Sony Secures Enough RAM for Every PS5 Sold This Year

Before GTA 6 is released this November, the console manufacturer is already ahead of the memory shortage.

This year the worldwide “Ramageddon” memory shortage has been rocking the electronics industry, and it has affected everything from laptops and graphics cards to game consoles. If all that noise has been causing any investors to become uneasy, there is some good news: Sony has already secured enough RAM to power every PS5 that it expects to sell this fiscal year.

What Sony actually said

The claim came in a company’s latest earnings report, and the company took the issue of memory shortage on the chin instead of waiting for analysts to bring it up. Sony said it has already sold enough memory to meet its future goal of selling 177 million PS5 units during fiscal 2026 (April 2027).

It’s a significant statement to make, especially for Sony. As the demand for AI data centers surges, along with demand from smartphone manufacturers and PC builders for the same scarce supply of chips, memory chip prices have been rising for months. Console manufacturers are particularly exposed to that squeeze as they are generally lower margin, longer lead time businesses. Sony appears to be trying to preempt any speculation that production on PS5 might slow down, or that its price might go back up due to a memory shortage.

Perhaps most important, Sony didn’t say it was not considering a further price increase. The company has more than once raised its PS5 prices in the past couple of years, mostly due to tariffs and currency fluctuations. If the memory situation will get another boost remains to be seen, and Sony didn’t make a decision.

Why the timing matters

The comfort arrives months before the potential largest stress on PS5 demand yet: the launch of Grand Theft Auto 6. The eagerly awaited sequel by Rockstar is now due on November 19th; it’s expected to be one of the biggest entertainment launches of the decade, console or otherwise. Historically, such a game has stimulated hardware revenue, with people who’ve been on the sidelines making their purchasing decision. Sony will want to ensure that it doesn’t run into a similar situation when that wave of people arrives.

The sales numbers tell a more complicated story

But the sales numbers behind the optimistic headline for Sony’s PS5 are far less rosy. The company shipped 1.6 million PS5 units in its first fiscal quarter of this year, compared to 2.5 million PS5 units that were shipped in the first fiscal quarter of last year. This wasn’t a one off either as the same drop year on year was recorded in the previous quarter. There are a couple of reasons that may be to blame: US tariffs have been driving up prices, and the PS5 may just be a little bit older now that it is six years old, and sales will gradually slow down until the next new console launches.

Sony’s bottom line actually got better, despite that decrease in units sold. Profit for the period rose 37 percent to 54.1 billion yen ($337 million) despite unchanged overall sales. The increase was fueled by two factors: refunds based on U.S. tariffs, and currency exchange rates that have been beneficial as the yen has weakened against the dollar. DON’T FORGET: Sony, like many companies embroiled in the tariff mess, retained those refunds, rather than rolling them back to customers who had been paying the higher fees in the first place.

Software sales, meanwhile, remained fairly stable with better than average performance from the third parties offset by a 900,000 unit decline in first-party shipments. That drop indicates that Housemarque’s PlayStation Studios game Saros hasn’t sold as well as Sony would have liked. Rather, PlayStation’s monthly active users jumped 2 million to 125 million, indicating that the platform still has a way to go in terms of growth as hardware sales slow down.

Reading between the lines

All this together gives an impression of a console manufacturer on low fuel having to play it safe and still preparing for a potential boom. Pricing pressure from tariffs and materials is continuing, Sony’s hardware numbers are in decline and its flagship exclusive did not perform up to the standard. Though profits are up, users are signing up and the company is taking proactive steps to ensure that a worldwide chip shortage does not become a reason why PS5s aren’t selling as much this holiday season.

It’s not whether it’s enough RAM for the next GTA game, it’s whether or not it’s enough RAM to stop price increases in console sales from happening in the next few months anyway.

The Tweaks Verdict

It is not a surprise, however, but a message of damage control and confidence building from Sony. The shortage of memory is a reality in the Ramageddon market and it’s happening all over. Sony’s leap frogging the problem with a direct admission is a shrewd PR ploy, albeit somewhat defensive. The real numbers are that sales momentum for PS5 is starting to sag with the age of the console, and a top tier first party title fell short. But despite the fact that the hardware is no longer the growth driver, Sony is still on a path to increase profits and user base, meaning it’s doing fine.

That’s not the actual fresh component to view, it’s what will occur to PS5 pricing when GTA 6 drops in November. If Sony can keep up with that demand without raising the price again, this quiet earnings call reassurance will have done just what it was supposed to do. Shooting up prices again, and the RAM tale will be all the more quiescent.