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In a nutshell: While both Nvidia and AMD are facing supply issues with their latest graphics cards, Team Red seems to be making the most of a bad situation. That’s even true in Japan, where AMD’s GPU market share has reached an all-time high of 45%. The company “isn’t used to selling [so many] graphics cards,” said one of its regional executives.
AMD’s Spring New Product Launch in Akihabara, Tokyo, was attended by board partners including Asrock, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, and Sapphire, as well as popular influencers.
During a roundtable hosted by AMD Japan’s Marketing Manager Yoshiaki Sato and Saki Suzuki, the audience asked about the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT shortages and when the issue might be addressed.
The board partners said that although they wanted to sell more RDNA 4 graphics cards, they lacked the production capacity to meet the huge demand, at which point Sato said AMD isn’t used to selling so many cards.
Sato then revealed that AMD’s market share in Japan had reached an all-time high of 45%, before adding, “We’re the opposition party, so let’s aim for 70%. We have never been a ruling party!”
Japan isn’t traditionally known for its love of PC gaming, but locals were so desperate to grab the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 at launch that there were scenes of chaos (below) at several retailers running lotteries offering the chance to buy one.
This isn’t the first time that AMD has talked about the popularity of its latest graphics cards. Earlier this month, David McAfee, AMD Vice President and General Manager over Client Channel Business, called the demand “unprecedented.” McAfee added that restocking the cards at MSRP was priority number one, and at the prices they expect to see in the market.
Despite McAfee’s assurances, graphics cards are becoming even more expensive. Asus recently raised the prices of its RX 9070 series and RTX 5090; its cheapest RX 9070 ($549 MSRP) is $659, while its cheapest RX 9070 XT ($599 MSRP) is $719.
🥰Hello everyone! Thank you for the support! We have received a lot of messages and would love to inform you now the supply is unstable, but we will restock every week. Please don’t be frustrated if you didn’t get it. The supply will continue stable to be available after April. https://t.co/U6oJSkziqb
– YESTON盈通 (@YestonOfficial) March 18, 2025
Exactly when the situation will improve is anyone’s guess. However, board partner Yeston said yesterday that its RX 9070 cards, currently only available in China, had an unstable supply, but it expected this supply to stabilize after April. Hopefully, it gives an indication of when global stock levels will improve.
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