PCs with 32 GB and 64 GB of RAM are becoming less common, at least in the latest CPU-Z Validator statistics. According to Doc TB, one of the developers behind CPU-Z, this is the first time RAM capacity on PCs has declined year over year. 32 GB is still the most popular configuration at 37.2% of validations, though its share is down 2.5% compared to a year ago. 64 GB took a much bigger hit, falling 18% to 7.3%. Lower capacities are moving the other way, with 16 GB up 12.9% to 33.0% and 8 GB up 5.5% to 11.0%, while 96 GB and 128 GB setups dropped by more than 26% each. Memory type tells a similar story, with DDR4 now making up 54.5% of validations, up 6.0%, while DDR5 slipped 2.9% to 32.9%.

Of course, these figures only cover systems that users actually submit to the validator over the last three months, so they aren't a full picture of the PC market. Steam's September survey, for example, showed 32 GB overtaking 16 GB as the most common configuration among gamers, but that promptly flipped with the October survey. Still, the timing makes sense. Memory prices have climbed sharply this year, and Team Group expects the worst of the shortage to land between Q4 2026 and Q2 2027. DDR4 platforms may also get a second wind, with DDR4 motherboards getting released for unannounced LGA1700 processors expected in early 2027. It looks like plenty of people are sticking with older DDR4 systems or settling for 16 GB instead of paying current prices.

A little over a year ago, PIF and Silver Lake were announced as two parts of EA's new ownership trifecta, following a $55 billion buyout agreement, and it has now been revealed in a new Reuters report that PIF and Silver Lake have met with Unity Software to initiate talks to buy the game engine developer. Similarly to the EA buyout, insiders claim that the Unity buyout would also be a leveraged buyout agreement, although there have been no claims about a potential buyout amount.

As was the case leading up to the EA buyout, Silver Lake has already invested in Unity, with an 8% share in the company. Following the recent EA buyout, the gaming giant's new owners have made several changes at the company, including a restructuring that led to significant layoffs and the closure of BioWare, one of the most recognizable game studios in gaming history. Earlier in the year, EA also reportedly accelerated its investment in and use of AI in order to cut costs. Unity itself has announced a similar increased adoption of AI with its new Unity Spark AI systems.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is now close to double its $749 MSRP in the US. According to price tracking by VideoCardz, the cheapest RTX 5070 Ti at major US retailers was $1,339.99 on November 6, about 79% above MSRP, up from $1,179.99 on October 29. That's a $160 jump in just eight days. Some models have already crossed the 2x mark, like the ASUS TUF Gaming OC at $1,499.99 on B&H. Prices are also moving fast. At the time of writing, the cheapest RTX 5070 Ti sold by Newegg itself is an MSI SHADOW RTX 5070 Ti at $1,409.99. Things aren't much better in Germany, where the cheapest listing on Geizhals sits at €1,300 for a PNY model, roughly 48% above the €879 MSRP.

Things are probably going to get worse, too. NVIDIA's board partners in China are reportedly raising RTX 5070 Ti prices by around 1,000 RMB (about $150) this week, with retail prices expected to follow within a week or two. Unlike the RTX 5090 and 5080 16 GB, which have reportedly been discontinued, the RTX 5070 Ti is still officially in production. After reports of an end of production in January early this year, NVIDIA said it was still shipping all GeForce SKUs, and ASUS denied the card was end-of-life, while admitting that memory supply was hurting production and restocking. The card is still listed at major retailers, unlike the RTX 5080, which vanished from NVIDIA's US Marketplace two weeks after the RTX 5090 did the same. Anyone shopping for an RTX 5070 Ti should probably expect these prices to keep rising for a while.

AMD CEO Lisa Su now calls AMD a "data center first" company, two days after AMD reported a 40% drop in gaming revenue. Speaking to Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi on November 5, Su said AMD's data center business should grow 50% sequentially from Q3 to Q4, and suggested it could more than double next year. Here's how she put it:

Dr. Lisa Su, AMD CEOWe are a data center first company, that is our profile, and you know, people need more computing to power all these applications.

Data Center brought in a record $8.5 billion in Q3, up 97%, and now makes up 64% of AMD's $13.4 billion total, up from 47% a year ago. Gaming fell to $773 million, or under 6% of revenue. AMD blames it mostly on lower semi-custom sales, meaning the console chips it makes for Sony and Microsoft, along with weaker graphics demand. Gaming was flat against Q2, though, and last year's Q3 was boosted by a 181% console-driven jump to $1.3 billion. Su used the same "data center first" line back in 2024, when data center was just over half of revenue.

