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With the memory crisis continuing to suck up supplies of memory and push up the cost of computing and gaming devices, a big question mark has lingered over the prices for the next consoles from Microsoft and Sony. And early reports suggest things won't be looking pretty for their launch.

As spotted by TechPowerUp , well-known hardware leaker KeplerL2 recently posted in a NeoGAF thread that the BOM (Bill of Materials) for the PlayStation 6 is currently $200 more than their last report, where they estimated it would cost $760. That means the current expected price of materials alone sits at around $960.

Naturally, this doesn't come from Sony, so a grain of salt is required, but KeplerL2's history as a hardware leaker is solid thus far.

Consoles sit in a unique place in the market. Because you need to use their software, and they get a cut of game sales, consoles have traditionally been sold at a loss or, if companies are lucky, they would barely break even. Where the Steam Machine has to make some sort of profit for Valve (explaining that hefty price tag), Sony and Microsoft care more about securing you as a long-term user.

With this in mind, the BOM estimate suggests the retail price of the PS6 will sit somewhere around the $900-$1000 mark, over double that of the PS5 at launch. The BOM does not factor in the price to build and ship the machine either. Sony could likely afford to take a small loss on these devices, but it seems the price tag isn't going to look pretty either way.

(Image credit: Future) Sony is in a very awkward spot regarding its next console. It seems likely the memory crisis won't end in the next year at least , with it perhaps pushing past 2028 , but pricing likely won't stabilise immediately, even when supply meets demand. This means even if the crisis suddenly ends by the end of 2028, we might not see prices return to normal until 2029 or 2030.

But the PS5 launched in 2020, and Sony has tended to upgrade every five or six years. So it either pushes out the next console with inflated memory prices in 2028, or waits another few years, having to restart research and development around new hardware so its machines don't lag behind the competition.

Even if Sony holds back its next console by a year or two, plenty of work done on designing the PS6 will have to go out the window to catch up with new hardware as it launches. So, like the Steam Machine launching at its astronomical price point, it's likely to just go ahead with it anyway. If you're waiting to get its next console, you'd better start saving soon.

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Dead Supra keeps selling fast as buyers scramble before remaining inventory disappears.

GR86 sales are down 26 percent despite it being more affordable and available to order.

Highlander Hybrid shines while Prius, Land Cruiser, and RAV4 post year-to-date declines.

Toyota may have stopped building the GR Supra , but buyers clearly didn’t get the memo. Or maybe they did, because nothing boosts demand quite like scarcity. The discontinued sports car is enjoying a remarkable farewell, leaving its still-living GR86 sibling looking strangely unloved.

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Through the first six months of 2026, Toyota delivered 2,116 Supras in the US, a hefty 71.9 percent increase over the 1,231 sold during the same period last year. June itself was equally impressive, with sales climbing 45.8 percent to 449 cars. Production at the Graz, Austria, plant wrapped this spring, meaning buyers are snapping up remaining inventory before it’s gone for good.

The GR86 Can’t Keep Up

The GR86 tells a very different story. Despite costing far less than the Supra and remaining firmly in production, meaning you can order one to your preferred spec, it continues to lose momentum. Year-to-date deliveries have dropped 26.2 percent to 4,007 cars, while June sales slipped another 6.8 percent to 754 units.

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More: Toyota GR86 Gets Even Better For 2027

Toyota’s overall performance was much healthier. The Toyota brand posted an 11.2 percent gain for June and is up 1.5 percent for the year so far, while electrified vehicles accounted for more than 57 percent of all TMNA sales during the month. The company also celebrated a best-ever month for the RAV4 Hybrid and a record June for Lexus, though Lexus is down 5.2 percent year-to-date.

Limited Stock Hurting Sales

Elsewhere in the lineup, there were plenty of winners and losers. The Prius continues to struggle, down 42.3 percent year to date despite a 9.4 percent increase in June. The regular, non-hybrid RAV4 has fallen 35.7 percent this year – though that’s more to do with choked availability , rather than lack of demand – while the Land Cruiser is down 40 percent.

On the brighter side, the Highlander Hybrid has surged 48.9 percent year-to-date, the 4Runner has rocketed 141 percent, and the Camry remains on a roll with a 15.3 percent gain, proving that America still loves a sensible sedan, especially if it comes with an equally sensible and trustworthy Toyota badge.

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Toyota

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A mysterious wavelength of light is missing from the dwarf planet Pluto and Saturn's supersized moon Titan, new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations show. The surprising discovery hints that these worlds harbor an unknown molecule that has not been seen in any other solar system world or exoplanet so far.

Every element or molecule in the universe absorbs unique wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation . Therefore, one of the main ways astronomers study distant worlds — both inside and outside the solar system — is by closely examining the light that reflects off them and searching for dark "absorption lines" that correspond to the wavelengths of known chemical compounds.

For example, molecular oxygen absorbs light at 230 nanometers, so if the electromagnetic spectrum of a faraway exoplanet has an absorption line at this frequency, researchers can be confident that its atmosphere contains oxygen, according to a 2021 study .

JWST has proved to be exceptionally good at capturing electromagnetic spectra and identifying specific chemicals in exoplanet atmospheres , around distant stars and within primitive galaxies . It has even identified a molecule on one alien world that could point to extraterrestrial life .

In a new study, uploaded June 11 to the preprint server arXiv , researchers analyzed JWST data from Pluto and Titan , focusing on very small wavelengths that have been relatively unexplored until now. This revealed a specific absorption line at around 5.11 micrometers in both worlds' spectra. (These findings have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet.)

The James Webb Space Telescope is specially designed to be able to detect subtle absorption signals from distant worlds. (Image credit: Getty Images) The team pored through similar studies on other planetary spectra but "did not find any band referenced in these publications that corresponds to the location of the observed absorption in Titan and Pluto," the researchers wrote in the paper.

A molecular mystery

The discovery is even stranger because there are very few similarities between Pluto and Titan that could explain why they share a molecule not found anywhere else.

Titan is the largest of Saturn's many moons and is even larger than Mercury . It is also the only solar system world, other than Earth, that is known to have liquid rivers and oceans on its surface. Pluto, on the other hand, is a completely frozen world that's around half the size of Titan and roughly four times farther from the sun than Saturn's satellite is.

Both worlds do have similar atmospheres that are rich in methane and nitrogen. However, the researchers are confident that the molecule responsible for the 5.11-micrometer absorption line is located on both worlds' surfaces, not in their atmospheres.

Titan and Pluto are very different worlds. Saturn's largest moon has liquid on its surface and is around four times closer to the sun than the dwarf planet. (Image credit: Getty Images) Pluto's absorption line is around three times thicker than Titan's, meaning the mystery molecule is likely much more abundant on the dwarf planet. But on Titan, the molecule seems to be unevenly distributed, with a stronger absorption line on its trailing side — the hemisphere opposite to its forward momentum around Saturn — than on its leading side.

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The researchers proposed that it could be benzene — a ring-shaped hydrocarbon — mixed with an unknown molecule, or some form of acetylene or ketene ice. However, much more work is needed to prove that any of these potential candidates are responsible for absorbing this specific wavelength, they wrote.

NASA's Dragonfly spacecraft, which is set to launch no earlier than 2028 and fly through Titan's atmosphere in 2034, could eventually shed more light on the situation. The helicopter-like craft's onboard spectrograph could identify the mystery molecule on Saturn's moon, which would also help reveal if it is viable on Pluto, the researchers suggested. But in the meantime, we'll have to wait to unravel this curious cosmic conundrum.

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