Handheld gaming in 2026 compared. We break down Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation Portal and ROG Xbox Ally to see which brand approach makes the most sense.
For Southeast Asia, new price changes.
Prices effective starting May 1st, 2026.
Replies(1)Looks like PlayStation took a hit with Marathon and is now quietly adjusting prices worldwide to recover the losses
Lets be honest raising prices doesn't do that when no one's buying it. I imagine the profit it greater selling 10 times more at a lower price
LMFAO Your comment alone says a lot more about you than anything else. When has one game not selling 10 million copies made a company raise the prices of their console? Then Xbox would be costing $5000 by now lol. You remind of the crazy drug addicts on the street rambling on about conspiracies. xD You sure you don't need a hug, buddy?
One game that Sony payed $200 million for. lol
Also, you sure were quick to get triggered. Maybe your the one who needs a hug?
If nothing else, we should be united against the real issue here. AI and unnecessary tariffs that are effecting all gamers.
The price increases are due to the RAM demand associated with AI and the US-Iran war. You can look to any business news website and local news to see that. Heck, even the 2026 Asus Zenbook Duo I've been eyeing has faced delays and has had a price increase of $400; that laptop has two specs. Asus is doing a staggered release with per-orders for the lower spec now and shipping in May and pre-orders for the higher spec that I'm eyeing starting in June. Basically, all computer manufactures are affected. It'll most likely start affecting smart phones too if it hasn't already. I can't remember the last time any major console maker (Nintendo, Sony, Sega, etc) increased the price of their console mid cycle outside of Microsoft just to make more profit.
War is causing gas prices to rise. Transport of everything requires gas so the prices of those items go up as well. So it does have an impact
The blockage of the Straight of Hormuz due to the US-Iran war has affected raw components used in semi-conductor manufacturing such as bromine, aluminum, and helium. Iran had attacked the liquified natural gas (LNG) plant in Qatar which is a large producer (1/3 globally) of helium which is used in semiconductor etching. So it's the both the war and the RAM crises.
Prices effective starting April 2, 2026.
• U.S.
PS5 – $649.99
PS5 Digital Edition – $599.99
PS5 Pro – $899.99
• U.K.
PS5 – £569.99
PS5 Digital Edition – £519.99
PS5 Pro – £789.99
• Europe
PS5 – €649.99
PS5 Digital Edition – €599.99
PS5 Pro – €899.99
• Japan
PS5 – ¥97,980
PS5 Digital Edition – ¥89,980
PS5 Pro – ¥137,980
PS5 Pro will be like $1250 in Canada now (factoring exchange).. that's $300 more than it was. Yikes
That doesn't even include a disc drive either, so slap another $100 on top of that.
I feel sorry for anyone who hasn't upgraded, but this won't help adoption rates.
Im glad I got my 5 and Portal when I did. I been adamant about not wanting a Pro, and now this solidified that.
to be honest I never would have gotten the Pro as I was happy with my OG PS5. But I lucked out in being able to purchase the 30th Anniversary Pro from Best Buy up here in Canada.. so my mind was already made up at that point, lol.
^^I'm not going to lie... i have been looking at the 2nd hand market just to see what 5 Pros are going for. On average about $500. When i got my PS4 Pro, I got it for $100. And that was from a guy who just wanted to get rid of it because his roommate moved out and left his stuff. He gave him time to come get it... but never did. So his loss was my gain.
If I were to come across a deal like that again for a 5 Pro... yeah I'd jump on it.
@darth yeah that one was definitely stolen. If it's too good to be true, it probably is
Yea same boat here. I never thought the PS5Pro was worth it to begin with so I never picked it up. Absolutely not picking one up now.
Haven’t touched my ps5 for months now so invested that same amount into a new 4k OLED monitor for my pc. Which has been a game changer. So I’m happy with that.
Trump's tariffs, plus the memory shortage, it was bound to happen eventually. Expect this to be the new normal... They won't back down on prices from here.
I bought the pro for 699 in 2024....these tech prices are going through the roof....it's insane. I was planning on getting a dolby vision 2 capable oled in 2027, but it will probably cost $527,668.35 by then. F outta here with this b.s. It might be tolerable if there were banger after banger of Sony first party titles to play, but there is literally nothing from so many of their first parties that has been produced this far into this generation. We don't even know what many of them are currently working on, but the studio closures and layoffs keep coming. No thank you...this may be my last generation of console gaming....the execs at Sony and Microsoft are mismanaging the gaming businesses, prices going up, less games being released, every week more layoffs and closures, subscription prices continue to rise through it all though....F OFF!!!!!!
