Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has warned that rising RAM prices will have an impact on high-end gaming for years to come.
Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, took to Twitter/X to share his views on rising RAM prices and the impact they will have on the future of high-end gaming. His post came in response to Twitter/X member theo, who expressed concern over the drastic increase in RAM prices at retailers. “I knew the memory pricing thing was bad but, like, wtf?? I bought 64gb of ram 4 weeks ago for $240. Same kit right now is $498.”
Sweeney responded by saying that rising RAM price will be problematic for the future of high-end gaming. According to him, the needs of AI data centers are being prioritized by RAM producers, as it is more lucrative than the consumer device market. “RAM price increases will be a real problem for high-end gaming for several years,” he said. “Factories are diverting leading edge DRAM capacity to meet AI needs where data centers are bidding far higher than consumer device makers.”
The Epic Games CEO is possibly hinting at smaller increases in RAM capacity in future consumer graphics cards from both NVIDIA and AMD. Ultimately, such a scenario may lead to game developers adopting a more conservative approach to memory utilization.
Evolving prices of PC components may be part of the reason why Valve has yet to commit to a price point for its upcoming Steam Machine. According to Daniel Ahmad, Director of Research and Insights at Niko Partners, tariffs, surging RAM prices, supply chain volatility and an inability to subsidize to the same extent as traditional console manufacturers are all working against Valve at the moment. That said, he believes the the specs suggest that the company originally intended the Steam Machine to be in line with the PS5’s pricing.
