Практика Shadowing: The Gaming Market is Starting to Break. - Изучайте разговорный английский по видео

Выберите режим практики

Каждый режим открывает полноэкранную комнату практики.

283 предложений

Если предложения слишком короткие или длинные, нажмите Edit, чтобы их изменить.

This is a PlayStation 5.

It came out in 2020 at $399, and now, even though it's six years old, it costs $599.

Nintendo's announced a price hike to their Switch, too.

The Xbox has raised its price three times since 2025, and the scariest part is not even the extra money, it's what's happening around it.

Because at the same time, PlayStation announced it's going to stop shipping physical game discs entirely.

Xbox has axed five of its big game production studios

and fired thousands of people in what's being called one of the biggest single layoffs in gaming history,

all while Nvidia has started capping how many hours a month you're allowed to play when using their services.

The craziest part?

Everything I've just mentioned is linked.

This is actually all part of a single chain reaction that's already started in the gaming industry.

And I don't see where it stops.

To understand what I mean, if we were to take apart this PlayStation 5, inside you would find 16 gigabytes of RAM,

or memory, which it needs to be able to run games.

A single AI chip from Nvidia, the Blackwell Ultra, requires 288 gigabytes of memory.

18 PlayStation 5s worth of RAM.

Now it is a fancier type of memory than what's in your PlayStation, but it's made on the same production lines by the same companies.

So every gigabyte that goes into this is a gigabyte that can't be made for a PS5.

And the problem is when AI companies buy chips for their data centers, they don't just buy one.

Chips are sold in racks, each containing 72 of those AI chips.

So one rack equals 1300 PlayStation 5s.

Oh dear.

And they don't just buy one rack.

Racks are purchased in clusters.

Last year, Microsoft switched on their first big cluster to help power the growing needs from OpenAI's ChatGBT models.

That cluster was 64 racks in one go.

83,000 PlayStation 5s.

And here's where it gets truly terrifying.

Even that was barely a test run compared to the scale on which these new servers are being set up now, just a year later.

OpenAI is currently building out the Stargate campus that will reportedly hold 100 times the number of racks as that first purchase.

8.3 million PlayStation 5's worth of memory in one company's one site.

That's almost enough PlayStations for every single household in the entire continent of Australia.

And so when you factor in that there are also other AI companies, Meta and their even larger Prometheus site, XAI's Colossus, supposedly the world's most powerful data center,

Amazon, Google, and every other big tech company who's galloping headfirst into the AI wars,

we have reached a point where AI data centers are now estimated to be swallowing up 70% of the world's memory output.

70% is going into building services that we'd barely heard of five years ago.

And that has left everything else on the planet that needs memory, every phone, every PC, every car,

every console, having to now fight over the small and rapidly shrinking pool that's left.

Why don't they just make some more memory, you ask?

Well, I don't think they want to.

See, the entire world's memory supply comes from, largely, five companies.

And if we're talking about the specific type of memory used to make RAM, that's only three companies.

Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.

And these three companies could choose to invest tens of billions into new factories to be able to produce more, but that would take three to four years to build.

And if there were to be an AI crash in that time, they'd have spent it all for nothing.

And so why take the risk when they're currently raking in cash?

These companies are currently lapping up 70-80% margins on their memory compared to the historical norm of 30-40%

because of one simple fact that their new favourite customers, big tech companies will pay absolutely anything for it.

We are in a very unique situation where basically for the first time since the dot com bubble, some of the richest companies on the planet like Microsoft,

Amazon, Google are not even behaving like businesses.

They're spending more money than they're even making from AI

because the fear of losing the AI race has actually become bigger than the fear of debt.

This is a very precarious situation for the world to be in.

And it puts these memory companies in such a powerful position

that it feels like they've just decided to forget entirely about the consumer, with Micron actually quietly shutting down its consumer memory brand,

crucial, to focus on these data center business customers.

Now new factories are coming.

Elon Musk and Intel are building a giant AI complex in Texas, for example, that will also make some memory.

But none of it produces anything meaningful before 2028.

Plus, almost all of that new capacity is being built for, you guessed it, the AI customers anyway.

Because, well, you already know now.

So how much more expensive has this memory really become?

