The Chip Shortage Is Impacting Game Console Makers Across the Board
The chip shortage that has consistently affected a huge part of the gaming industry will seemingly not let up until the end of next year. Takeshi Kamebuchi, the Director who is in charge of the semiconductors at one of Toshiba Corp.’s units, confirmed that the chip shortage will continue into 2023.
“The supply of chips will remain very tight until, at least, September next year,” Kamebuchi confirmed. “In some cases, we may find customers not being fully served until 2023.” This chip shortage affects everything related to the gaming world, from graphics cards to the manufacture of the PS5—which, in turn, has remained to be high in demand to date.
The constant high demand and material shortages are making it hard for Toshiba Corp., and others, to fulfill its orders. Apparently, the foundries are astronomically expensive to set up and orders for the chips need to be placed far in advance. Unfortunately, the rampant increase of Covid-19 cases, natural disasters, and increase in political tensions, have largely impacted the global chip supply chain.
“We consider which customer faces the most severe situation, such as the risk of the whole production line halting, or the business getting obliterated without the supply of chips,” he added. “Game console makers are among the customers making the strongest demands, and I am sincerely sorry for their frustration as none of them have a 100% satisfaction.”
With that said, it is safe to say that the struggle to purchase the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, or even the new PC graphics cards, will continue. Although Sony was confident that they can sell more than 14.8 million PS5 units, it has been reported that PS5 production this year has fallen behind that of the PS4 by a considerable margin.
Nintendo is also struggling to meet the demand for new Switch consoles. The company will be launching an OLED version of the Switch on October 8th, which many expect will also run into shortage problems post-release.