PlayStation, Xbox, Switch Power-Chip Shortage Likely to Continue Through 2022

Better hunker down for a long hardware winter.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Toshiba Corp has admitted that they will be unable to meet demand for power-regulating chips for the rest of this year and, in some cases, even through to the end of 2022. These chips are used in a wide variety of products, from cars to consumer electronics to industrial machinery.

Takeshi Kamebuchi, a director at Toshiba in charge of semiconductors in one company unit, said the following: “The supply of chips will remain very tight until at least September next year…in some cases, we may find some customers not being fully served until 2023.”

 

What’s Going On With Power Chips?

The ongoing shortage is due to enormous outgoing demand for the chips, which outstrip Toshiba’s production output by a considerable margin, and a shortage of materials used in their production. Toshiba has a plan to inject 60 billion yen (roughly $545 million) between now and March 2024 to increase production as much as possible and close the gap between their supply and customer demand.

One major victim of the chip shortage is video game console production. Production and sales of the PlayStation 5 have lagged compared to the PS4 during its first year. According to Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa, this year’s production of Switch consoles has also lagged behind their intended sales goals.

On the topic of game consoles, Kamebuchi told Bloomberg, “We consider which customer faces the most severe situation, such as the risk of the whole production line halting or the business getting obliterated without the supply of chips…Game console makers are among the customers making the strongest demands and I’m sincerely sorry for their frustration as none of them have a 100% satisfaction.”

Components like the Toshiba power-chips are hard to find substitute parts for, contributing further to the difficulty consumers and hardware manufacturers are having getting around this resource shortage.

READ NEXT: Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania: 10 Guest Characters We Want To See

Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.