Good news everyone! In case you haven’t been following the curious case of the Ayaneo Pocket Micro 2; the retro handheld community just recently watched a handheld get announced, undergo a proper marketing campaign, and then sell out during its four hour launch livestream due to only having 110 units relegated to the western market. All of this to say it left a number of users in the dust because, while a time for the livestream was announced, most general users who were interested had no clue when in that livestream it would launch, were unavailable due to how early it was, or were not in the Ayaneo Discord where it was announced during the livestream that it would be a limited launch.
But none of that matters now! As Ayaneo has just confirmed that the Pocket Micro 2 will be coming back.
As stated in the announcement on the Ayaneo twitter, there’s a good bit to expect. Additional production has been confirmed, though if you’re looking to get it soon, you won’t be receiving it until late August at the very earliest. The drop for the Pocket Micro 2 is today, July 10th at 8:00PM Pacific. That means if you want this handheld, you really only have today to decide. And the last bit of good news stems from the fact that they are bringing back the pretty expensive Stardust Purple Gamecube colorway, but this time it’s only going to be in the 6gb setup to hopefully save themselves and you the money.
Unfortunately that’s not the full story, and if you’re interested in learning more you do need to be in their Discord for the rest of the story. John Nee; Ayaneo’s community representative in their Discord has confirmed that this pre-order is going to be “extremely limited”. Does that mean another 110 handhelds being produced? Does that mean they’re only going to take handheld pre-orders for a limited time? That’s up for debate, but what we do know is that the Pre-order price for the Stardust Purple unit will be $269 as well, which is a bit of a bump over the traditional black and white units at $239. And according to John’s announcement, that seems to be the only configuration available as well.
If you’re interested in picking up this oddity of a handheld, I suggest checking out the Ayaneo website today for more information and to help make your decision on whether or not you’d like to pick it up. For $269 you’re looking at a Snapdragon 865 handheld with 6gb of ram, and 128gb of storage in a compact device rocking a 3.5″ 960×640 display. That’s a ram and storage setup that’s more reminiscent of the Ayaneo Pocket Air from 2023 over anything. This could likely be an ideal GBA machine for on the go, but my interest lies in the potential for Linux and Rocknix compatibility thanks to the breadth of support for the Snapdragon 865. Whether or not that comes to fruition simply lays in who will even be able to get one.
So all I can say is good luck.