Well, to give you an idea, within just three months at the end of last year, the price of a single 16GB stick of RAM rose almost 300%.

According to Tom's Hardware's RAM Price Index.

Asha Sharma, CEO of Xbox, has said, The price we paid for console storage components was over two times as high as we paid last fall.

These costs have since doubled again.

And as we plan for the 2027 holiday season, we expect another significant increase.

Taking us over five times the prices we paid only two years earlier.

Five times!

Memory is getting so expensive that, according to a report from TrendForce, on some high-end graphics cards, the memory that's on the card,

known as the VRAM, now accounts for up to 80% of the total cost.

Let that sink in.

The actual clever bit of the graphics card that you should be paying for, the GPU chip that companies like NVIDIA spend billions designing,

is on some cards now costing less than the basic memory that's soldered around it.

Here's where it starts to get problematic.

The implications from these higher prices are bigger than they first seem, because when the prices go up, of course fewer consumers buy.

Like if we take PlayStation in May 2026, just after the price hike.

Americans bought fewer PlayStations than they had in any May since the year 2000.

That's before the PlayStation 2 had even come to America.

Xbox had the worst May in its entire history.

And it's much bigger than just PlayStation and Xbox.

Any company that makes any type of computing hardware.

I was speaking to the director of one of the big Windows handheld companies.

The companies that make this kind of stuff.

And his words were, man, Windows gaming handhelds and computers are dead now.

No company will launch new products if the memory prices continue to rise.

It is crazy now.

How bad do things need to be for a director of a currently operating business to call their own business dead?

Even like Valve, typically the strongman of value gaming, just launched their Steam machine,

a box that's barely as powerful as the six-year-old PS5, for $1,049.

It's not going to be the next Steam Deck, put it that way.

So all of a sudden, the home console, the bastion that for 30 years has been the affordable way to game, the thing your mum could buy you at Christmas,

is quietly drifting away from a staple to a luxury purchase.

Now gamers aren't going to stop playing games, right?

But are they going to have to start changing where they play them?

Very possibly.

And that's where things get concerning.

If the If the PlayStation 6, for example, launches at two and a half times the base price that the PS5 did, $1,000, which sounds like an outrageous prediction,

but is actually what the current latest rumors are suggesting, then it's not a crazy thought that far fewer people are going to buy a PS6.

100

And you might think, okay, I mean, that's fine, I'll just wait, I'll buy it pre-owned.

101

But it's not about just us, the individual.

102

See the entire console gaming industry relies on momentum.

103

These companies have to sell tens of millions of these consoles right out the gate to prove to developers

104

that their new platform is worth developing for.

105

It means that a new console is basically either all or nothing.

106

You either sell tons of boxes, have developers flooding to your platform to make games for those users, and then even more users buying your console because of those games.

107

The Nintendo Wii is a great example of forward momentum like this, with the console eventually hitting 101 million sales.

108

Or you bottle it at the start.

109

You don't manage to get that initial launch trajectory, game devs don't want to take the risk, and then pretty much nothing you do is going to save your platform.

110

Like the Wii U, which came just after the Wii, and in its entire lifetime has only hit 13.5 million.

111

So my question is, how on earth are Sony

112

or Xbox going to build any kind of momentum with their next-gen consoles if they're priced at $1000?

113

If the PS6 launches and only 5 to 8 million people buy one in the first year, whereas 80 million people are currently on PS5s.

114

Which platform are developers going to prioritize their games for?

115

Obviously the old one.

116

Sure, they'll make a version that runs at a higher resolution for the latest hardware, but any sensible developer who's going to have to spend maybe

117

half a decade pouring everything into their next game is going to do everything to make sure

118

that it's PS5 users who are getting an optimal experience.

119

Because that's where the money is.

120

So now there is even less reason to upgrade.

121

And the spiral descends.

122

Because here's the thing, Sony more so than Xbox is a little bit protected in the short term.

123

If no one buys a PS6 then they do still have this giant PS5 install base to sell subscriptions and games to.

124

But the install base of a console is like a melting ice cube.

125

Consoles break, they get sold, they get retired, and players do slowly lose attachment and stop buying games for it across its lifetime.

