No one is exempt from the global DRAM shortage, and today Sony confirmed there might be a way for enthusiastic gamers to purchase the PlayStation 5 Pro console at MSRP. In Japan, Sony is running a lottery system that explicitly allows gamers with 60 hours of playtime to purchase the console. These playtime hours must have been earned in the two-year period between September 27, 2024, and September 27, 2026. The latter date marks a hard stop that Sony will track, preventing anyone from artificially increasing their playtime. Eligible gamers can apply to the lottery system by October 7, and those selected to buy the console at MSRP will be notified on October 26.

Once the notification email is received, the eligible owner must purchase the console by November 2, or these lottery spots will be returned for another drawing scheduled later this year. This is perhaps one of the strangest ways to purchase a console, but since DRAM shortages have been depleting Sony's stock for manufacturing new consoles, it at least allows gamers who are truly passionate about gaming and need to upgrade their hardware from any earlier PlayStation version to get better performance on the upcoming launch of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto VI game.

Valve has confirmed that the ongoing DRAM shortage hasn't changed anything about its plans for a Steam Deck 2, even though the crisis has driven up prices on the company's other hardware. Speaking with IGN's Jacqueline Thomas, Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais was asked directly whether the memory shortage had affected the next handheld's development. Here's what he told IGN:

"We've talked before about how we want to make sure there's a very delineated performance improvement for something like a future Steam Deck, and I think we're still looking at it in the same way. It's just a matter of looking at the current conditions and seeing how and when we can deliver something like that. But from what we're working on, as far as the user experience goes and what the product that we're trying to build goes, it's very similar goals."

As was rumored for months, Apple's iPhone 18 Pro launch on September 9 brought price hikes across almost every iPhone in its lineup, not just the new models. The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max now start at $1,199 and $1,299, a $100 jump over the iPhone 17 Pro pair, both of which have been discontinued. Apple also raised prices by $100 across the board on the phones it kept around. The iPhone 16 now starts at $799, the iPhone 17e at $699, the iPhone 17 at $899, and the iPhone Air at $1,099. None of these older models got any hardware changes to justify the bump.

The timing of these price hikes aligns with what's become an industry-wide DRAM shortage, driven largely by AI data center demand soaking up memory supply. Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously compared the situation to a "hundred-year flood," and said the company can no longer absorb rising memory and storage costs like before. This mirrors what's already played out across the PC space, where DRAM and SSD price hikes have been hitting system builders and OEMs for months. It looks like Apple, despite its scale and negotiating leverage, isn't immune to the same memory price pressure squeezing the rest of the industry.

SK hynix expects the current memory shortage to persist through the end of 2030, with no clear signs of a slowdown yet, according to CEO Kwak Noh-Jung. Speaking after the company's groundbreaking ceremony for its new Indiana packaging facility, Kwak said any eventual slowdown would likely be the result of a gradual easing rather than the sharp price crashes memory markets have previously seen, per Reuters. SK hynix had previously flagged tight supply lasting through 2028 for commodity DRAM, so this latest comment pushes that prediction out further.

Kwak's reasoning is that memory products have moved away from being purely commodity parts. AI-driven demand has pushed customers toward customized DRAM and HBM configurations, which makes future demand easier for manufacturers to forecast and less prone to the abrupt oversupply swings that caused previous crashes.