Gaming is currently in the throes of its second major market crash, at least that's how Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney describes the industry's current tumult.
According to Tim Sweeney, the video games industry is currently in the throes of its second major crash. And he might know; his company, Epic Games, is an institutional backbone of the interactive entertainment sector. The numbers are also pretty clear; we now live in the world of $900 PS5 Pros and $800 Xbox Series Xs.
In Edge Magazine (issue #428), Sweeney says that what's going on right now in the industry is the "worst crash" since the console market plummeted in 1983 (it was later revived by Nintendo and SEGA).
Sweeney echoes the kind of sober talk we've heard from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who said that memory prices have skyrocketed since she took office. The Epic boss is confident that new facilities will be built to help make chips and reduce console prices, offering some sort of relief. But for the next three years, things are expected to be dicey.
"There's an unprecedented wave of investment in building AI systems and data ceters, based on the belief that they're going to have a really transformational role in the economy, and the scale of the economic opportunity there means they can outbid the entire entertainment industry for all the components.
"So we're getting the short end of the stick, and the prices of RAM and storage are quadrupling, and not necessarily stopping there.
"We should expect there's just going to be a continual supply crisis for all gaming-relevant hardware for the next three years.
"The only solution, I think, is going to be building massive new factories to meet the world's capacity demands - and that will happen."
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Things are so tumultuous that it's rumored that Sony and Microsoft could end up delaying the release of the PlayStation 6 and Project Helix consoles.