126

They drift over to PC, phones, or just out of the hobby.

127

the thing that replenishes this pool of active users is the next-gen console.

128

So if the PS6 ends up too expensive to do that, then the paying population for companies like Sony is going to shrink every year with nothing refilling it.

129

So if these companies want to continue to maintain their profits,

130

they have to claw back money from other places.

131

And as far as I can see, there are four ways that they could do this.

132

The first lever they can pull is subscriptions.

133

I think these companies will raise the price of subscriptions

134

and will make it feel more essential to pay a monthly fee to get the experience.

135

I mean, Xbox tried an enormous price increase at the end of last year to its Game Pass, then realised they went a little too far and pulled it back a bit, but it's still more expensive than it was.

136

And Nintendo's already started jacking up online costs two months ago in Japan, so who knows how long till that becomes global.

137

Lever 2 is game prices.

138

And we've already been seeing a lot of this before the memory crisis.

139

Like $60 was the default price for a game for 15 years.

140

Then it jumped to $70 in 2020, only to now start another jump to $80, just five years after.

141

If things carry on like this, we might be seeing the $100 video game sooner than we'd like to.

142

The third lever is control.

143

This is what we've just seen happen with Sony, announcing that from 2028 onwards, they're going to seize distribution of physical discs.

144

And this might seem completely unrelated to what's happening here.

145

But the key thing

146

that this move achieves for Sony is rerouting a lot of the money in the gaming market

147

that wasn't previously going to them, back to them.

148

Because it means that you can't sell your games anymore.

149

When games are digital, they are tied to your account.

150

Effectively shutting down the entire secondhand market.

151

It means that if your friend wants to play the same game you're playing, you can't just lend it to them.

152

They can't just pop over to eBay and grab it for $20.

153

They have to make an entirely new, maybe $80, maybe $100 purchase, direct to Sony.

154

And if that doesn't already sound like a problem, look at this.

155

On my PlayStation right now, if I want to buy, say, Immortals of Avian, a game that, safe to say, flopped pretty hard, Sony is currently selling that for £69.99.

156

That exact same game, I can pop onto my phone, go onto CEX and order the physical edition for £5.

157

It is crazy to think that this second option could just disappear.

158

And crazier still, that this is how Sony prices games while these other options still exist.

159

What are they going to do when there's no other option?

160

To clarify, when Sony acts as the discs, you will still be able to buy their games at other retailers,

161

but you'll be buying a download code that still has to go through the PlayStation store to get you the games.

162

I don't know what I expected.

163

So Sony will control the price more so than they ever have been able to with discs.

164

I wouldn't go as far as to say that Sony axed the disc because of AI.

165

But I do think that Sony axing discs is a sign of a squeezed, desperate industry, and that squeeze is largely brought on by this AI boom.

166

And even if these discs don't officially die till 2028, it feels like the beginning of the end is now, with GTA 6, maybe the biggest game launch in history.

167

But the only physical thing about the physical edition is a download code, at which point they might as well just be digital only.

168

And Nintendo too.

169

Because their game cartridges rely on the same type of flash memory that's rocketing up in price, publishers on Switch 2 are increasingly shipping data-less game key cards, like Elden Ring.

170

It's a cartridge in a box that doesn't actually have the game on the cartridge, just a key that downloads it.

171

So when you put it in, you're the one who has to download it, and you're the one using up your internal storage instead of theirs.

172

And the fourth lever that these companies can use to recoup their costs.

173

The darkest one I'm getting to.

174

But for the time being, can you see how it's already getting more expensive and just worse to be a console gamer?

175

This is even leading to some insiders claiming that while Sony originally planned to launch PS6 in 2027, that it has now been delayed to 2028 or later.

176

And whichever way this turns out, there is absolutely no doubt that we're about to see slower progress in games becoming next generation.

177

And there's even a supposedly claiming

178

that the next-gen consoles will ship with less RAM than originally planned and a lower speed bandwidth, as if there weren't already enough reasons to be concerned about them.

179

I was originally wondering, one upside of AI is that maybe you don't need that new hardware.

180

We've already seen with NVIDIA's DLSS 5 tech that AI has the ability to massively upscale the resolution of games,

181

make them run smoother, and even improve the lighting in real time.

