While anyone reading this will know it has been hard finding a PS5 lately, loads of other markets are experiencing shortages as well, thanks to a global “crisis” affecting the supply of semiconductor chips to—well—anything that uses them. And that’s a lot of stuff.
As The Guardian reports, while the supply of chips should be improving now that we’re months out from some of the worst Covid lockdowns and distribution disruptions, things have actually gotten worse because of market changes (we’ve been buying a lot more computers and TVs and consoles while stuck at home), and a huge influx of new products using them, putting further strain on the supply chain.
PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X shortages are just the tip of the iceberg. Big phone launches from companies like Apple and Samsung have been postponed, new graphics cards are still hard to find, and all over the world car manufacturers are either scaling back production or piling unfinished cars up in parking lots while they wait for the chips needed to power their software systems.
“Chips are everything,” tech analyst Neil Campling told The Guardian. “There is a perfect storm of supply and demand factors going on here. But basically, there is a new level of demand that can’t be kept up with, everyone is in crisis and it is getting worse.”
We reported last month that President Biden was looking at “reviewing the causes” behind this, but it’s hard seeing what good that could do; we know the reason, and it’s simply that supply of the chips isn’t enough to meet demand, and may not be for quite a while, which is only going to make things like graphics card shortages and an inflated resale market worse for the foreseeable future, until production can increase (or at least just catch up).