Memory Shortage Pushes PS5 Pro Past $1,400 in China
October was supposed to be a celebration for gamers in China. The month has brought a dense wave of releases, from a new Castlevania title, Belmont’s Curse, to the rhythm-action sequel Ratatan, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2, a Total War: Shogun 2 complete edition and a remaster of Tales of Eternia. Instead, many players are discovering that the bigger story is what it now costs to play them.
A shortage of memory chips has driven up console prices across the board, and the PlayStation 5 Pro has become the symbol of the squeeze. The machine’s street price in China has climbed past 10,000 yuan, roughly $1,400, according to a roundup from the games outlet Gcores. The same report warns that tight supply is likely to last into the first quarter of 2027.
The cause is not a sudden collapse in console production but a broader battle for memory. Demand from data centers and AI hardware has tightened supplies of the DRAM and NAND chips that consoles rely on, and consumer electronics makers are competing for the same components. When memory gets expensive, every device that needs a lot of it gets expensive too, and a high-end console with a large solid-state drive is an especially exposed target.
For Chinese players, the timing is awkward. Consoles have long carried a premium in the mainland market, where they are sold through official channels but compete with imported units and grey-market sellers. A jump of this size turns a luxury purchase into something closer to a collector’s item. The usual workaround, buying a cheaper regional model or waiting for a promotion, is less attractive when the underlying hardware cost is rising everywhere.
Handheld PCs and gaming laptops are not immune either, since they draw on the same memory supply. Some players are responding by sticking with the hardware they already own, clearing backlogs, or turning to cheaper alternatives. That is one reason the free and experimental games catalogued each week on the indie platform itch.io keep drawing attention, including strange little text adventures like Rest Stop. When the newest console costs more than a month’s rent in many cities, a free browser game starts to look like a reasonable evening.
The software side of October is not slowing down. Beyond the big releases, there is a new racing game from veterans of the Horizon series working with a writer from a narrative-focused studio, an attempt to bring real storytelling to a genre long dominated by lap times and car lists. There are also smaller projects, such as the Japanese studio C#4R4CT3R’s lo-fi psychological thriller Rain98, whose Steam demo runs about three hours, and the mystery adventure Room 909 on the Silent Express, both timed to online showcase events this month.
For the industry, the memory crunch is a reminder that consoles are no longer insulated from the wider chip economy. A machine that was meant to be a mass-market gateway to big-budget games is drifting toward enthusiast pricing, at least in markets like China. Publishers can keep releasing games, but the audience that can afford the hardware to play them may be narrower than the release calendar assumes. Until memory supply loosens, the most exciting thing about a new console may be finding one at the listed price.