my control center.

Because the moment that your gaming

moves to your phone, your gaming moves

to the internet full-time. You're

playing on cafe Wi-Fi, hotel Wi-Fi,

airport Wi-Fi, and every one of those

networks is a vulnerability. So, the

fact that I can just single tap here and

know that every account login, every

payment detail is all encrypted before

it leaves my phone is a massive piece of

mind, especially since the rise of AI is

actually making it much easier for

scammers to use that info to

convincingly deceive you. And unlike the

immense price creep that we've seen

across the entire gaming industry, Surf

Shark's price is still as low as it

gets. With the code boss, it's $2 a

month for an unlimited number of users.