182

But alas, most of this tech can only run on new compatible AI hardware, which the current gen consoles are just not.

183

Unfortunately, it's not just gaming companies and gaming consumers who are losing out in this spiral.

184

Because the final lever that brands like Sony and Xbox are going to have to pull is cost cutting.

185

Like I mentioned, Xbox has actually divested five big game studios, including the people behind massively popular titles like Hellblade and Psychonauts,

186

and in the process also axed around 3,200 jobs.

187

This is one company's one set of layoffs.

188

And still it means 3,200 potentially talented level designers,

189

graphic designers, voiceover artists who were previously working on the next generation of games, who there's a very good chance are just not anymore.

190

Key word, talented.

191

Reportedly the layoffs even include around half of the team at id Software, the studio that basically invented the first-person shooter with Doom,

192

Quake, Wolfenstein, and more.

193

Now, imagine if on top of everything else, the higher prices, the dirtier tactics, the reduced focus on next generation,

194

that we also start getting fewer big-budget games too, because there's fewer people to make them.

195

From an industry trade analysis in May 2026, a higher hardware entry price changes the shape of the next install-based cohort

196

and feeds directly into the lifetime value assumptions that justify a green light decision at the publisher level.

197

Or in English, publishers decide whether to make a game based on projections of

198

how many consoles are going to exist in the future to sell it to.

199

This memory price surge has reduced the future projected install base,

200

which means that games are being killed at the pitch stage right now because of RAM prices.

201

And we're not even ever going to know which ones.

202

And I think there's a very good chance

203

that this also affects the innovation in games Because doing new things is a risk.

204

When projected install bases shrink, it means that the threshold for something to become greenlit is going to become tighter.

205

So the games that make it through that are increasingly going to be those easy, safe wins.

206

Games like the new Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, a beloved 13-year-old game that's been rebuilt cheaply, targeted at hardware people already own,

207

and absolutely filled to the brim with in-game monetization.

208

Or for another example, Jason Schreier recently reported that Obsidian, one of the other top game devs, they're ending work on a new,

209

unannounced RPG game to work on the next iteration of Fallout, the safe, known entity.

210

These are dark times for video games.

211

I mean, EA is even going all out right now on trying to create a new standard for how in-game advertising works.

212

And they're not scaling them back.

213

They're actually building a platform that would let advertisers in almost real time buy ads

214

that will then appear onto billboards and objects that you will see while trying to play your games.

215

Now, you would hope that there will be limitations on what can be advertised where, but I am horrified by the idea of dropping the big bucks on Ghosts of Yotei,

216

being knee-deep in feudal Japan, katana drawn, cherry blossoms falling, only to turn around and see a giant sign for car insurance discounts.

217

And even if it doesn't go that far, think about it.

218

As soon as there becomes a monetary incentive to show gamers adverts, how could that not start to change how game worlds are designed, and even what types of games are made,

219

and how permanently online they need to be connected.

220

Now, a lot of the issues that we've talked about, game publishers getting greedier, the layoffs has been happening already in the background for years.

221

I mean, especially after COVID, when companies realized that they couldn't sustain the revenues that they had

222

when all we were allowed to do was basically play video games.

223

So they've been finding all sorts of ways to recoup those costs, both in-game and also by culling employees.

224

You're fired!

225

The point being, the fire was already lit, but the AI crisis stacked on top of this already strained

226

industry is like the fire brigade showing up with cans of petrol.

227

The problems are now accelerating so fast that, yes, there's still a possibility that the memory crisis suddenly starts to ease.

228

I hope it does.

229

It is possible that this AI bubble that some people are calling it does just pop entirely.

230

But the worrying thing is, if they don't, how much more can console

231

and game prices keep going up

232

and demand keep going down before this entire business model for a games console as we know it becomes unviable.

233

I don't think very long at all.

234

If the AI industry carries on doing what it's doing then there's one of three things I could see happening

235

and I don't think any of them are good news.

236

One, cloud gaming like Nvidia's GeForce Now becoming a more popular alternative

237

so that Nvidia can rent us the graphics card we can no longer afford to buy

238

and own and we can stream games from their servers for a monthly fee forever.

