AYANEO has been teasing its flagship ‘NEXT 2’ PC gaming handheld for a while now, and last month the company unveiled the full specs alongside launching the Indiegogo campaign for the device. With its premium 9.06-inch OLED display, large 115Wh battery, and up to ‘Strix Halo’ AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor with Radeon 8060S Graphics and up to 128GB of unified memory, it’s poised to become one of the most powerful Windows gaming handhelds on the market.
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However, due to rising component costs, specifically storage costs, AYANEO has announced it is suspending preorders for the handheld. “When we launched NEXT 2, storage prices were already at a very high level,” AYANEO writes in the update, referring to the AYANEO NEXT 2’s starting price of $1,999 USD.
“However, considering that many AYANEO fans had been looking forward to this product for a long time, we still decided to release it as planned and open pre-orders so as not to disappoint our supporters,” the company continues. But, with prices now “several times higher” than what they were before the Chinese New Year, “the overall cost of the product has become far higher than our current selling price.”
And with that, AYANEO is suspending new pre-orders for the gaming handheld, but it will continue production for those who have already pre-ordered the device. “What we did not expect was that storage prices would not only continue to rise but would increase even more rapidly,” AYANEO confirms. “At present, the total cost of the product has far exceeded our selling price, even approaching twice the price we originally set. Under such circumstances, continuing to sell this product is no longer sustainable.”
With or without increased component costs, the AYANEO NEXT 2 was always going to be an expensive PC gaming handheld; however, it’s a shame that we’re now in a situation where a smaller company like AYANEO is unable to continue selling what it calls “a major leap in performance, but also a comprehensive evolution in design language, ergonomics, control systems, and overall user experience.” And with the price for the top Strix Halo model crossing $4,000, it’s pretty crazy to think that even that is unsustainable.
On the plus side, the company isn’t pulling the plug on the NEXT 2 completely; it adds that the suspension is temporary and that it will consider resuming sales if storage prices return to a “more reasonable level.”