- Roku streaming device prices are rising
- The products are still available at ‘sale’ prices
- One source puts the change down to the memory crisis
Streaming devices like the Roku Streaming Stick Plus give you a lot of entertainment for relatively little money, but the value proposition is changing: Roku is the latest tech company to raise its prices in response to the global memory shortage.
As discovered by Ars Technica and others, prices for streaming devices on the Roku US site have been jacked up, though the products are still available at their previous prices — now labeled as “sale deals.” It’s not clear how long this sale might last before the new prices take effect, but you might want to grab a Roku fast.
The Streaming Stick is up to $39.99 from $29.99, the Streaming Stick Plus is up from $39.99 to $59.99, the Streaming Stick 4K is now $79.99 instead of $49.99 (the biggest jump of 60%), and the Roku Ultra box is up to $149.99 from $99.99.
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Looking at Roku’s international websites, including the UK, there’s no sign of price increases yet – but it seems inevitable that if the company increases the cost of buying a Roku in the US, then this will also come to other countries in the near future.
Time to change?
Roku hasn’t said anything official about the new price changes, but according to the team at The Desk, a Roku executive they spoke with confirmed that it was due to “a shortage of computer memory and other components.”
We know that rapidly increasing demand for AI computing capacity has led to a severe shortage of memory and high costs, and everyone in the industry has been affected. Last month, Apple raised its prices on a variety of products in response, including iPads and the MacBook Neo.
Reaction online has been mostly negative, as you’d expect. One Redditor says “it’s hard to find another affordable option” for streaming devices like these, though other commenters recommend alternatives from Google and Apple.
There’s also some consternation over an increasing amount of ads appearing on Roku screens and the company’s recent acquisition of Fox. Whatever you think of Roku, it’s yet another sign that consumers are hit hard by a memory shortage.
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