Lenovo Says RAM Prices Will "Never" Drop Back Down

Three companies control virtually all DRAM production on Earth: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. Between them, they decide what gets built, who gets supplied first, and at what price. Right now, AI data centers are winning that negotiation. Everyone else, including every company that makes gaming hardware, is fighting over what's left.

That context matters because of what Lenovo said at ISC 2026 this week. According to Computerbase, executive director Martin Hiegl presented a slide showing the recent price history of DRAM and NAND, then told the audience that prices will "never" return to their pre-2025 levels. The room reportedly laughed, because the alternative is crying. But Hiegl wasn't entirely joking. He went on to explain that even as manufacturers ramp up capacity, the new supply won't close the gap created by hyperscaler demand from Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. Higher prices, he said, will be the "new normal" heading into 2030 and beyond.

I wrote last week about $800 Xboxes being just the start of gaming's RAM crisis. Lenovo's presentation confirms what a lot of us suspected: this isn't a blip. It's a structural shift in what technology costs, and the gaming industry is absorbing the hit in real time.

The Numbers Keep Getting Worse

Lenovo isn't the only one sounding the alarm. Micron's earnings report last week included a blunt assessment from CEO Sanjay Mehrotra: "We expect tight conditions to persist beyond calendar 2027 as a result of AI-driven demand across all segments coupled with structural supply constraints." He added that the company doesn't have "line of sight as to when memory supply will be able to catch up with increasing demand." When the company that manufactures the RAM is telling you they can't see the end, you should believe them.

Then there's financial services group Jefferies, whose latest market analysis paints an even grimmer picture. As reported by Wccftech, Jefferies is forecasting a 40-50 percent RAM price surge in Q3 2026, followed by another 30-40 percent hike in Q4. For 2027, they're projecting a further 40-45 percent jump. Some relief might arrive in 2028 in the form of a 15-20 percent drop, but even that would leave prices dramatically higher than where they sat eighteen months ago.

Let me put that for anyone building or upgrading a gaming PC. If a 32GB DDR5 kit costs you £120 today, these projections suggest you could be looking at £200+ by early 2027. And that's just RAM. SSDs use NAND flash, which is caught in the same supply crunch.

The knock-on effects are already visible across the industry. Valve's Steam Machine launched at over $1,000 and the company openly admitted that "some people are going to be priced out." Xbox Series X|S consoles have been hit with a third round of price increases. PlayStation raised PS5 prices earlier this year. The Nintendo Switch 2 is getting a bump too. Every platform holder is passing the cost along because they have no choice.

What makes this feel so intractable is the supply side. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have spent billions reconfiguring their fabrication plants to produce high-margin AI memory chips. They're locked into multi-year supply contracts with tech giants that stretch to 2030. Even if the AI investment bubble cools, those contracts don't evaporate. The factories don't magically pivot back to producing consumer-grade memory at pre-shortage volumes. Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais described the dynamic with uncomfortable clarity: memory suppliers give them a price every month, and if Valve pushes back, "they never talk to us again."

I keep coming back to what this means for the next generation of consoles. Microsoft has internally forecast that memory costs will double again by fall 2027. If that holds, how does anyone ship a next-gen Xbox or PlayStation at a price consumers will actually pay? A $700 console was already a tough sell. A $1,000 one changes the entire calculus of who can afford to play games on new hardware. Sony and Microsoft could wait, but based on every forecast available, waiting only makes it more expensive.

For PC gamers, the situation is arguably worse because there's no subsidised hardware model to absorb part of the cost. You pay component prices directly. And those component prices are being set by three companies whose most profitable customers aren't you.

Game preservation site Myrient already shut down because of the RAM crisis. Handheld manufacturers are raising prices across the board. The entire hobby is getting more expensive at every level, from the hardware you play on to the storage you save games to. Lenovo's presentation didn't reveal anything the industry didn't already suspect, but hearing a major manufacturer say the word "never" out loud strips away whatever optimism was left. Maybe it's time to listen to Sonic.

If there's a silver lining, it might be that developers are forced to prioritize optimization over raw graphical horsepower. When fewer players can afford hardware, building games that run well on older specs becomes a business necessity, not just a nice gesture. But that's cold comfort when the price of entry keeps climbing and no one with actual market power seems interested in bringing it back down.