It is clear that the launch of new video game consoles has brought the benefits of SSDs to the mass market, for the time being in very limited ways, but soon in increasingly sophisticated ways.
That’s why it’s a good time to buy an SSD before its price goes up.
Demand for SSDs will increase this year
We are in the midst of a transition from conventional hard drives to SSDs, with the gaming market being the primary driver of such massive adoption. The reason? Games designed for the next generation of consoles will benefit from the SSD drive, available on PS5 and Xbox Series.
At the moment, video game consoles are in the introductory phase in a product lifecycle, but as soon as they enter the growth phase, the demand for NVMe chips used to build SSD units will increase. . If we add to this that PC conversions of these same games are going to have this demand in more and more requirements, then the huge increase in demand is clear.
This creates a situation where NVMe chipmakers have to meet a huge demand, which did not surprise them, but their decisions will have implications for the price at which SSDs can be purchased during this period of 2021. .
Capacity versus quantity, the dilemma of NVMe manufacturers
NVMe chips, like RAMs and processors, are semiconductors with all that that implies. But, these are mainly memories and therefore the density that they will have as such will depend on the number of transistors, which also influences the size of each chip and therefore on the number of chips that come out per wafer.
At the same time, major manufacturers such as Micron and Samsung have launched new 3D NAND fabrication nodes and shapes, which should help them make chips with greater storage capacity. What was the decision? As long as the demand for NVMe chips does not exceed the supply, the decision is that in the medium to short term, it has been decided to maintain the capacity of the NVMe memories, instead of increasing it.
Which means we’re not going to see SSDs with greater storage capacity, at least in 2021, because for memory manufacturers it is extremely important to be able to meet the increased demand.
Why is it advisable to buy an SSD now and not wait?
With that, we come to the heart of the question: how will everything we have said above affect the price of SSDs? Logic can lead to the mistaken belief that an increase in supply can turn into price competition between manufacturers.
Reality? Manufacturers have been negotiating prices for a long time and when the demand for these storage units increases, especially in the gaming market, then you will see how the price of SSDs will increase. In other words, this NVMe SSD with a PCI Express interface will start flying out of stores as fast as it is known that they not only increase performance, but are a minimum requirement.
Unsurprisingly, there are already games like the latest expansion for the popular MMO World of Warcraft and Cyberpunk 2077 that are optimized for this type of disc and they won’t be the first, the trend will increase more and more. In addition, as we have already mentioned, both models of the Xbox series as well as the PS5 will take a good part of the production.
So, if your intention is to purchase an SSD, we recommend that you do so before it ends up creating a price bubble due to the increased demand for these devices.
