Console developers vastly underestimated the demand the incoming console generation would generate. Subsequently, the concerted efforts of scalpers exacerbated the lack of supply across the board. It's not a question of PlayStation or Xbox at this point. Players looking to pick up a PS5 or a new Xbox find themselves struck by the sting of supply shortages everywhere.

Playing catch-up

In a report by Tom's Hardware, AMD enjoyed financial milestones but the chip shortages may persist at least through the latter half of 2021. The shortage affected both sides of console wars. Surprisingly, PC builders found themselves in a similar position given the lack of AMD hardware. AMD CEO Lisa Su tried to alleviate concerns from customers heading into the brunt of the year.

“And so we do see some tightness through the first half of the year, but there's added capacity in the second half. Then, in terms of how we — how we think about these things, so for our full-year annual guide, we do have good visibility on both the demand side and the supply side. That was the basis for the guidance across the businesses.”

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One would normally think that the ongoing global pandemic gravely affected supply. Unfortunately, this one case is an example where Covid-19 did not play a major part. Su pointed towards “unexpected demand” of new hardware. The AMD CEO stressed that the demand gravely overwhelmed their readily-available supply.

AMD looks to correct this deficit by amping up production for hardware across the board. Unfortunately, AMD's best efforts pale in comparison to the undying efforts of greedy scalpers. Increased console and PC CPU supplies can do little to curb the dirty practices of scalpers. Hopefully, retailers around the world can clamp down on scalping to help get deserving players the hardware they need. We'll have to see until the latter half of the year if the supply issue comes close to a resolution.