PlayStation 6 handheld: Leaker shares tidbit regarding upcoming flagship console's pricing

It has been a long time since Sony was a player in the handheld segment, with the PS Vita officially kicking the bucket in early 2019. Now, as powerful handhelds are returning to popularity, Sony has been rumored to be cooking up their own variant of a PlayStation 6 Handheld.

Recent industry murmurs have indicated that the PlayStation 6 will be powered by an AMD APU codenamed Canis, featuring Zen 6-based cores. A six-core setup is plausible, featuring 4 Zen 6c and 2 Zen 6 LP cores. The RDNA 5-based iGPU has been tipped to feature a 16-CU setup, paired with 24 GB of LPDDR5X RAM on a 192-bit bus.

Prominent leaker KeplerL2 has now chimed in once again, giving us our first tiny little hint at the PS6 handheld's pricing. The NeoGAF member has claimed that a sub-$600 pricing for the PlayStation 6 handheld is simply not possible in the current market scenario, which is definitely disappointing, but not surprising.

Given just how much DRAM pricing has skyrocketed in the past few quarters, and just how bleak the future appears as of now, it is possible that the Sony PS6 handheld might end up being more expensive than current predictions. The 24 GB of RAM alone would make the handheld well beyond most average gamers' reach.

For context, Lenovo, Asus, and Valve have all hiked prices for their handhelds by substantial margins. The Legion Go S, for instance, was bumped to a cool $1,580 MSRP for the 32 GB LPDDR5X RAM, 1 TB storage variant.

The Z2 Go-powered variant with half the memory, on the other hand, is currently available for $667 on Amazon.

The recently launched Strix Halo-powered GPD Win Max 3 handheld has also been revealed to start at an insane $1,750, clearly indicating that high-end flagship gaming handhelds are no longer an option for most budget-conscious gamers.

As of this writing, it is believed that Sony might be forced to delay its next-generation consoles as far back as 2028, or even 2029 if the RAM apocalypse gets any worse.