The NVIDIA RTX PRO 5500 "Blackwell" workstation card has shown up at a US retailer, and it surprisingly costs more than the flagship RTX PRO 6000. As spotted by Alex Ziskind on X and corroborated by Videocardz, SHI Government Solutions listed the PNY-built model (VCNRTXPRO5500B-PB) with an MSRP of $17,999 and a discounted price of $17,408.63. NVIDIA's own US marketplace, on the other hand, lists the RTX PRO 6000 for $16,000, even though that card has more CUDA cores (24,064 vs. 21,760) and more memory (96 GB vs. 84 GB). So even at SHI's discounted price, the cut-down card costs around $1,400 more. NVIDIA hasn't announced official pricing since it quietly added the RTX PRO 5500 to its lineup in September, so it isn't clear whether the $17,999 figure comes from NVIDIA or PNY.

Videocardz points out that Chinese demand is probably a big factor behind the RTX PRO 5500's price. According to Reuters, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have ordered over 3 million RTX PRO 5500 cards at roughly $11,400 each, with total orders from China reportedly topping 6 million. One source said NVIDIA can make no more than 3 million of them in 2027. With the B300 barred from China and the H200 reviewed case by case, the RTX PRO 5500 is one of the strongest NVIDIA GPUs Chinese firms can still buy. The card also packs 28 GDDR7 modules at a time, even as memory prices keep climbing. With orders far ahead of supply, it's reasonable to expect RTX PRO 5500 pricing to stay high for a while.

AMD looks set to bring in more quarterly revenue than Intel for what appears to be the first time ever. Alongside its record Q3 2026 results, AMD guided Q4 revenue to approximately $17 billion, plus or minus 3%, or roughly $16.5 billion to $17.5 billion. Intel, on the other hand, expects Q4 revenue between $15 billion and $16 billion. Even the bottom of AMD's range sits above the top of Intel's, so unless either company misses its guidance badly, the flip is pretty much locked in.

Most of AMD's growth comes from the data center. AMD's Data Center segment hit a record $8.5 billion in Q3, up 97% year over year, on strong EPYC demand and the launch of the Instinct MI450 Series GPUs inside its Helios racks. AMD expects the segment to grow about 50% sequentially in Q4, while Client and Gaming is expected to drop by more than 20%. Intel's Q4 outlook, meanwhile, came in well below expectations, partly due to a two-week shutdown at Fab 28 in Israel that Intel says will cost about $300 million in Q4 revenue.

As spotted by Club386, two motherboards based on Intel's Z970 chipset have shown up in the NBD shipping database, which logs Vietnamese customs records. Going by the names, both appear to be from ASRock: the Z970 LiveMixer WiFi and the Z970 Pro-A WiFi. The entries refer to PCBs shipping at the end of September 2026. The Z970 chipset is rumored to support CPU multiplier overclocking, but not the base clock tweaking that Z990 is expected to offer. Leaker Jaykihn has also previously reported that it will replace most of the market the B860 covers today. If that ends up being the case, it would be a big change, since Intel has kept CPU overclocking on its most expensive chipset for years, while AMD allows it on most of its B-series boards.

Intel's Robert Hallock has previously said the goal is more unlocked SKUs over time, and that overclocking shouldn't be reserved for the people paying the most. It looks like that approach could extend to motherboards too. Of course, Intel hasn't announced Z970 or Z990 yet, so this is all unofficial, and we don't know what the prices of either would look like. Moreover, shipments this early don't necessarily mean retail boards are close. Intel has reportedly promised more details at CES in January 2027, which fits the rumored CES 2027 launch window. If Z970 does arrive at B860 prices, it could be the most interesting platform for most builders.

Two days after arguing that the DRAM in home PCs would be put to better use in data centers, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sat down with around 50 Samsung presidents on Saturday, October 31. The group went well past the chip business, with leaders from Samsung's finance and biotech arms joining the electronics side at the company's training center in Yongin. Samsung presented it as part of a leadership seminar series for its company-wide AI push, and the talks apparently covered where AI is headed, the markets it could open up, and how it changes the way large companies make decisions. According to Samsung, Altman told the room that adopting AI alone doesn't give anyone an edge, and that the payoff comes from using it to move faster and build better products.

