If you have noticed console prices creeping up all year and wondered why, the answer sitting behind almost every price rise is memory.
Not memory as in nostalgia, but the actual DRAM and NAND chips inside your phone, laptop and games console, the same chips now being bought up in huge volumes by the companies building the world’s AI data centres.
Nintendo became the latest to pass that cost on to Australian shoppers on 1 September, when the Switch 2’s local price jumped from $699.95 to $769.95, a $70 increase that pushed New Zealand’s price up by even more, from $799.95 to $969.95, while the original Switch console kept its existing price tag.
In a statement, Nintendo Australia pointed to “various changes in market conditions” that it expects to persist over the medium to long term, language that echoes almost word for word what Sony has said about its own hardware this year.
Two Price Rises In One Year
Sony has been here twice already. After lifting PS5 prices across Australia, Europe and the UK in April last year, it went back to the well again on 2 April this year, taking the standard disc console from $829.95 to $999.95
The digital edition starts from $749.95 to $919.95, the PS5 Pro from $1,199.95 to $1,399.95, and the PlayStation Portal handheld from $329.95 to $389.95.
The standard PS5 now sells in Australia for exactly what the PlayStation 3 famously launched at back in 2006, a coincidence Australian gaming outlets were quick to point out at the time.
Sony’s Vice President of Global Marketing, Isabelle Tomatis, attributed the move to “continued pressures in the global economic landscape” in a post on the PlayStation Blog, the same phrase used across every regional market the price rise touched.
Apple has not been immune either, having lifted Australian prices on parts of its Mac and iPad range earlier this year, and laptop makers including Lenovo have publicly acknowledged they are weighing further increases of their own, even after building up larger component stockpiles to delay the impact.
None of that inventory buys more than time.
Where The Squeeze Is Coming From
None of these companies are pointing to tariffs, currency swings or shipping costs, the usual suspects behind past hardware price hikes.
What has changed this time is the price of memory itself. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron between them supply almost all of the world’s DRAM and NAND flash, and all three have spent the past year redirecting production towards the high margin memory that OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Amazon need for their AI server farms.
That leaves less capacity for the ordinary memory chips that go into consumer laptops, phones and consoles, and basic supply and demand has done the rest.
Some memory trackers have recorded price increases well over one hundred per cent within a single year, with certain DDR5 kits rising two to three times over in a matter of months.
The knock-on effects are starting to show up in forecasts as well as sticker prices.
Analysts at IDC now expect the global PC market to shrink by close to five per cent this year, reversing growth from 2025, while IDC and Counterpoint both expect global smartphone sales to fall for the first time since 2023, hitting cheaper handsets hardest since their thinner margins leave less room to absorb the higher component costs.
Industry researchers including TrendForce expect memory prices to keep climbing well into 2027, when new production capacity is finally due to catch up with AI demand.
Meanwhile, AI demand is driving a 90% jump in chip sales to US$1.51 trillion in 2026, lifting the cost of your next laptop or console.
What It Means For Australian Shoppers
For Australian shoppers the practical upshot is straightforward, even if the cause is anything but.
Whatever you are planning to upgrade this year, whether it is a gaming console, a new laptop or a phone, the best price you will see is probably the one on the shelf today rather than one waiting for you in a few months.
Local retailers have already adjusted their advice accordingly, with several urging customers to buy console hardware before scheduled price rises rather than after, and stock of outgoing-price consoles has been drying up in the days before each deadline hits.
Whether the pressure eases before 2027, as the chip makers themselves suggest, or whether AI’s appetite for memory keeps outpacing supply, is the question now sitting behind almost every consumer electronics price tag in the country.
