PS5 for 900K KRW? — Chipflation swallowed everything from game consoles to PCs

PS5 for 900K KRW?

In April 2026, Sony raised the PS5 Pro price to 899 dollars (about 1300K KRW). The basic PS5 is also 649 dollars (about 940K KRW). To buy one game console, you need enough money to buy a used refrigerator.

But this is not only Sony's problem. The Galaxy Fold7 went up by 190K KRW, the Galaxy Book jumped by 1000K KRW, and Gartner, the world's biggest IT research company, warned that '500-dollar PCs will disappear by 2028.' They all have the same cause.

Chipflation. It is a combined word from Chip (semiconductor) + Inflation, and simply, when semiconductors become expensive, all products that use semiconductors also become expensive one after another. And if you know the real cause of this chipflation, you may be surprised. It is AI.

Chipflation — AI ate up all the memory

The story starts at AI data centers. To run large AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, you need GPUs. But one GPU uses 96 DRAM dies (chips). This is called HBM (High Bandwidth Memory, high-bandwidth memory), and it has a structure where normal DRAM chips are stacked vertically like a 16-floor apartment building.

Even in 2022, AI data centers used 20~30% of the world's memory. But now in 2026? It is 70%. AI is taking in almost all memory production. Of course, memory for normal consumers started to become scarce.

So what happened? The price of one DDR4 8Gb (gigabit) memory chip jumped from $1.35 a year ago to $13. 10 times. BlackRock, the world's biggest asset management company, even wrote in a report that 'DRAM went up 17 times in one year.'

One DDR5 16GB memory module for PCs costs 400K KRW. With this one price, you could buy 3 used laptops. At least until a year ago.

And now it is not only a memory problem. Prices have started to rise for non-memory semiconductors and foundries (contract semiconductor manufacturing) too. Experts call this 'chipflation round 2'. Smartphone shipments fell by -12.9%, and PCs fell by -11.3%. People do not buy them because they are expensive.

Korea's irony — Samsung earns, Samsung raises prices

Here, we really cannot skip the Korea story. Because 75% of the world's DRAM is made in Korea. If you add Samsung Electronics (36%) and SK Hynix (34), that is 70%. Korea is both the center of chipflation and the biggest winner.

SK Hynix posted an operating profit of 47.2 trillion KRW in 2025 — the highest ever, and for the first time in history, it passed Samsung Electronics' total operating profit (43.5 trillion KRW). Samsung also made 57.2 trillion KRW in just the first quarter of 2026. That is the biggest quarterly result ever, and +755% compared with the same period last year.

BlackRock said, 'Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are the biggest winners of chipflation.' In fact, Samsung + SK's combined operating profit in 2026 is expected to go over 370 trillion KRW. That is about 15% of Korea's GDP.

But there is an irony. When the price of memory made by Samsung goes up → phones and laptops made by Samsung also become more expensive. The Galaxy Z Fold7 1TB is +193.6K KRW more than the previous model, the Galaxy Book6 Pro is +1M KRW compared with the previous model, and the LG Gram Pro AI also went up by +약 500K KRW.

Sony vs Nintendo — why are they responding so differently?

Sony raised the PS5 by $100 and the PS5 Pro by $150 in April 2026. It was the third price increase during the PS5 generation. On the other hand, Nintendo president Furukawa said, 'There is no plan to raise prices. But a re-evaluation is possible.' Why are they so different?

The key is that the money-making structure is completely different. Sony uses the razor-blade model. Hardware is sold at cost or even at a loss, and instead it makes profit from PS Plus subscriptions (132 million subscribers), digital game sales (76% of total game sales are downloads), and store fees. The operating profit margin is 9.5%.

Nintendo is the complete opposite. It makes profit from the hardware itself. Gross profit margin (hardware margin) is 30.5%. On top of that, its own games like Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon (first-party) make up 81.2% of total software sales. It is a structure that does not depend on outside publishers. So the operating profit margin is 19.2% — sales are half of Sony's, but the profit margin is two times higher.

But Switch 2 is in a bit of a different situation. The manufacturing cost is $338, and the total parts cost (BOM) is about $400, but the retail price is $449. There is almost no margin. A former Nintendo executive said, 'A price increase is unavoidable,' and industry analyst Serkan Toto also said, 'I would be surprised if it stays at $449 until the end of 2026.'

So, Sony has already raised prices, and Nintendo has not yet, but it has a structure that will have to raise them. In front of chipflation, even if the business models are different, they end up moving to the same place.

$500 PCs are disappearing — Gartner's warning

If chipflation only ends with game consoles, that is at least a little lucky, but the really scary part is the PC market. Gartner gave a shocking forecast. "PCs under $500 will disappear by 2028."

Because the share of memory in PC cost has changed completely. According to HP, memory (DRAM+SSD) has gone up to 35% of PC cost. Before, it was 15~18%. If memory prices become 2 times, PC prices go up by more than 17%.

The average selling price (ASP) of PCs has already kept rising: $544(2015) → $640(2020) → $750+(2026 forecast). IDC expects PC shipments to fall -11.3%, and Counterpoint expects -5%. The direction is the same — down.

There are alternatives. Chromebooks($300~400, 60% share in the education market), mini PCs($200~300, good enough for office use), cloud PCs($349 device + monthly $32~45 subscription), and refurbished PCs(used market CAGR 7.1%). But this is mainly a story for advanced countries.

The real problem is the digital divide. Around the world, 2.6 billion people still cannot access the internet. LPDDR4, the low-cost memory first used in developing countries, is being cut first in supply priority. As AI takes all the high-end memory, the memory needed to make low-cost devices is disappearing first.

So, until when?

Putting expert forecasts together, supply will start increasing in the second half of 2027. When the new fabs (semiconductor factories) now being built by Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron start running seriously, supply will begin to catch up with demand.

The common view is that real price easing will come in 2028. The Intel CEO also said, 'no relief until 2028.' In other words, from now we need to hold on for at least 2 years.

So what can we do now? For game consoles — honestly, waiting is the right move. Since the PS5 Pro $899 is the highest price ever, it is better to be careful. If you need a PC right away, consider a refurbished one or a mini PC. A cloud PC is also a good option.

The most important thing is to understand the structure of this situation. This happened because AI is taking all the memory, and semiconductor factories cannot be built overnight, so time will solve it. It is just that the time is 2028.