I was lucky enough to get a 30th Anniversary Pro bundle up here in Canada, which would only end up being a couple hundred dollars more than what the new price of the regular Pro will be. Crazy.
TVs are fairly inexpensive still. You can get LG OLED 65” for 1500sih. In 27’ who knows
just saw the Canadian prices for the Pro ($1099). So it wasn't as bad as I feared, but still....
This is freaking INSANE!! I wonder how much the PS6 will be 😕 I'm glad I got the Pro and the portal when it first launched. I don't think I would have purchased a Pro at $900.
Did you factor in the $99 disc drive to the price of the pro as well? As it stands the Pro with the disc drive is pushing like $1090 in Alberta before taxes.
That was just the console. So yeah it's $1099 + $99.99 for the Physical Pro experience. $1356 here in Ontario after taxes.
RIP
Why would I? It's an attachment, you're trying to make it sound even more expensive.
...not just the Pro, that disc drive add-on applies to the base model as well if people want the full disc based experience.
Sony basically matched the prices of the Series X, except for the Pro.
Digital X and 5 are the same at $599.
Disc X and 5 are the same at $649.
2tb X (w/drive) is $799 and 2tb Pro (w/o drive) is $899.
What do people think will be the pricing for the XB Helix and PS6?
The Helix will launch at a very reasonable 2.2 million dollars US. The PS6 will retail for slightly less than that.
The price to performance ladder will soon look like this:
512gb Series S $400
1tb Series S $450
827gb PS5 (digital) $600
1tb Series X (digital) $600
1tb PS5 (disc) $650
1tb Series X (disc) $650
2tb Series X (disc) $800
2tb PS5 Pro (digital) $900
Lucky for me I torrent about 95% of PC games, with the 1 or 2 max I buy all year lol. To be fair I have a Switch 2 but I have yet to buy any Switch 2 games, I have a small collection of used Switch 1 games. I will never buy new anymore.
It's actually priced at $1100 for some reason instead of the actual currency exchange rate.
This is dreadful, but I felt it was inevitable with AI slop sucking up so many components, trumps stupid tariffs and his more recent nonsense in the middle east impacting energy prices heavily.
Companies just aren't willing to subsidise hardware anywhere near as much this gen, and it's sad for the health of the industry overall, it's my main hobby and it's always sad to see this happen, I want to see the industry thriving, not get stifled by stupid politics and AI slop production.
I don’t know about tariffs but do you really think that war in Iran and destroying terrorists is the reason why Ps5 prices went up? Come on man..
Why do you think the The Strait of Hormuz is so important? Care to guess? Over 20% of global oil consumption passing through it. A significant amount of crude oil for China crude goes through the strait. It might not be the main factor, but when you add in the tariffs and AI issues, then you have a problem
People blame Hermen Hulst, or Phil Spencer, or whatever middleman for the woes of Sony and Xbox.
The truth is that the true corporate harpies behind this kind of shit (and the layoffs, and the studio closures) are the Chief Financial Officers. Lin Tao is relatively new, and she has only dealt damage to PlayStation in the attempt to suck every possible drop of profit from the cash cow, like Amy Hood has done before her on the other side
To all the people who commented so passionately about the Iran war without knowing anything about what the Iranian people are going through with that regime, I will say this:
We’ve tried everything to change this regime. We’ve tried tolerating them to see if they will turn more moderate over time, we’ve tried asking for reforms, we’ve bought up lies and tolerated insults, we’ve tried peaceful resistance, we’ve tried protesting, and we were answered with live bullets. They massacred approximately 32,000 protesters in 2 days. This last protest, they used patushka machine guns mounted on trucks against unarmed civilians. Each bullet casing is the size of your hand. If the world does not intervene in Iran militarily, you are condemning 90,000,000 Iranians to a life of servitude to a government that has no mercy for its own people. Eventually the world will pay a much higher price for their indifference to the Iranian people’s plight when the regime acquires even more advanced missiles and a atomic bomb. You will have a North Korea 2.0 with an islamic ideology. We are already seeing the signs that the regime intends to isolate Iranians further by creating a “national internet”. Please stop spreading miss information. The people of Iran are 100% in support of the war. You are liberating us. If there has ever been a just war, this is it.
@S2Killinit No no no. There are a million things wrong with the world and it's leaders. There are injustices/atrocities taking place around the globe and it will always be that way. The lie some have bought into is the belief that change can and will be imposed from the outside it will not especially not from the two evil mad genocidal/ leaders primarily behind this war. Dont delude yourself, nothing good will come from this just more death and destruction.
ive never been so thankful for having the pro
but damn, look at those prices.
gaming definitely is a luxury nowadays, and has been for quite a while now.
but i wonder if they couldnt have just take the loss? but then again, they're probably betting on gta6 to drive sales to ridiculous heights.
ridiculous
Totally could have. Profits have only been going up. Lin Tao has been milking the cash cow dry as much as she possibly can.
