In what is sure to come as an unexpected move to many, Micron has decided to end the production of its popular gaming RAM lineup. A press release from Micron announced the abrupt end of Crucial Ballistix memory. The press release states that Micron will “end-of-life” its Crucial Ballistix gaming memory, but it didn’t give a reason as to why. The decision is rather puzzling since Crucial Ballistix memory is fairly popular among gamers.
While it’s unknown why Micron decided to end the production of Crucial Ballistix memory, the company did say that it plans to “intensify its focus on the development” of its DDR5 product roadmap. Whether this means it’ll have enthusiast-level gaming DDR5 RAM in the near future isn’t clear. Micron does sell standard DDR5 memory without the enthusiast specs typical of the Ballistix lineup. For example, there’s no RGB on these sticks of RAM, which, as we all know, is unforgivable in the PC gaming space.
Crucial Ballistix memory is no more
The discontinuation of Crucial Ballistix memory is a little strange in a lot of ways. DDR4 RAM is still very widely used in a lot of PCs. This is mainly because the benefits of DDR5 don’t vastly improve upon its predecessor at the moment. Right now, there isn’t much point in upgrading to DDR5 unless you’re an early adopter. There are also more and more companies developing high-performance DDR5 RAM, so the options that consumers have are constantly improving. Ballistix has been around for a really long time though, so it feels a bit strange to see Micron drop the branding just like that.
It’s worth noting that Micron will still produce its NVMe and portable SSD products. Teresa Kelley, Micron’s Vice President and General Manager of Micron’s Commercial Partners Group, said that the company is “focused on growing [its] NVMe and Portable SSD product categories.” Micron will continue the production of the vast majority of its existing lineup of other memory and storage products. The main area that the company seems intent to cut back on is the enthusiast gaming market.
It’s a shame that Micron has decided to discontinue its Crucial Ballistics RAM. It’s a decision that seems unnecessary from our perspective as gamers, but it may make room for things to come. One similar example that comes to mind is when Kingston sold the HyperX brand to HP last year and discontinued its memory kits, only to revive the Fury brand. The Micron press release didn’t mention anything about future DDR5 memory products, so there’s potential for an updated lineup in the future.
