The ROG Xbox Ally X is one of the premier PC gaming handhelds currently on the market. Despite some half-baked UI tweaks and finnicky Windows holdovers, it’s an excellent way to play PC games on the go, for existing Xbox and Game Pass users. The only problem when it launched last fall was the $1,000 price tag. And in Japan at least, that’s just gone up even higher.
Automaton reports that Asus has raised the price of the ROG Xbox Ally X in Japan from 139,800 yen tax included ($911) to 169,800 yen tax included ($1,107). That’s a jump of 30,000 yen or almost $200 at the current exchange rate. Notably, the price hasn’t been chanced on Microsoft’s website in Japan, though its listing for the ROG Xbox Ally X then sends users to the Asus page with the new price.
Interestingly, the base ROG Xbox Ally price has remained the same. That price is still listed at 89,800 yen, or roughly $585. One obvious reason for the discrepancy is that the regular Xbox Ally has 16GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory compared to 24GB of LPDDR5X-8000 in the Xbox Ally X. As RAM prices spike amid the ongoing shortage, the Ally X is going to be much more susceptible to the pricing volatility.
Asus was one of the first PC gaming manufacturers to tell its partners at the start of 2026 that some prices would be going up as AI “hyperscaler” companies race to acquire available memory supply to build out data centers. At the time, nothing was mentioned specifically about the Xbox Ally X handhelds. While it’s unclear just how many Asus has sold, it promised consumers late last year that it was ramping up production to meet higher demand than originally expected.
A similar issue is facing every other hardware manufacturer in the gaming space. Valve already delayed announcing the price of the Steam Machine as it evaluates the rapidly changing economic conditions, and its existing Steam Deck, a much cheaper competitor to the Xbox Ally X, has quickly become impossible to buy. Sony is reportedly considering delaying the launch of the PS6, Nintendo is looking at having to hike the price of the Switch 2, and god help you if your PC is at the end of its life and you need to buy or build a new one.
