If you’ve been waiting for RAM prices and console costs to come back down, Samsung just delivered the kind of news you didn’t want to hear. During its Q2 2026 earnings call on July 30, the Korean tech giant warned that the global memory chip shortage is going to get worse in 2027 — not better — and isn’t expected to ease until at least 2028. The company responsible for roughly a third of the world’s memory supply said so directly, and the downstream effects for gamers and everyday consumers are already very much real.
What Samsung Actually Said on the Earnings Call
Jaejune Kim, Samsung’s executive vice president for memory, didn’t leave much room for interpretation. “Based on the incoming requests that we have been seeing from customers, unmet demand from this year is likely to carry over into the following year, contributing to tighter supply conditions going forward. The supply constraints are expected to become even more severe in 2027 than 2026, reinforcing our view that the supply shortage will persist through 2028,” he said.
That’s not hedging language. Samsung is telling the market: it gets tighter before there’s any relief. The demand driver is straightforward — AI data centers are consuming high-bandwidth memory at a rate that manufacturers simply cannot match, and nearly all of Samsung’s customers are now requesting multi-year supply agreements, a significant shift from the traditional quarterly or annual procurement model.
Frontier AI labs, desperate to secure memory infrastructure, have been sharing their medium- to long-term demand forecasts directly with Samsung to lock in future supply. That visibility lets Samsung prioritize the highest-margin customers — the AI hyperscalers signing five-year rolling contracts with large upfront payments — while leaving conventional consumer-grade memory supply as the afterthought.
The Numbers Behind Samsung’s Good Quarter
Here’s the part that makes this whole situation feel a bit gross: Samsung is having an absolutely phenomenal year. Samsung’s semiconductor division posted 89.2 trillion won ($61.7 billion) in second-quarter operating profit, up more than 250-fold year on year, while company-wide profit reached 89.5 trillion won on revenue of 171.5 trillion won. The quarter’s profit beat Samsung’s combined earnings from the previous three years.
Samsung has already signed multi-year supply agreements with the top five global data centre firms and is close to deals with five more, covering 60% to 70% of capacity over the longer term. That means the vast majority of Samsung’s production is spoken for — by AI companies, not by the companies making the consumer electronics sitting in your living room.
There’s a dark irony inside Samsung’s own business: the same memory prices enriching the chip unit are bleeding the phone unit. Samsung’s mobile division reported a 700 billion won loss — the first losing quarter in its history — because DRAM and NAND are inputs for handsets and outputs for the chip business. The company is simultaneously the biggest winner and one of the biggest losers of its own shortage.
What This Means for Gaming Hardware Prices
This isn’t an abstract finance story. The memory shortage — which some are now calling the “RAMpocalypse” or “RAMaggedon” — has had direct, tangible effects on the price of every piece of gaming hardware you’d want to buy right now.
All three major consoles have gone up in price. The PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2 have all seen price hikes in 2025 and 2026, with some platforms raising prices more than once. Valve’s Steam Machine launched higher than Valve’s own initial projections, and the company has hinted further increases may be necessary depending on where component costs land. PC builders are getting squeezed too — DDR5 prices have climbed significantly, and anyone who bought RAM in the last 18 months has paid more than they would have two years ago.
The memory shortage has also forced Apple to raise prices on its MacBooks, Macs, and iPads, with Apple warning on its own earnings call that revenue growth for the upcoming quarter is projected to slow as component costs bite into margins. When Apple is passing costs to consumers, everyone else in the market follows.
The core problem is the same one Samsung just confirmed will continue: the big three memory manufacturers effectively shifted toward producing high-bandwidth memory for AI hyperscalers and enterprise users, choking the production of consumer DDR3, DDR4, and DDR5 RAM in the process. Less supply chasing higher demand equals higher prices at every point in the chain, from the RAM stick in your PC to the price tag on a new console.
Read Samsung’s Forecast With Some Skepticism
Samsung benefits directly from the current crisis continuing. High prices and constrained supply are what produced that 250-fold profit increase. An earnings call is also a performance for investors, where the goal is to project confidence in future profitability. Samsung telling the market “the shortage gets worse in 2027” is simultaneously a warning to consumers and a bullish signal to shareholders that margins will remain elevated.
It’s also worth noting that not every analyst agrees the crunch will last as long as Samsung suggests. Taiwan-based market watcher TrendForce agrees that AI will remain a primary driver of DRAM demand in 2027, but expects to see supplies of NAND flash ease in the second half of the year as new production capacity comes online. There are also new fabs being built across the US, Europe, and Asia under various government subsidy programs — capacity that will eventually come online and start pulling supply upward, even if the timelines are longer than anyone would like.
None of that changes the near-term picture, though. If Samsung’s forecast is even half right, consumers are looking at elevated memory prices through at least 2027, with meaningful relief not arriving until 2028 at the earliest.
The Lawsuit Hanging Over Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron
The three dominant memory manufacturers collectively control around 90% of the global DRAM market, and that concentration has attracted serious legal attention. A class-action lawsuit filed on June 25, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California names Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron as defendants, seeking to represent a broader class of consumers and businesses that bought products containing conventional DRAM during the price surge.
The plaintiffs claim the companies deliberately shifted toward manufacturing HBM for AI hyperscalers, effectively choking the production of consumer DDR3, DDR4, and DDR5 RAM — what the complaint calls the “RAMpocalypse” consumers are experiencing today. The lawsuit alleges prices have climbed approximately 700% over four years as a result of this coordinated behavior.
This isn’t the first time Samsung and SK Hynix have faced price-fixing allegations. Both companies paid a combined $300 million and $185 million respectively as part of more than $700 million in total industry fines from a DOJ case over DRAM price-fixing between roughly 1999 and 2002, with prison terms for several executives. The plaintiffs cite that history as evidence of a pattern. Micron denied the current allegations and said it will defend itself. Samsung and SK Hynix have not yet responded in court.
The critical legal question is whether the three companies independently arrived at the same business decision to prioritize HBM — which is legal — or whether they coordinated that shift together, which is not. That distinction is what the lawsuit will ultimately turn on, and it’s going to take years to resolve.
The Bottom Line for Anyone Buying Hardware Right Now
If you’re waiting for the right time to buy a gaming PC, upgrade your RAM, or pick up a new console hoping prices will drop — that window isn’t coming in 2026, and Samsung is now on record saying 2027 won’t be much better either. The combination of AI-driven HBM demand locking up manufacturing capacity, long-term contracts keeping supply committed to hyperscalers, and a legal challenge that won’t produce results anytime soon means consumers are stuck in the expensive part of the cycle for a while longer.
The best practical advice right now is the same it’s been for a year: if you need the hardware, buy it at current prices rather than waiting for a drop that isn’t coming on any near-term timeline. And if you’re building a PC, DDR5 prices aren’t going anywhere meaningful before 2028 at the absolute earliest.
For more on how the current industry climate is affecting gaming specifically, our piece on the Game Industry Hardship Fund bundle raising $100K for laid off developers gives a ground-level view of what this economic environment is doing to the people who actually make games. And for the latest on console-side news, check out which games are leaving Xbox Game Pass on August 15 — a few worth grabbing before the deadline hits.
