March 29, 2026
Card-astrophe: Insert Panic to Continue
First Western Digital, now Sony: The tech giant suspends SD card sales
Sony pauses memory cards; comments spiral from ‘it’ll fix itself’ to ‘we’re doomed’
TLDR: Sony halted orders for most camera memory cards due to a chip shortage, as AI data centers soak up parts and prices spike. Commenters are split between “the market will fix this,” doomsday predictions, and wallet-shock stories about storage now costing 2–4x more — making this shortage feel very real.
Sony just hit the big red stop button on camera memory cards — SD and the pro-only CFexpress — blaming a global chip crunch powered by AI-hungry data centers, per PetaPixel and a note on Sony Japan. It follows Western Digital saying it sold out of hard drives for the year, with Sony also hiking PlayStation prices. And the comments? Absolute chaos. The top debate is a clash between free-market faith and supply-chain reality. One camp asks, “Shouldn’t the market just scale up and fix this?” while others point to year-long backlogs and factory bottlenecks and say, basically, “Good luck.” Meanwhile, nostalgia meme’d hard: someone dusted off a 16MB relic (yes, megabytes) like it’s a museum piece. A home server owner brought the pain: a failed 16TB drive and replacement prices now 2–4x higher — even for used — turning storage upgrades into a wallet horror story. Doomers rolled in with talk of fuel rationing and broader shortages (claims from commenters, not confirmed), pushing the vibe from “mild inconvenience” to “civilization is toast.” There’s even a geopolitical side quest: a commenter side-eyes India’s new chip push as “just assembly,” sparking arguments over whether that’s a real fix or PR spin. Cameras, consoles, clouds — everyone’s fighting for the same chips
Key Points
- •Sony suspended orders for most CFexpress and SD memory cards due to a global semiconductor (memory) shortage.
- •Orders are halted for authorized dealers and Sony Store customers starting March 27, 2026.
- •CFexpress Type A, CFexpress Type B, and standard SD cards are all affected; some low-end cards may still be in production, per PetaPixel.
- •Sony did not provide a timeline for resuming orders and will update product pages when possible.
- •Western Digital previously said it sold out of all hard drives for the year; the article also notes Sony raised prices on current-gen PlayStation consoles this week.