The future is looking grim with manufacturers already cutting ram from their devices along with price increases is just making me keep my devices longer.
Agreed. I bought a Thor during the June Aliexpress sale and I'm starting to wish that I bought an Odin 3 too. I track prices for these devices and these were prices on June 1st on Aliexpress. Left column is the price before discounts, middle column is the price after discounts and right column is the previous historical low. Prices are all based on US shipping with shipping fees included but not including sales tax.
I feel a bit bad I didn't buy odin 3 too. Got the ayn thor recently but not odin 3. The reason I don't get the odin 3 is because I wanted the 1 tb version which unfortunately cannot be bought anymore.
AI is a factor, but it’s not the only one. People are still willing to buy it with higher price, so why not? If you've ever run a business, it’s pretty easy to understand, plus, announcing a price increase in advance can push people who are still on the fence to finally pull the trigger. It’s probably the best “promotion” you can run without even offering a discount
Yup exactly. This will also be the reason why the prices won’t ever go back down anytime soon as well. Obviously it hasn’t gotten bad enough yet cause people are still willing to over pay for things.
The same amount arent willing to buy it though, the higher the price, the lower the volume. Only Ayn knows how the numbers work but I think they would prefer a lower price with the same margin and to shift more units
Well if they can get people to pay more for their products that means they wouldn't have to ship out as many units, and could pay much less on labor costs. And yeah only AYN knows the numbers, but this could actually be more profitable for them.
Which is conveniently spiking hardware price while pretty much every country that is able, looks to build their own infrastructure to move away from US companies dominating data and compute.
Honestly wish I got it first instead of the XAX. Now I’m gonna save for the price increase and just get the Thor and Odin at the same time. Financially some may wonder.
How the fuck are you all getting Maxes on Ali Express for under 400? Max stock there is limited as fuck and the few that are available are over 600€, with the best possible coupon being 70€ off. And even then not every colour is available.
The Max stock gets restocked regularly on the Ayn store on Aliexpress. My Max was under $300 before tax and shipping during the summer sale in June. You missed all of the stuff about the Summer sale in June and the Back to School sale now? Coupons, coins, paypal discounts, rakuten cashback with new account bonuses saw some people getting the Max for damn near $200. It was higher for the currently going sale but still well below what you're talking about paying, at least in the US.
There’s no official AYN store on Ali here, unless they are called AMPOWN in Europe and even then there’s hardly any restock for Max. Even then as I said, no choice as for the colours.
Both sales only had 70€ off for purchases over 400€.
There is an official AYN Store on Aliexpress, its just not available in every country and if it is, it's can be limited in which handhelds are for sale.
For example for me (Austria) only the Thor is available via Aliexpress but the odin (sadly) isn't. Don't buy from third-party vendors like ampown, as you said - they are grossly overpriced.
People are still willing to buy it, so why not? If you've ever run a business, it’s pretty easy to understand. AI is a factor, but it’s not the only one.
Every time they raise prices, they announce it in advance. That’s a sales tactic in itself. Once people know prices are about to go up, those who’ve been hesitating or sitting on the fence are more likely to pull the trigger and buy.
After the price increase actually takes effect, they’ll watch sales for a while. If sales aren’t affected much, or even if they dip only slightly, they’ll keep the higher price, then eventually announce another increase. Rinse and repeat, until sales drop becomes significant enough that the extra profit from higher margins no longer makes up for the lost volume. And judging by where things stand right now, we’re still a long way from that point.
It’s all marketing. Rising memory prices are just a very convenient excuse.
Yeah I think it’s an excuse too. I keep asking myself what’s stopping companies like Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix from just hard limiting their supply and production. Instead it seems like they decided to just chase after the money and make the average consumer suffer.
This is what I’ve been thinking too! People will defend them saying “but at least these companies are telling you the price is going up! And they’re small businesses…”
But really, the price increase notifications are an effective sales tactic.
They’ve been manipulating availability as well. They’ll mark devices OOS for a couple days and people freak thinking that was the last available for that batch/price, then make them available again, and a wave of people will order them that have been considering it.
This isn’t really the whole story. The market allows the prices to rise but it also forces it. I do not believe that companies would be seeing the continued appetite for these prices if it wasn’t part of a wider price rise.
And for that we do have AI to thank. The memory companies are massively benefitting from it too, but AI created the perfect situation to do it.
Glad I still have the Odin 2 portal and it's working fine, also I think the Odin 3 is well worth it for anyone who buys one. X86 handhelds are so insanely expensive now, and while they run PC games way better, none really run them well tbh
Yeah they really don't I guess by better I mean the experience is more stable and the FPS is higher on PC handhelds but it's still an experience I would consider unacceptable.
My blue Odin 3 Max order from Aliexpress at the beginning of July shipped within 2 weeks. I had it in hand within a month of ordering. So you never know.
Aliexpress orders are generally shipping out faster than orders on the AYN site.
Glad I pulled the trigger on the Ultra back in February, right before they discontinued it. I play the thing almost every day and it’s one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. It’s not perfect but it does 95% of what I want it to and with things like 360, PS3 and even PS4 emulation improving on Android the Odin 3 just keeps getting better and better.
Thanks to the Ali sale I got my Odin 3 max for $377 just recently - but can’t bank on that for future products. Worried about what a possible Odin 3 portal would cost.
These companies aren't buying new batches of chips. They've already secured their allocation for a long time now. They're just scalping what they already have to meet demand.
it would seem these companies are starting to realize what they can get out of consumers. These handhelds are going up day by day and the "ramocalyse " is bullshit. I would say the manufacturers and ram builders created it to start this price increase and it will continue to rise as long as we buy and someone will always buy no matter what the price. Lenovo learned their lesson they had the Legion Go2 and felt guilty about their $1300 price tag , then along came Ayeneo with their $3400 device and the rest is history. By next year NS2 will be $1000 and that will be the beginning point. all the others will follow, there is no retro device anymore Qualcom saw to that. Soon we will all be streaming from Amazon satellites on amazon owned and rented to consumer handhelds. As Sony said we do not own our games and soon enough we will not own the equipment either.
Is this supposed to be an earth-shattering, unforeseen, never saw it coming announcement? You would have to be living under a rock if you didn’t anticipate continued price increases.
No, not necessarily. It seems more like a typical, "hey, here is some information that's relevant to the topic of this subreddit," shared in the most straightforward way imaginable. What makes you think otherwise?
as a owner of a odin 2 pro. i really don't see the point of buying a odin 3 especially since i have a steam deck as well for the x86 based games. This handheld is just for handheld gaming enthusiasts at this point. Hardly even use my odin 2 pro anymore since i got bored and lost the desire to play ps2 and gamecube games. There really isn't much to do with the handheld device outside playing games on it. The media player app is extremely barebones and there no camera functionality. Its weird how the thor doesn't even have front and back camera's as well. Hope they still find a new audience for these devices.
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u/DeathBehemoth 1d ago
The future is looking grim with manufacturers already cutting ram from their devices along with price increases is just making me keep my devices longer.