Nothing came out of it in terms of a new supply contract, at least publicly, and Samsung's own write-up stuck to AI strategy. Still, it's hard to look at the visit separately from the memory shortage. Samsung signed a letter of intent with OpenAI back in October 2025 to act as a memory partner for Stargate, with OpenAI's demand projected at up to 900,000 DRAM wafers per month. Separately, on October 31, SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won also reportedly met Altman in Seoul, with SK hynix and SK Telecom executives joining, according to industry sources. Last month, AMD's Lisa Su spent hours with Samsung's chip chief chasing HBM supply, and amid all these meetings, Micron's CEO expects the memory crunch to get worse in 2027 and 2028. It seems like every major buyer is knocking on the same Korean doors.

Apple is once again the world's most valuable company, taking the top spot back from NVIDIA after Friday's trading session. Apple shares slipped 1.2% on October 30, leaving it with a market cap of $5.03 trillion, while NVIDIA dropped 4.2% to close at $4.93 trillion. This is the first time Apple has been ahead since it briefly overtook NVIDIA in late July. For context, NVIDIA became the first company to cross $5 trillion almost exactly a year ago, in October 2025. Friday's sell-off came after a run of tech earnings that disappointed investors, with Intel and Amazon following earlier reports from Alphabet and Meta. Intel's stock fell roughly 29% on Friday after a weak Q4 outlook, which CNBC called its worst day since the 1970s.

It looks like the bigger concern is whether the huge spending on AI data centers will pay off, and NVIDIA, as the main supplier of AI GPUs, is directly tied to those budgets. The outlays have grown large enough that Alphabet and Amazon have seen their free cash flow turn negative, pushing them toward debt markets for funding. Apple, meanwhile, has largely stayed out of the AI infrastructure race and kept its capital spending in check. Its shares are up 27% this year, more than twice NVIDIA's gain, and its free cash flow for fiscal 2026 (ended September 30) is projected to climb 38% to $142 billion. The gap between the two is only about $100 billion, though, so the ranking could easily flip back with one good day for NVIDIA.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks the DRAM sitting inside personal computers would be better used in data centers. He made the comments on the Cheeky Pint podcast, hosted by Stripe co-founder John Collison, in an episode released on October 29. The two were discussing the memory supply chain when the topic turned to local inference, meaning running AI models on your own hardware instead of the cloud. Here's what Altman said, at roughly the 29-minute mark:

Sam Altman, OpenAI CEOA lot of people want local inference. And somehow, they assume that the problem is solved now. Because, we are going to have open-source models. We're going to be able to run them on our computers. And so we're not going to need all the stuff in the data center. But from a global allocation perspective, actually, it's quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer. And, being used 5% of the time. You want maximum utilization in the cloud if you're trying to deal with this very supply constrained environment. And somehow everyone's... many people's intuition is the opposite of that.

Intel shares fell roughly 29% on Friday to $65.76 after the company's fourth-quarter outlook came in well below Wall Street expectations. According to CNBC, it was the stock's worst day since the 1970s. Intel had closed at $92.07 on Thursday, right before it posted its third-quarter 2026 results. Oddly enough, the quarter itself was a good one. Revenue came in at $16.5 billion, up 21% year over year, and adjusted EPS of $0.52 easily beat the roughly $0.40 analysts were expecting. Data Center and AI revenue jumped 78% to $7.3 billion, while the Client Computing Group slipped 5% to $8.1 billion.

Investors, however, were looking at Q4. Intel expects revenue between $15 billion and $16 billion, against a consensus of around $17 billion, with adjusted EPS of just $0.25. Non-GAAP gross margin is also expected to fall to about 38% from 44% in Q3. Part of the shortfall comes from a plant shutdown in Israel. CFO David Zinsner said Intel sees "the PC slowdown continuing at least through the first half of next year." On the earnings call, the company said it expects the PC market to shrink by about 12% in units this year, and it reportedly sees another 10% decline in 2027.