239

And this isn't conjecture, the service is growing, racking up 30 million registered users,

240

with industry analysis actually citing the hardware scarcity from this memory crisis as one of the big three drivers of that.

241

30 million is a huge amount of people.

242

Not an entirely fair comparison, but that's basically the same number of people that have bought the current gen Xbox Series S and X combined.

243

And what makes this so depressing that it's almost funny, Nvidia just this January has enforced a 100 hour a month playtime cap on paid GeForce Now accounts.

244

Obviously that's not going to affect every user, but it paints quite the picture of what the world could look like when you don't own your hardware.

245

The second thing I could see happening is older classic games becoming not just something

246

that you revisit because you fancy a bit of nostalgia, but something that you settle for because it's a whole lot more affordable.

247

We've already started to see this on PC, where the majority of all PC playtime now goes towards games that are over 6 years old.

248

And a recent survey from Tom's Hardware, a publication that's only really going to be read by PC enthusiasts,

249

finding that 60% of their readers won't be upgrading any hardware for at least the next two years.

250

And then the third situation is mobile gaming becoming more of a default.

251

See, all tech is getting more expensive, right?

252

PCs, consoles, and that includes smartphones too.

253

But people are still going to buy a smartphone, because it's considered much more of an essential than a game's console.

254

So if the user base of the smartphone remains steady, and if anything continues to rise, while the pool of people who can keep up with the increasing costs

255

and difficulties of being a console or PC gamer falls, of course I could see a situation where developers are much more incentivised to put their eggs into the mobile basket.

256

Am I happy about that?

257

Hell no!

258

Console games are held to a certain standard that mobile games just aren't.

259

And it's not like you can just make console games and then put them on mobile.

260

This has been tested time and time again.

261

Resident Evil 4, Death Stranding, Assassin's Creed Mirage, and commercially, they largely flocked.

262

They cost near console money and barely anyone bought them.

263

Because mobile gaming rewards free-to-play, battle passes, and in-game currencies and adverts.

264

So the future that I'm worried about is not your favorite console game but smaller on a phone.

265

It's this entire industry where the only economically sane thing for a game dev to do is to build endlessly monetized, free-to-play machines.

266

Games that are not designed around spectacle and hardware-pushing experiences because no one has the hardware.

267

And instead are all about just reusing safe IPs that have worked before, remaster after remaster, made by fewer and fewer people.

268

And it's about what we lose on the way.

269

From the games that you can no longer borrow from your friends to the graphics cards

270

that you might have to borrow from your not-friends the industry

271

will find a way to claw its money back from the one group of people who can't pass that cost on.

272

That's us.

273

I'm a console gamer at heart, but I've actually noticed myself becoming more of a mobile gamer these last few months.

274

I'm currently playing a ton of Pokemon Champions on my phone instead of the Switch.

275

And even my second favorite franchise, Monster Hunter, their next game is mobile only.

276

And it's just created yet another reason why Surfshark VPN, our sponsor, has a permanent place in my control center.

277

Because the moment that your gaming moves to your phone, your gaming moves to the internet full time.

278

You're playing on cafe wifi, hotel wifi, airport wifi.

279

And every one of those networks is a vulnerability.

280

So the fact that I can just single tap here and know that every account login, every payment detail is all encrypted before it leaves my phone is a massive peace of mind.

281

Especially since the rise of AI is actually making it much easier for scammers to use that info to convincingly deceive you.

282

And unlike the immense price creep that we've seen across the entire gaming industry, Surfshark's price is still as low as it gets.

283

With the code BOSS, it's $2 a month for an unlimited number of users.

Скачать приложение

Всё для свободной речи

ИИ-оценка произношенияОценка каждой фразы

Практика IPAОсвойте каждый звук

СловарьСоберите свой словарный запас

Игра со словамиУчитесь играя

Сканировать QR

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

Тот же канал

FOR YOU

Цели говорения для этого клипа

Этот видеоролик помогает улучшить навык разговора на английском в контексте обсуждения современных трендов — от экономики до технологий. Ты научишься выражать сложные идеи, связывать факты в цепочку и использовать эмоциональную окраску, чтобы передать обеспокоенность или удивление. Это отличная тренировка для shadowing английский: повторяй за спикером ритм, интонацию и паузы, чтобы сделать речь более естественной.

