Earlier this week, MSI announced the price of its new Claw 8 EX AI+ portable console, which will launch on June 23. The console retails for $1,799 (or €1,599 in Europe), a price that is likely to limit its appeal to a relatively small audience.
In an interview with FRVR, Andy Chu, MSI’s product marketing manager, was quite candid. He began by noting that the company did everything it could to make the console as affordable as possible. Unfortunately, the costs of memory and storage quickly drove up the price.
“All I can say is we have tried every approach to get the memory and also storage at a lower cost. Like, deepen the relationship between us and also those suppliers, like to have some deals… and I think we have done everything we can do to make out system as affordable as possible.
But unfortunately, I think the situation, the result is what you see right here. So, I would say, yes, it will be a tough year for us and for the gamers.”
For $1,799, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ features an 8-inch IPS display, an Intel Arc G3 Extreme processor, an Intel Arc B390 graphics card, 32 GB of LPDDR5x RAM, and 1 TB of SSD storage.
