Asus ROG Xbox Ally X gets a price increase of nearly $200 in Japan
There’s no indication that the price will increase in other regions yet
Asus has increased the price of the ROG Xbox Ally X handheld in Japan by nearly $200.
When it was originally released in Japan, the portable gaming PC cost ¥89,800 ($585) for the lower-end ROG Xbox Ally and ¥139,800 ($913) for the higher spec ROG Xbox Ally X.
Now, as spotted by Otaku Souken, while the standard ROG Xbox Ally remains the same price, the ROG Xbox Ally X now costs ¥169,800 ($1,109) on the official Asus website, an increase of ¥30,000 ($196).
While the official reason for the price increase has yet to be confirmed, it’s believed it could be the latest example of hardware prices rising due to the increased scarcity and cost of fast memory and storage.
Notably, while the Xbox Ally contains 16GB of LPDDR5-6400 RAM and 512GB of storage, the Xbox Ally X contains 24GB of faster LPDDR5X-8000 and 1TB of storage.
The Xbox Ally X’s faster (and more sought-after) RAM, therefore, is likely to be the reason it’s received a price increase while the cheaper model remains the same price.
Similar price increases have not yet been confirmed outside of Japan, meaning at the time of writing the prices are still $599 / £499 for the Xbox Ally and $999 / £799 for the Xbox Ally X, which were the prices at launch.
This week Valve informed players that the Steam Deck – the closest rival to the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds – would be “out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages”.
The continued strain on RAM availability and its subsequent surge in pricing has been making tech companies reconsider plans for their current and future products, as the cost of goods becomes increasingly higher and profit margins either shrink or disappear entirely.
A report from Bloomberg earlier this week cites sources who claim that Sony may be holding back PlayStation 6 until 2028 or 2029 in case the issue is resolved by then. The same report claims that Nintendo is considering a price increase for Switch 2 this year.
