The frenzy surrounding the launch of Black Myth: Wukong, China's first AAA game to find success in the global market, has spurred speculation of a ripple effect going into the traditional peak season for hardware sales.
After a sluggish market performance in the first half of 2024 due to memory makers steadily increasing prices, the supply chain is anticipating the new game to drive a wave of device replacements and upgrades into the traditional third and fourth-quarter peak seasons. However, it may be too premature for suppliers to pin their hopes for sales of devices equipped with 16GB or more of RAM on this one hit.
According to supply chain sources, even though Black Myth: Wukong has sold more than 1.2 million copies in its first week, there have been no reports of gamers being bogged down by insufficient memory on the Steam platform. It remains to be seen whether this will drive hardware sales in an already cautious consumer market.
Testing has shown that the game will not launch on PCs with 6GB or less of RAM, and although performance is best on machines with more than 16GB of dual-channel memory, 8GB of RAM still yields acceptable results. As industry experts note, most notebooks and desktop PCs on the market come with at least 8GB of RAM as standard.
Mid-range graphics cards are usually equipped with 6GB of dedicated video RAM, and mainstream graphics cards all have 8GB or above. Since the game primarily relies on graphics card performance, even PCs equipped with DDR4 RAM will have little issue if graphics specs are decent.
By comparison, the growth in SSD sales has far outpaced that of DRAM modules, driven in part by upgrade demand from older SATA drives to high-speed PCIe drives. In addition, SSDs have an inherent life span due to limited write cycles, and thus there will always be a basic demand for SSD replacements. In contrast, DRAM modules rarely fail, and growth in this sector during the past decade has mainly been an increase from 8GB to 16GB of RAM as standard on computers.
Memory makers aim to capitalize on gaming trend
Even though the end-user market for memory has been sluggish, intense marketing in the gaming scene has indeed drawn attention to memory specs, just as the Chinese consumer market is prepping up for the annual Singles' Day promotion in November. Furthermore, patriotic fervor among non-gamers may drive a short-term surge, as well as a wave of other Chinese companies producing similar games aiming to cash in on the fad.
In light of this, the memory industry is hoping to ride the wave to increase sales for the second half of 2024 and draw in momentum for further upgrades in the long term. The supply chain projects continued momentum in the fourth quarter for AI PCs and smartphones, which will boost performance for the second half of the year as shipments in the overall consumer market improve.
Although memory contract prices have already seen major increases, DRAM and NAND flash prices will continue to rise in the second half of 2024, with double-digit increases in the third quarter. During the fourth quarter, NAND flash prices will rise at a slower pace, but DRAM prices may still see hikes in the high single digits.
