This article was originally published on March 13, 2026 - read the full issue

By Patrick Garratt

Given a radical switch in senior staff at Microsoft's Gaming division in recent weeks, followed by an immediate first mention of Project Helix from Asha Sharma, the newly installed CEO of Microsoft Gaming, the Redmond giant could be accused of seeking some good old-fashioned first-mover advantage in the next-generation console race. While Sony has said almost nothing about PS6, Microsoft swaggered into GDC this week to confirm that development kits for its new console will be available "beginning in 2027." According to technical head Jason Ronald in San Francisco on Wednesday, the forthcoming machine is "ushering in the next generation of console gaming".

But it may be unwise to expect any "ushering" in the near future. While Sony and Microsoft have yet to commit to any release timeframe for their next machines, a widely held assumption that one of the boxes would ship before the end of next year may have evaporated in recent months due to one single factor: staggering rises in the cost of RAM and storage drives thanks to AI datacentres' insatiable desire for hardware.

To illustrate just how severely the onset of AI has impacted the memory industry specifically, OpenAI signed deals with memory manufacturers Samsung and SK Hynix in October 2025 to buy roughly 40 per cent of the global DRAM production per month for its Stargate datacentre, some 900,000 DRAM wafer starts. This triggered havoc in an already stressed market, and price increases in home PC RAM, for example, have been nothing short of wild: a 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30 kit that sold for $99 in late March 2025 cost $297 by early December 2025, exactly triple the price in roughly eight months. And with analysts predicting further dramatic increases to come, all computer hardware manufacturers are facing the reality of an explosion in production costs. And that includes companies that make game consoles.

"Yes, 2028 is looking increasingly realistic as a launch window for next-gen consoles," says Ampere Analysis games research head Piers Harding-Rolls.

"We've already seen a delay to launch timing for Valve's upcoming Steam Machines and because the memory and storage pricing trends are expected to continue for the foreseeable future, I think Sony and Microsoft will be planning for an elongated current-gen console cycle."

Ahmed AlSharif, head of Reality Labs automation and platform engineering at Meta during the Quest 2 launch, and previously a software development engineer working on PS4 and PSVR Architecture at Sony, agrees that this type of extreme component price volatility is likely to push new hardware back.

"You have to have a frank conversation with your executive team about what sustained uncertainty means for launch commitments," he says.

"Roadmaps built on hardware assumptions that may not hold are liabilities. I'd rather have the uncomfortable conversation in the planning room than be the person explaining a delay six months before launch because memory costs broke the bill of materials."

As part of the team that shipped Quest 2 at Meta in 2020, AlSharif has seen firsthand how fine a line gaming hardware manufacturers walk in terms of costing when planning launches.

"The central constraint of [Quest 2's] existence was price accessibility," he says. "The entire strategic logic – wireless, standalone, no PC required – only works if the device sits at a consumer-friendly price point. The moment [bill of materials] cost forces you above $400 to $500, the addressable market shrinks dramatically and the value proposition relative to tethered alternatives starts to erode. That tension was real and constant during development."

As with the type of consoles Sony and Microsoft manufacture, memory is a critical factor in a standalone XR headset. Quest 2 contains 6GB of LPDDR5. PS6 is reportedly targeting 30GB of GDDR7, nearly double the 16GB of a PS5. Harding-Rolls warns that, despite new PlayStation and Xbox launches remaining far out, opening retail prices for these consoles will almost certainly eclipse those seen for the current generation as a result of the current memory situation.

"Pricing won't be known yet," he says. "There will probably be an expected target range, but that will also be very fluid at this point due to the current component pricing. Realistically, if current component pricing continues on into late 2028, then launch prices are very likely to be higher than the launch prices of the Xbox Series X and PS5."

And with pricing around key components already in uncharted territory, it may be impossible for new PlayStation and Xbox machines to ship without taking some form of hit in terms of retail price, specification or launch date. Delaying launch is the "most underrated" of these three potential levers available to manage the RAM crisis, AlSharif says.

"Delaying a launch window by even one quarter can shift memory pricing meaningfully if you're tracking the commodity cycle well. The problem is that hardware programmes are enormous ships. You can't steer them quickly, and the commercial calendar is unforgiving. You can't tell a global retail machine to move Christmas."

Thanks largely to AI, then, Valve's Steam Machine may not be the only new piece of gaming hardware slamming on the brakes. If the expected ship was the end of 2027, we may not see a new PlayStation or Xbox until late 2028. Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of memory supplier Micron, told CNBC in January that the current memory price situation will last into 2027, with Micron VP Christopher Moore telling Wccftech in the same month that he doesn't believe the shortage will improve until 2028. And if that's the case, game developers and publishers should expect a long console generation as this new normal installs itself.

"If Micron's CEO is right about 2027 being the earliest normalisation point, that spans at least two product-planning cycles for most studios and one full hardware generation for platform holders," says AlSharif.

"That's not the kind of volatility one can realistically plan around. It's a new structural reality you have to plan within."

This article was originally published on March 13, 2026 - read the full issue