This past holiday season, Microsoft and Sony launched their respective next-gen consoles, theXbox Series Xand thePlayStation 5. Since then, both consoles have been consistently been sold out across the United States and elsewhere. It isn’t just that thePS5andXbox Series Xare in high demand, which they are, but due in part to component shortages that prevent increased production. Now, the United States Senate is moving forward with a funding bill that could improve the situation.
The worldwide shortage of semiconductor production has led to capped manufacturing across many industries. A new bill has just been voted through the United States Senate that puts forward $52 billion in funding toward semiconductor production domestically. The funding would theoretically help improve ongoing shortages for gaming hardware including the PS5 and Xbox Series X, as well as PC hardware including graphics cards likeNvidia’s 30 Series GPUs.
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Domestic semiconductor funding is included in a larger bill called the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, a funding package intended to encourage US competition in certain technologies dominated by other regions – and China especially. Over $200 billion total is included in the USICA, which passed with bipartisan support in the US Senate. The bill still needs to be passed in the US House of Congress before being signed byPresident Joe Biden. It’s unclear if any further alterations will be made to the bill as part of the process.
This new round of funding forsemiconductor productionand research in the US comes after President Biden issues a 100-day review of ongoing shortages in early 2021. The review was published this past Tuesday, helping provide momentum to the USICA as it moved forward in the Senate. A statement from the Biden administration following the review acknowledged that there was no “quick, immediate fix,” but made clear expanding domestic production capabilities is the correct “answer.”
What that means for gamers across the world hoping to seePS5 and Xbox Series X availabilityincrease in the short term is nothing but bad news. Even if the US finding bill is approved rapidly, it’s unlikely to result in increased production for some time. This is a long-term effort at best and its impact may be difficult to ascertain even years into the future.
The global semiconductor shortage is unlikely to lighten, it seems.PS5,Xbox Series X, andPC graphics card shortagesare likely to continue for the foreseeable future. The hope is that the semiconductor shortage will end gradually over time and then after it ends it’ll be much more unlikely to happen again.
