Xbox has seemingly introduced a price hike for the ROG Xbox Ally X, reportedly due to rising RAM costs, as first spotted by VGC. Ever since we started tracking the spike in RAM pricing and watching companies quietly adjust hardware costs, this felt inevitable. It was only a matter of time before handheld gaming devices were affected.
At launch in Japan, the ROG Xbox Ally X debuted at ¥139,800. It now lists for ¥169,800 through Xbox and the Asus ROG website. That’s a ¥30,000 increase, roughly $192 USD. So far, the standard ROG Xbox Ally pricing appears unchanged.
There has been no official statement from Xbox confirming the reason for the adjustment, nor whether this increase is limited to Japan or will expand to other regions. The move is somewhat surprising given Xbox’s historically weaker hardware sales in Japan, making it an unusual market to test a price increase.
Still, even without formal confirmation, the timing strongly suggests the broader RAM supply crunch is playing a role. We have already seen ripple effects across the industry.
PC RAM prices have doubled or even tripled in some cases. Reports indicate that Sony may delay the PlayStation 6 due to memory constraints. Valve’s Steam Deck has gone in and out of stock in the United States, and future availability remains uncertain. Valve even updated its Steam Deck page to acknowledge supply issues tied to memory and storage shortages:
Note: Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages. Steam Deck LCD 256GB is no longer in production, and once sold out will no longer be available.
Even Nintendo is reportedly evaluating potential pricing adjustments for its next hardware revision.
Much of this pressure comes from AI firms and data centers aggressively purchasing memory and storage at scale. The demand from AI infrastructure is consuming available supply at a pace consumer hardware simply cannot compete with.
It is becoming increasingly clear that this is not a short-term fluctuation. If supply constraints continue, more price adjustments across the gaming hardware market may follow.
