Steam Deck Announces Inventory Issues, ROG Xbox Ally X Gets Price Hike Thanks To Computer Hardware Shortages
Between American president Donald Trump’s chaotic, fly-by-night tariff strategy and the ever-rising power demands of AI technology, it has long since been a widely accepted fact that the world’s current computer hardware shortage would eventually come for the video game industry – and though the Nintendo Switch 2 was able to dodge it, that moment has finally arrived, with both the Steam Deck and ROG Xbox Ally X announcing resulting changes to their respective production plans.
For a snapshot of just how bad said crisis has gotten, one just has to look back to yesterday, February 16th, when leading hard drive manufacturers Western Digital and Seagate both announced that they were already all but completely sold out of their entire 2026 stock.
Speaking during the company’s recent Q2 2026 earnings call, Western Digital CEO Tiang Yew Tan asserted, “We’re pretty much sold out for calendar year 2026.”
“We have firm purchase orders with our top seven customers through calendar year 2026,” Tan detailed. “We also have in place robust commercial agreements with three of our top five customers, two through calendar year 2027 and one through calendar year 2028.”
Likewise, Seagate CEO William Mosley told investors during his own company’s quarterly earnings call that “Our nearline capacity is fully allocated through calendar year 2026, and we expect to begin accepting orders for the first half of calendar year 2027 in the coming months.”
“Further out, demand visibility is strengthening based on the long-term agreements in place with major cloud customers through calendar 2027,” he added. “Additionally, multiple cloud customers are discussing their demand growth projections for calendar 2028, underscoring that supply assurance remains their highest priority.”
And it was in the immediate wake of this genuinely shocking development that both Valve and Asus made their respective handheld-related announcements.
First up was Asus, who as reported by Japanese news outlet Otaku Souken upped the regional price of their higher-grade ROG Xbox Ally X model from ¥139,800 JPY (~$910 USD) to ¥169,800 (~$1,105.14).
And while Asus did not officially confirm the reason for their price hike, the same cannot be said of Valve, who broke the news that their handheld would soon be experiencing production disruptions on its official website, therein declaring both that the “Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages” and “Steam Deck LCD 256GB is no longer in production, and once sold out will no longer be available.”
Unfortunately, while it would be encouraging to say that the computer hardware shortage is the result of a temporary hype and will fade out in due time, the truth of the matter is that it’s only going to get worse from here, with prices set to see a sharp rise across multiple industries as the tech industries continues to try and force AI down the average individual’s throats.
In other words, if you can, get your electronics now while they’re still mildly affordable and there still exists an option to own your machine instead of renting it.
