PlayStation 5 consoles jumping $100 in the U.S. starting April 2

Sony Group is raising what customers pay for PlayStation 5 consoles across the globe. American buyers will see a $100 increase starting April 2, the second time in less than a year the Japanese company has pushed prices higher because of rising costs for parts like memory chips.

Computer memory makers have been favoring production of chips for data centers, where they can charge more. That’s created a supply crunch for everyday consumer gadgets as the tech industry races to build out infrastructure for artificial intelligence.

Starting next month, the standard PS5 will cost $649.99 in the U.S., up from $549.99. The Digital Edition jumps to $599.99. The high-end PS5 Pro will run $899.99, and the PlayStation Portal remote player climbs to $249.99 from $199.99.

Europe and Japan will see similar bumps. Sony said it made the call after what it described as a careful look at rising cost pressures hitting global supply chains.

Industry watchers think the higher console prices will probably slow down video game market growth this year. Epic Games, which makes Fortnite, pointed to sluggish console sales as part of why it cut 1,000 jobs earlier this week.

During the key holiday shopping quarter from October through December, PlayStation 5 sales fell 16 percent from a year earlier to 8 million units. The console has been out for around six years now.

Sony last bumped PS5 prices by about $50 in the U.S. in August last year. Microsoft also raised prices on its Xbox console during the same period.

Memory chip stocks take a beating

Over in the stock market, Micron Technology shares kept sliding Friday. The memory chipmaker has now lost roughly 23 percent of its value over six straight sessions as investors rethink their views on memory pricing and AI-related demand.

The stock has been under pressure even though Micron supplies high-bandwidth memory used in artificial intelligence work. Shares dropped another 2.4 percent before the market opened Friday, hitting $346.40. Other memory chip companies also moved lower. SanDisk fell 3.2 percent, Western Digital dropped 3 percent, and Seagate lost 2.8 percent.

Micron took a nearly 7 percent hit Thursday after Alphabet unveiled its TurboQuant compression technology. The search company said it reduces memory usage and makes AI models run better. That raised worries about whether demand for memory chips might weaken, which pulled down the whole sector.

Later Thursday, Trump told Fox News he’d recently met with Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra and called the company one of the “hottest” in the U.S.

Equipment maker ASML gets upgrade

There was better news Thursday for ASML, the Dutch company that makes semiconductor equipment. A Wall Street analyst called the stock a “top pick” because memory chip producers are buying new gear.

Bernstein analyst David Dai kept his outperform rating on ASML and raised his price target to 1,971 from 1,911. He also said ASML is his top pick in Europe’s semiconductor sector.

ASML fell 4.6 percent to 1,329.50 Thursday during a rough day for stocks overall. Shares had hit a record high of 1,547.22 on Feb. 25 before pulling back.

Dai wrote in a note to clients that ASML is seeing more orders from makers of DRAM chips, which stands for dynamic random-access memory.

“The DRAM makers are accelerating the pace of capacity expansion due to the widening gap between DRAM supply and demand,” Dai said. Demand for DRAM has jumped as companies build data centers for artificial intelligence.

“With the surge of DRAM demand from generative AI, including both HBM (high bandwidth memory) and DDR (double data rate RAM) for AI servers, the supply and demand gap widened and DRAM prices surged,” he said.

Companies buying new equipment include Micron Technology, Samsung and SK Hynix.

Based on capacity additions, Dai expects ASML to ship 44 extreme ultraviolet lithography machines to DRAM makers in 2028. That would represent 45 percent of ASML’s total shipments of such equipment that year, more than double the 18 units expected in 2025, which made up 34 percent of shipments then. Dai increased his forecast for total ASML extreme ultraviolet shipments in 2028 from 79 to 92 units.

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