NVIDIA's US Marketplace no longer lists the GeForce RTX 5080. The GPU filter on the store's graphics card page now tops out at the RTX 5070 Ti, followed by the RTX 5070, RTX 5060 Ti, RTX 5060, and RTX 5050, with partner RTX 5080 models gone as well. The same thing happened to the RTX 5090 about two weeks ago and, barring a brief cameo at $5,599, the card still hasn't returned. NVIDIA has since denied that the RTX 5090 is discontinued, though it hasn't said anything about the RTX 5080 yet. Oddly enough, its RTX 5080 product page still says "Starting at $999."

The removal seems limited to the US for now. NVIDIA's UK Marketplace still has 13 RTX 5080 listings and two RTX 5090 cards. Of course, a missing listing could simply mean there's no stock left, since the RTX 5080 already costs close to $2,000 at US retailers, roughly double its MSRP. That leaves the RTX 5070 Ti as the fastest card on NVIDIA's US store, and it isn't cheap either. The seven listings there range from $1,269.99 to $1,499.99, well above its $749 launch price.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5080 24 GB might arrive sooner than expected. A new post from Board Channels' ChannelGate account claims NVIDIA is speeding up the launch, with availability now expected around January 2027 and December 2026 as the earliest option. Earlier this month, various sources relayed that the card was reportedly planned for Q1 2027. The same post says NVIDIA will stop supplying the RTX 5080 16 GB and the RTX 5090 D V2 to China, leaving the 24 GB RTX 5080 as the only flagship model in that market. The report only covers China, so there's no word yet on whether the 16 GB card is going away globally. If the January window pans out, a CES 2027 reveal seems likely, though NVIDIA hasn't confirmed anything.

Apparently, NVIDIA has already cleared out its RTX 5080 16 GB GPU inventory, and the remaining stock should last around two months. That roughly matches a leaker's claim that NVIDIA has January discontinuation dates set for the 16 GB card. The post is machine-translated, so some wording may be off. Specs are still unknown, though 24 GB on the same 256-bit bus would most likely mean 3 GB GDDR7 modules instead of 2 GB ones. Board Channels previously suggested the card could cost around 19,999 yuan (nearly $3,000) in China, while the 16 GB model already sells for close to $2,000 at U.S. retailers, double its $999 MSRP. With the memory shortage expected to get worse in 2027, it's reasonable to expect the 24 GB card to be both expensive and hard to find.

Apple's newly unveiled MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display marks a significant milestone in the evolution of MacBook display technology and user experience, becoming the first model in the lineup to feature a tandem OLED touchscreen. TrendForce estimates that shipments of the new model will reach 1.2-1.5 million units in 2027. Apple's entry into the OLED notebook market is also providing fresh impetus for panel makers to accelerate the development of advanced display technologies.

However, TrendForce notes that the new MacBook Pro's premium starting price of US$2,899 for the 14-inch model, coupled with its initial availability alongside existing Mini-LED models, could temper near-term replacement demand.

Call of Duty has crossed $40 billion in lifetime franchise revenue, according to Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma. She shared the milestone on X on October 26, a few days after Modern Warfare 4's full launch on October 23, calling it one of the most celebrated games in the series' history and thanking both the Activision team and the players. The series debuted in 2003 and has seen a new entry almost every year since, along with Warzone and mobile spin-offs, so that figure covers a lot of ground. PC Gamer's math puts it at a staggering $4,762,472 a day, which is hard to wrap your head around. It's also worth remembering that this is revenue, not profit, and Activision doesn't disclose development or marketing budgets for its games.

Sharma, however, didn't say how Modern Warfare 4 is selling, or whether it was the game that pushed the franchise over the line. Early signs have been good, at least on PC. The game picked up a 90% positive Steam rating during campaign early access, a far cry from the reception Black Ops 7 got, and even climbed the Steam Top's Sellers list rapidly. Activision has also called it the conclusion of the current Modern Warfare series, with a new sub-franchise set to follow. For some context, Microsoft paid $68.7 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard back in 2023, though only some of that $40 billion would have come in under Microsoft's ownership.

Recently, analysts estimated that Gears of War: E-Day had earned around $42 million in revenue in its first week on the market, but a recent report from Kotaku claims that that revenue is but a drop in the bucket compared to the game's overall budget.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of Gears of War: E-Day is now live]

The report cites an insider "familiar with Xbox's business" and claims that the production budget alone—that is to say, excluding the marketing costs—for Gears of War: E-Day was over $500 million. This puts the game's overall estimated revenue at well under 10% of what Microsoft spent to get it out of the door, and, in a report from early October, employees at The Coalition, the Xbox Game Studios subsidiary responsible for the game's development, said that they were concerned about being laid off shortly after the game launched, especially given the ongoing Xbox Reset and the current climate in the gaming industry overall.

