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The lawsuit also raises concerns regarding how insulated the three big DRAM producers have become over time. Building even one DRAM fabrication plant costs billions of dollars and takes years, never mind the expertise required to keep one running. Although Chinese DRAM manufacturers like CXMT and YMTC are slowly picking up Steam, export and supply controls imposed by the US don't help the situation. The result? It's almost impossible for anyone to step in and compete with the big three manufacturers.

So what happened? AI happened. The way the world's memory market is set up relies on three major companies to supply everyone else with DRAM for consumer memory and storage. Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron realized early on in the AI boom that they could make a whole lot more money by moving away from consumer memory and into high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that's used in AI datacenters. Profit margins are enormous on the other side, and I really don't find it surprising that these massive corporations made the shift, as companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have essentially offered blank che

Gartner expects PC lifetime for regular consumers to increase by 20% by the end of this year. The cheap PC upgrade cycle has all but come to an end. When new DRAM factories do come online, I expect them to serve AI customers first. Consumers will get the scraps, just like they are currently. Chinese DRAM makers might enter the international market and force prices to fall, but I doubt by enough to make a serious impact. 👉 Best Windows laptop in 2026 If you're waiting for the RAM crisis to be over before you buy your next device, I have some bad news. The most optimistic predictions put easing

Anything is possible, but I don't want to venture into speculation. We're trying to get confirmation from Microsoft regarding digital ownership of media. What I will say is that legal protections of digitally purchased content need to be secured. Reportedly, over 90% of Xbox games are purchased digitally. PlayStation isn't that far behind, with digital sales reportedly making up 78% of purchases. Buying habits have shifted dramatically over the last decade. There are plenty of gamers with entirely digital collections. The advent of online streaming has made physical movie collections rarer, th