Consoles and PC components will continue to be affected by the shortage for 3 more years.
The technology and video game industry is being affected by the chip shortage that has plagued the entire world since 2019. Dr. Yuh-Jier Mii, Senior Vice President of Research and Development at TSMC, the world’s largest and one of the few remaining chipmakers, has reported in an interview with Spectrum that the shortage could last until 2025.
This shortage has been affecting different industries for almost 4 years now. This is because TSMC has invested over the last 10 years in chip and semiconductor manufacturing technology that no one else in the world was making. By offering smaller and more powerful chip and semiconductor alternatives, companies such as NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel have relied on them to manufacture their products.
A snowball that has grown over the years.
Companies like Intel, which still manufacture chips today, by playing the role of the customer, stopped investing money in technology development, something that TSMC has not stopped doing in recent years, giving it a technological superiority that stands out in the market. Because of this, the most powerful chips on the market are made directly by the Taiwan-based company.
This, coupled with the production problems caused by the global pandemic of COVID-19, has caused the company to have a lower quantity of materials and production than the company used to. Technology is constantly evolving, and there is a growing need for the technology offered by the Taiwanese development company.
This is reflected in a shortage of hardware for gaming, with graphics cards difficult to obtain and with a high price, adding the stock problems to find available a PlayStation 5 or X|S.
An emergency solution in order to end the shortages.
Intel has already stepped up to address the shortage, teaming up with TSMC to manage the lack of production that is affecting the industry today. This alliance has been made in order to meet today’s high technology demand, which affects different technology industries, including the emerging electric vehicle companies, and the one that matters most to us, video games.
Their goal is to expand chip manufacturing bases to different developed countries, with a greater source of material suppliers, so that they can increase chip and semiconductor production. Intel reports that with these moves the shortage could be seeing an end in 2023, but Dr. Yuh-Jier Mii reports in the interview, that the shortage could extend for 3 more years, coming to an end in 2025.
TSMC’s momentary solution was to take a very controversial step in the technology industry. The taiwanese company was one of the protagonists during the beginning of the year in the hardware market by announcing in January a 20% increase in the cost of manufacturing chips that will affect NVIDIA and its graphics cards or AMD, which, remember, is responsible for creating the graphics and processors of PS5 and X|S.
In this way, the Taiwanese company could afford to buy materials from private companies, in order to make up for the lack of materials, which is one of the reasons for the shortage. If you are thinking of joining the PC Master Race, or getting one of the new generation consoles, you should be aware that you may have to pay for the hardware or consoles at a premium. It is a problem that affects gamers with low incomes, or that the products simply do not reach the areas where they live. Let’s hope that these titanic companies of the technology industry find an early solution to this issue that will be with us for at least another year.