Банк фраз

"the scariest part is not even... it's what's happening around it" — Самое страшное не то..., а то, что происходит вокруг
"all while..." — При этом, в то же время
"the craziest part?" — Самое безумное?
"factor in that..." — Учти, что...
"galloping headfirst into..." — Прыгать вперёд в...

Эти фразы универсальны: их можно использовать в дискуссиях о бизнесе, технике или социальных изменениях. Практикуй их с shadow speech — повторяй вслух, имитируя темп и эмоции спикера.

Исправь свои слабые места

Особое внимание уделяй ритму речи. Спикер часто использует паузы перед важными фактами (например, "Oh dear." или "And here's where it gets truly terrifying") чтобы подчеркнуть значимость. Наблюдай, как он акцентирует ключевые слова ("70%", "8.3 million") и меняется интонацией при переходе от фактов к выводам. Для тренировки используй shadowspeak: запиши себя, повторяя фрагменты, и сравни с оригиналом. Это поможет улучшить понимание естественной речи и сделать твою речь более убедительной. Ищи shadowing site, где можно практиковаться с подобными видеороликами — это эффективный способ развить уверенность в говорении.

Грамматика в этом видео

Конструкции, которые говорящий использует чаще всего, с точными словами из видео:

Конструкция	В видео
Present Perfect Continuous have/has been + -ing — действие началось раньше и продолжается	we've already been seeing · has been happening · they've been finding
Present Perfect have/has + причастие прошедшего времени — прошлое действие, важное сейчас	has raised · has started · I've just mentioned
Пассивный залог be + причастие прошедшего времени — важно, что происходит, а не кто это делает	being called · is linked · can't be made
Придаточные определительные who / which + предложение — уточнение о человеке или предмете	one who has · people that have · people who can

Что такое техника Shadowing?

Shadowing — это научно обоснованная техника изучения языка, изначально разработанная для подготовки профессиональных переводчиков и популяризированная полиглотом доктором Александром Аргуэльесом. Метод прост, но эффективен: вы слушаете аудио на английском от носителей языка и немедленно повторяете вслух — как тень, следующая за говорящим с задержкой в 1–2 секунды. В отличие от пассивного прослушивания или грамматических упражнений, Shadowing заставляет мозг и мышцы рта одновременно обрабатывать и воспроизводить реальные речевые паттерны. Исследования показывают, что это значительно улучшает точность произношения, интонацию, ритм, связную речь, понимание на слух и беглость речи — что делает его одним из самых эффективных методов для подготовки к IELTS Speaking и реального общения на английском.

Техника шедоуинга: читать полное пошаговое руководство →

Практика Shadowing: The Gaming Market is Starting to Break. - Изучайте разговорный английский по видео

Выберите режим практики

Скачать приложение

Тот же канал

I spent $12,000 on the THINNEST Tech

World's Cheapest vs Most Expensive Laptop!

The Best TINY Tech on the Internet!

I tested the most Futuristic Tech - it scared me.

Mac vs Windows - It's not close in 2026!

I bought the most SATISFYING TECH on the internet.

iPhone Duo/18 Pro Hands On - Beyond Impressive.

Xiaomi made an iPhone Duo. It’s Unhinged.

Рекомендуемое видео

The best (and worst) setup upgrades.

The (Overdue) Collapse of AI Layoffs (here's the proof)

Powering The Internet is Becoming a Big Problem

GTA 6: Why Is Netflix Getting The Gameplay Reveal First?

The Big Bang Theory Active Listening - english sub

The Stock Market Is Being Used as a Dumping Ground

Gemma 4 Just Released - Whats In? In 2026!

Neuralink’s Newest Brain Chip Isn’t What You Think

Corrupt Your Files

Nvidia's New Laptops - RTX Spark

The worst week in cybersecurity history... so far

Is the AI Boom Just Another Bubble?

Цели говорения для этого клипа

Банк фраз

Исправь свои слабые места

Грамматика в этом видео

Что такое техника Shadowing?