Micron has decided not to bring 4F² DRAM to market, even though it says it invented the cell design and has been researching it for around two decades. Scott DeBoer, Micron's President and Chief Technology and Products Officer, shared the decision during the company's technology webinar on October 21. On paper, 4F² uses vertical channel transistors to shrink each memory cell's footprint by about a third compared with the 6F² layout used in today's DRAM. However, DeBoer argued that real-world density is limited by how closely the capacitors can be packed, not by the cell's footprint, calling the density advantage over 6F² "a bit of a myth." He also said 4F² can be built, but at a higher cost and complexity, and that it runs into fundamental scaling problems at leading-edge nodes, which points toward 3D DRAM instead.

That puts Micron at odds with its rivals. Samsung and SK hynix are both developing 4F² designs, and China's CXMT says its first 4F² product will be a server DDR5 RDIMM due by the end of this year. Micron will keep scaling 6F² instead, with its 1-delta node set to ramp in Boise, Idaho, in the second half of 2027 and the 1-epsilon node after it moving to wafer bonding. 3D DRAM is being developed as a parallel path, but there's no timeline yet, and Micron says it will only switch once the economics make sense. It's a risky bet if rivals manage to make 4F² cheap at scale, especially with memory supply expected to get even tighter in 2027 and 2028, per Micron's own estimates.

TrendForce's latest AI server industry research indicates that demand for server CPUs has grown steadily since the second half of 2025 as AI server providers actively introduce AI agent applications. Server CPU shipments are projected to increase 31% YoY in 2026.

In 2027, continued growth in AI inference demand and rising adoption of agentic AI services are expected to drive server CPU shipments up by more than 40% YoY, potentially reshaping a market landscape traditionally dominated by x86 processors.

Michael Dell doesn't think the memory shortage is anywhere near over. Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Dell's chairman and CEO said things will get worse next year, as the AI data center buildout keeps soaking up DRAM and HBM supply. According to him, the bottleneck for Dell isn't demand, since the company is sitting on roughly $95 billion worth of AI server orders it hasn't delivered yet, the largest backlog in its history. Memory is what's holding those shipments back, as AI accelerators need plenty of HBM, while the servers around them still rely on conventional DRAM.

Relief also looks quite far away. New memory fabs take around four years to build, so Dell apparently doesn't expect meaningful new supply until 2029 or 2030. That aligns with Micron's CEO, who recently said supply will be much tighter in 2027 and 2028 than it is this year. Interestingly, SK hynix's CEO said something similar, expecting the memory shortage to last through 2030. Dell is reportedly coping by buying DRAM only when final assembly is close and by locking in long-term supply agreements, though there's no word on how much of that applies to its consumer products.

A Polish technician who goes by Modyfikatorcasper on X has taken apart one of the revised Nintendo Switch 2 units now showing up in Europe, and the screen hasn't changed. The European "V2" console still uses the same Innolux-based LCD as the launch model, not the Sharp-made panel fans were hoping for. That panel, reportedly listed as LS079T1SX10P, surfaced on a Chinese marketplace back in June. The hope was that faster pixel response would cut down on the smearing the original screen is known for. The technician plans to check more units and bundles, so a mixed rollout can't be ruled out entirely, though none with the Sharp panel have turned up so far.

The main change is about repairability. The battery can now be swapped without fighting adhesive, a change planned for EU units to meet battery rules that take effect in mid-February 2027. The motherboard has been reworked (OSM-CPU-01 instead of BEE-CPU-01), the fan is a different variant, and the 12 GB of RAM now comes from another supplier. The NVIDIA chip itself is the same. Nintendo's own spec sheet lists the battery at 5,172 mAh, slightly down from 5,220 mAh, while the console gains roughly 10 grams. The company says there's no difference in functionality between the two versions. Anyone holding out for a better Switch display will probably have to wait for the OLED model Nintendo is reportedly considering.

