RAM's rough stretch just got a bleaker long-term forecast from two of the industry's biggest names.
At the ISC 2026 high-performance computing conference in Germany, Lenovo said RAM prices will likely "never" return to pre-crisis levels — a remark made with some on-stage laughter, and one that ComputerBase, which reported on the event, notes should be read as covering roughly the next five years rather than as an absolute prediction. Even so, Lenovo followed it up with the more durable claim: a "new normal" of significantly elevated pricing from 2030 onward, even after chip production ramps up starting in 2028. Meanwhile, Microsoft tied the memory crunch directly to its pockets, announcing Xbox console price hikes and stating that memory and storage costs have already risen more than 2.5x, with another doubling expected by fall 2027. Console makers feel this especially hard since hardware is typically sold at a loss, with revenue recovered through game sales and subscriptions.
Lenovo's framing matters because it signals that even the companies best positioned to absorb or hedge component costs are no longer pretending a return to cheap RAM is coming. Microsoft's Xbox disclosure puts a retail face on what has mostly been an enterprise-level conversation — suddenly the memory crisis isn't just a data center problem. There's also a side plot: Micron, without naming Apple directly, pushed back at partners it says pressured memory suppliers on pricing, potentially constraining investment in new production capacity.
For context, SK Hynix is reportedly weighing a partial shift away from AI-targeted high-bandwidth memory toward conventional RAM — which could offer some relief — but that remains a rumor, and Lenovo's "new normal" framing suggests the industry itself isn't counting on it.