Ayaneo has canceled production of its premium Next II Windows gaming handheld—unveiled in February with a planned $2,000 starting price—citing skyrocketing component prices that have doubled expected costs to around $4,000 amid the AI data center boom. The company announced the decision on its Indiegogo page on March 23.
Ayaneo, a maker of high-end PC gaming handhelds, revealed on March 23 that it is scrapping the Next II due to unsustainable production expenses. The device featured an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB drive, designed to run top games at high settings in a portable form factor. Unveiled earlier this year with a planned $2,000 price tag, it faced rising component costs as suppliers shifted to AI infrastructure demands. Ayaneo believed prices had stabilized by mid-February but found storage costs accelerating further. “At present, the total cost of the product has far exceeded our selling price, even approaching twice the price we originally set,” the company stated on its Indiegogo page. “Under such circumstances, continuing to sell this product is no longer sustainable.” Despite willingness to launch at little or no profit, Ayaneo noted, “what we did not expect was that storage prices would not only continue to rise but would increase even more rapidly.” The firm decided against proceeding to protect consumers and its brand. “We believe that continuing to sell Next II under the current circumstances could potentially harm the interests of consumers and ultimately affect the long-term development of the brand,” it concluded. This cancellation underscores broader pressures on PC gaming hardware from the component shortage, with implications for devices like Valve's upcoming Steam Machine and next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft.
