The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been far-reaching. In addition to, of course, causing a whole heap of health-related issues to humans, it has also created crippling effects for manmade industries. While just about every industry has been adversely affected in some form or another by COVID, the gaming industry in particular has been affected greatly on a hardware level.
Lockdowns early on in the pandemic, as well as more recent occurrences due to spikes in COVID cases in China, and the subsequent strain of the global supply chain (that’s still continuing) have caused massive backups in the pipeline for microchip production. Of course, these are essential components for the creation of products like game consoles, GPUs/CPUs, SSDs, and more.
Micron’s CEO, Mr. Sanjay Mehrotra, gave a forward warning to the masses by means of a Fox Business interview, as reported by Wccftech. There, Mr. Mehrotra flat-out stated that even though improvements in the overall situation are starting to come to head, there are other areas that won’t start to recover until 2023.
Micron is responsible for the creation of various memory products, such as DRAM and NAND flash. Again, companies like Nvidia, AMD and Foxconn (manufacturers of the Switch and PS5) heavily rely on these parts for creating their products.
So, it’s easy to see how issues in just one link in the production chain result in a butterfly effect that’s felt throughout the rest of the process.
As long as this chip shortage lingers, stocks will remain low and prices will remain high. It’s a vicious cycle that will only be broken once production can stabilize to a level where output can either match or exceed demand.
Thus, if you’re continuing to have trouble finding new parts for your PC, or are still on the hunt for a PS5 or Xbox Series X|S, then just know you’re absolutely not the only one.
Source: PCGamer
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