Tripster, Jaydub, Nikola and all those PlayStation shills will ignore the news or somehow spin it into a positive and say it's good for the industry.
I think I'm happy to not know who any of these individuals are. Means new age of "shills" have come and I just am not paying attention. More people should do that.
Some are already down playing some are equally as disgusted.
Some of the old Xbox guard like septic sauce is already jokingly (but it's possible) that like always once Playstation releases bad new Xbox normally comes along a few days later with even worse news and sorts of bring Sony out the spotlight.
@Christopher
Head over to X and search them lol. Some Sony shills some Xbox shills the worst of the worst is Colteastwood just have a 15 minute read about some of the rubbish that guy has come out with over the last 5 years. He has had to delete two tweets this week. One for claiming someone was fired from Xbox the individual replied stating she simply found a new job. Second one was last night after the Xbox direct. Stating stranger than heaven was a Xbox exclusive. How did he come to this conclusion? Ps5 logo was not shown during the trailer during Xbox partner show.
@Neonridr Spin, shills? Lol. You believe Sony just raised prices this dramatically for the heck of it? None of this needs to be defended, the world is facing some incredible economic head winds right now console prices like everything else are not immune. None of this matters, these are luxury items there are bigger things for people to concern themselves with like paying for the necessities of life.
I still remember Sony going after that actors advertising firm for promoting the Wii. So yeah I remember him. 😆
The update will begin rolling out globally from March 18.
They added a Quality Mode.
"Players can now select a 1080p High Quality mode during Remote Play and Cloud Streaming. This new mode enables players to enjoy games at a higher bitrate compared to the default 1080p Standard mode, providing a smooth and high-fidelity experience."
I love this device. It’s one of those things you don’t think you need before getting one.
...and yet there are still those who scoff at the idea of streaming games. If they really gave this a try, it might convert even more to the dark side.
it actually really depends on the infrastructure, and what Sony has now with the Portal is pretty amazing. it's something you really have to experience yourself to believe. Playing my PS5 games almost anywhere at this quality and with almost unnoticeable input lag is the stuff of magic. If you're unimpressed, remember that the Portal allows this level of performance streaming from your own PS5 console AT HOME, relying on YOUR OWN, HOME NETWORK, not some massive infrastructure like the Xbox Cloud Gaming.
I'm not subscribed to PS+ Premium, so I don't know how Cloud Streaming is like on the Portal, but I heard that it's running great. The Portal is one of the best purchases you can make as a gamer always on the move.
@badz... if you like portal, you should try a gcloud. It too is a great little streamer for XB and Nvidia shield stuff. There have been some great improvements to infrastructure over these short few years of cloud gaming. And yeah, PS+ premium is great. Id say even better than remote play... for the games that are available.
@darthv72
yeah but I have to pay for another subs? I don't think I want to add another subs right now that I might or might not have time to fully utilize due to work.
Just used mine the other night, since I couldn’t sleep I jumped into a game of The Division2 remote play. Loved this device since day one.
I'll take the ones that can natively play a game thank you.
Loving the Switch 2 and ROG Xbox Ally X right now.
"For players who regularly play away from a television, this reliability is still unmatched." - speaking like a true Nintendo fanboy!
LOL the explanation about the Portal is totally whacked and out of date, it's not even funny anymore. When was this article published? 2024?
Sorry to disappoint you Portal haters out there, the Portal works good everywhere, not just inside your house. I regularly use it at my office over 25km away from home using my office wifi with ZERO issues. Been playing it on the go over my phone's 5G connection too nowadays because...why not?
Portal for me 💙
Recently got a fairly cheap Legion Go Z1 Extreme. Though I enjoy it and love sitting in bed playing Euro Truck Simulator 2. You really do have to scale back setting on anything remotely modern to get it playable (for me 60fps in the bare min). I tried playing Ghost of Tsushima on it and after setting everything to low and resolution to 1080p. FSR balanced and Frame Gen enabled getting a 70-80fps it was very playable felt smooth but looked like complete bum cheeks.
Experienced a friend Xbox Alley the basic white one. Felt nice to use Xbox experience was meh and performance on games where again bum cheeks. Terrible experience.
Playstation portal is my choice. Sure you need internet. But providing you have access to something half decent. It's a great experience. I don't even have to have my ps5 switched on