🎮 Minus 14 billion XP: Nintendo’s stock has dropped almost every day in December, wiping out USD 14 billion in market value. The main culprit: exploding memory prices that are eating the Switch 2’s margins alive.
💾 One’s pain, another’s gain: Nintendo now pays 41% more for RAM and 8% more for NAND. Samsung is set to reclaim the global DRAM crown in Q4 and rake in over USD 11.5 billion in memory profit thanks to soaring demand.
📦 Storage squeeze for players: microSD Express cards cost around USD 90 and are hard to find. With the Switch 2’s limited internal storage, many buyers have no choice — pushing up the real cost of the console ecosystem.
🏷️ Early discount raises eyebrows: A Switch 2 + Mario Kart bundle was already USD 50 off on Black Friday. Analysts see the early markdown as a warning sign for demand and inventory levels.
🧊 Chip crisis hits everyone: Samsung is tightening supply, while PC makers like Dell and HP warn of historic component price spikes. Buyers across consumer tech may be in for a costly 2026.
Background
Nintendo’s Switch 2 boom is colliding with the toughest memory shortage in nearly a decade. The global storage showdown has put the entire consumer electronics industry into Hard Mode.
After years of oversupply, Samsung, SK hynix & Co. shifted production toward high-margin HBM to fuel the AI boom — starving the market of standard DRAM and NAND. With AI models, data centers, and smartphones devouring massive memory blocks, gaming consoles sit at the very bottom of the food chain: expensive, but not mission-critical.
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