Ayaneo is suspending preorders for its $1,999 Next 2 gaming handheld due to the skyrocketing price of digital storage. In a post on Monday, Ayaneo says the overall cost to build its Windows handheld now nearly doubles the price it originally set, making it “unsustainable” to continue selling.
“Even before the launch of NEXT 2, storage prices had already been rising for several months,” Ayaneo writes. “At that time, we believed the price might be approaching its peak. Even if it meant making little to no profit—or even a slight loss—we still decided to move forward with the launch. However, what we did not expect was that storage prices would not only continue to rise but would increase even more rapidly.”
Ayaneo says it will fulfill existing preorders for the Next 2, which opened just weeks ago on February 10th. The device features a 9.06-inch OLED display, along with a base Ryzen AI Max 385 processor, integrated Radeon 8050S graphics, 32GB of memory, and 1TB of SSD storage. Ayaneo notes that it’s only “temporarily suspending” preorders, and that it may consider resuming sales if “storage prices return to more reasonable levels in the future.”