NVIDIA has finally responded to reports that the GeForce RTX 5090 is being discontinued. Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of NVIDIA's personal computing business, told Taiwanese media after the RTX Spark launch party in Taipei on October 16 that the rumors aren't true, as reported by 4Gamers and the Central News Agency (CNA). The whole thing kicked off last week when leakers claimed NVIDIA had stopped allocating GB202 silicon to the RTX 5090, and BenchLife later added that board partners were no longer receiving GB202 chips for the card. The RTX 5090 also seemingly vanished from NVIDIA's own marketplace and from Micro Center shelves, which only added fuel to the fire. Here's what Fisher said, translated from 4Gamers' Chinese report:

The supply chain (capacity) is indeed somewhat constrained, but NVIDIA is going all out to bring products to market. Although there are other variants of the RTX 5090 (chip), it has definitely not been discontinued. NVIDIA will continue to ship it, and this is very important.

Barring the upcoming launch of GTA VI, it's safe to say that the majority of the big game launches for 2026 have already taken place, and it seems as though Microsoft's Forza Horizon 6 will come out of 2026 as one of the year's big winners, per recent data from Alinea Analytics. According to the analytics firm, Forza Horizon 6 has handily taken the top spot as the most successful first-party game launch from Xbox and Sony for 2026 so far—and with quite a margin, to boot.

The research firm estimates that Forza Horizon 6 has earned a whopping $579.2 million in revenue from 8.8 million copies sold on PC and Xbox so far, even without a PS5 port, which is slated to launch in early 2027. This still puts it behind Forza Horizon 5, which earned over $1 billion in revenue across all platforms, but Horizon 6 only launched in May 2026, meaning it has only been on the market for around five months. The data suggests that Forza Horizon 6 generated 56.7% of its revenue on Xbox, with the rest coming from Steam, and estimated over 10 million gamers played Horizon 6 on Xbox Game Pass, with 1.3 million players opting for the Game Pass upgrade, generating $82 million in revenue for the platform.

A month after Cooler Master launched its GPU Shield 12v-2×6 power cable monitoring solution in the US, it has finally released the safety accessory in the EU, where it received a €29.99 price tag—compared to $49.99 in the US.

Along with the lower price, however, Cooler Master has also reduced the warranty period on the GPU Shield adaptor cable from three years in the US and China to just two years in the EU—just barely covering the minimum threshold for legally mandated warranties in the EU, but still longer than the one-year warranty granted for the international version of the GPU Shield. The GPU Shield adaptor cable is available via Cooler Master directly, and it does not appear to be available on sites like Amazon just yet.

Razer only just released the Viper V4 Pro [read the TechPowerUp review here] and DeathAdder V4 Pro [review here], but it seems as though the PC gaming OEM isn't stopping there, with new images posted to X by @jakeufps and @kazeslvt revealing new models of both the Viper V4 Pro and DeathAdder V4 Pro.

According to the leakers, there will be at least three new mice coming out of Razer in the upcoming weeks: carbon fiber Viper and DeathAdder V4 Pros and a purple Viper V4 pro. Allegedly, the carbon fiber variants of the new Viper and DeathAdder V4 Pro mice will come with more than just a new shell material, since the DeathAdder V4 Pro will also be getting the new Focus Pro 50K Gen-3 sensor that's present in the Viper V4 Pro, along with improved battery life.

Xbox and PlayStation console sales in the US are having a rough 2026, according to new Circana data that analyst Mat Piscatella shared on Bluesky. For the year 2026 through August, Xbox hardware unit sales are down 33% year over year, while PlayStation units are 25% lower. That puts Xbox at an all-time low and PlayStation at its lowest point since 2013. As one might expect, it looks like pricing is the main culprit. Buyers paid an average of $529 for a new Xbox console this year, 26% more than a year ago, and $597 for a PlayStation, up 20%. Both are record highs for the US, and Piscatella says price sensitivity is becoming a real problem.

The decline follows a string of price hikes tied to the memory and storage shortage. Sony raised the PS5 Pro to $899.99 in April, Microsoft pushed the Xbox Series X to $799.99 on August 1, and Nintendo moved the Switch 2 to $499.99 in September, a hike analysts had warned about back in January. August itself was weak, with total hardware unit sales falling 15% to 559,000, the lowest August total since 2013. The Switch 2, however, remains the best-selling console of 2026 in both units and dollars. Piscatella said the US hardware market hasn't been "in a more precarious position since the early 80s." He thinks GTA 6's big launch might ease some of these declines, although that depends on console availability and pricing.