Less than 24 hours after learning that AYN would be raising prices on both the Thor and Odin 3, while basically putting the Odin 3 Ultra on ice, more grim news was revealed. Retroid confirmed that “the RP6 12GB model will have to be discontinued.” Adding insult to injury, it was also announced that the 8GB Retroid Pocket 6 will see a $15 price increase starting on Monday, March 2.
As you probably could have guessed, the reasoning behind Retroid’s decision is the same as AYN: “ongoing shortages and sharply rising costs for both RAM and storage.” However, on the bright side, Retroid confirms that “all existing 12GB orders that have not yet shipped will remain unaffected.” So at least some of you out there should be able to breathe a sigh of relief.
While there’s about a week of a buffer before AYN’s price changes take effect, and two days before Retroid’s, there’s no such luck for the 12GB Retroid Pocket 6 model. After learning of the news, I tried to see if I could snag a silver model, only to see that both the D-pad top and Stick top variants are already listed as “Sold Out.”
To make matters even more frustrating than they already are, it would appear that the scalpers have already surfaced. When scrolling through just the first page of results, I thought seeing a listing for $459 was bad enough, but even further down, I came across another one with a Buy It Now price of $599.
For reference, that’s more than the cost of the AYN Odin 3 Max, which is still priced at $449 over at the AYN website. With that, you get a vastly more powerful handheld thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. All of that is to say, please don’t spend that much on a Retroid Pocket 6, especially when better handhelds are available for less.
5 Comments
I think this is absolutely a dumb move on retroids part. They easily could’ve raised prices on the rp6 12gb and still retained demand. It’s just unfortunate that there is no replacement for the ayn Odin 2 mini pro currently after it was also discontinued.
This sucks for the people that were hoping to order one still!
It’s pretty dumb because knowing that ayn and retroid have the same parent company and now they aren’t selling anymore sub 7 inch 8 gen 2 handhelds with more than 8gb of ram. This choice prevents you from running large portions of the switch and ps3 library which is the reason you get a 8 gen 2. You’ll have to go grab a konkr pocket fit instead with the G3x to get a choice of ram capacities so ayaneo is going to take that market share.
Please provide info on the necessity of 12gb.
I run steam and switch games daily almost exclusively on my RP6 and have an average of 4.3gb ram usage.
It’s not dumb if they literally can’t meet demand.
They can raise prices all they want but if they literally don’t have enough RAM, they can’t ship it.