AI Memory Crunch May Delay PlayStation, Hike Switch 2 Price
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- Sony is weighing a delay of its next-generation PlayStation console to 2028 or 2029 as memory chip shortages driven by AI data center demand squeeze supply, according to Bloomberg industry sources.
- A postponement to 2029 would break Sony's 30-year pattern of releasing a new console every six to seven years, a cadence dating back to the original PlayStation's 1994 debut.
- The current PlayStation 5 launched in November 2020, meaning a successor would normally have been expected before the end of 2027 under Sony's established cycle.
- Nintendo held the Switch 2's launch price at $450 last year even as Trump's sweeping tariffs pressured costs, and may now raise it this year as the memory shortage adds fresh cost pressure.
- Bloomberg offered no specific figure for how much the Switch 2's price could increase, and the publication has reached out to both Sony and Nintendo for comment.
Why it matters: A potential PlayStation delay to 2029 would break Sony's 30-year pattern of new consoles every six to seven years, stretching the PS5's shelf life to nearly a decade. For Nintendo, a Switch 2 price hike would follow absorbing tariff costs to hold the $450 launch — both face squeezed margins as AI data center demand crowds out consumer memory supply.
