Game hardware, including the new generation of consoles and PC graphics cards, has been extremely difficult to find as an ongoing consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. Now, the two largest PC chip manufacturers in the world, Intel and TSMC, have said that the shortage could well extend into 2022.
TSMC is well known for manufacturing the majority of Radeon GPUs and Ryzen CPUs, both of which have had newer models become notoriously difficult to find due to chip shortages. The shortage has also impacted the available stock of PlayStation 5s as well as the Xbox Series X/S and has even left an impact on the automotive industry.
TSMC's opinions on the matter were delivered to investors during a recent earnings call. TSMC's chief executive officer, C. C. Wei, told investors that to try and combat the shortage, the company has invested heavily into expanding production by building new facilities and working to expand its capacity at all sites. Despite their efforts, however, the company says that it expects the chip shortage to continue as it will take time for the new facilities to get running and produce enough stock to meet the extremely high demand. Despite the shortages, the company did post a healthy profit for the first quarter of 2021 due to the high demand and supporting many new products, like AMD's new Radeon Rx 6700 XT.
Intel's take on the issue came from a recent interview the company's new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, gave with The Washington Post. Gelsinger largely echoed Wei's statements, saying that the primary concern is the extremely high demand that will simply take time for companies to fulfill before everything evens back out as the world comes out of the pandemic. Gelsinger also said that Intel would be working to increase production to better meet the high demand, but all of this is being done while Intel faces a serious lawsuit accusing the company of wiretapping its customers.
Of course, it is frustrating to hear that the chip shortage could very well continue into next year. While things do seem promising as vaccines become more available globally, it seems that console players will still have a bit to wait until grabbing a new PlayStation, Xbox, or graphics card is a readily available option, but until then, companies are doing their best to make the wait more bearable on gamers. With programs like PlayStation's Play at Home and Xbox's dedication to having its biggest releases like Halo Infinite playable on Xbox One, players should not be missing out on too much as they wait to get their hands on the new generation.
Source: Reuters, The Washington Post