Nvidia GPU prices spike in Japan; prices up to 41% higher than Amazon US

A Redditor has shared a photograph of the prices of Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs in Japan, and it doesn’t bode well for gamers. According to u/Chaise91’s post on the r/pcmasterrace subreddit, retail prices for some of the best gaming GPUs are somewhere between 5.66% and 41.1% higher compared to Amazon U.S. listings.

The memory chip shortage and massive demand for AI compute have been affecting the supply of gaming GPUs, with reports suggesting Nvidia is planning to halt RTX 5090 production in favor of AI data center and professional GPUs. Because of this, the supply of high-end GPUs has vanished online, with third-party sellers now demanding almost $10,000 if you want to buy one. The image shared on the social media platform does not show the RTX 5090, so we fear that retailers in the market no longer have the high-end graphics card in stock, leading to supply pressure on the lower-tier cards.

We built a table comparing the prices from the Japanese retailer to listings we found on Amazon based on the current exchange rate of JPY 153.38 for every USD 1, and the hikes vary between 12.71% on average for the RTX 5080 to a jaw-dropping 41.10% for the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB. Note that these are pre-tax prices, though, so your mileage may vary depending on which state you live in. We added a representative 8.5% tax rate to see the price difference for gamers in states with high sales taxes, and the difference falls between 3.88% and 30.04%.

While the Japanese market is typically more expensive compared to the U.S., especially in GPU pricing, you would still feel the price hikes on these graphics cards, especially for the mainstream RTX 5070 Ti and below. While this may be bad news for Japanese gamers, it could also serve as a harbinger for the United States, as these pricing trends tend to travel westward. We saw this late last year, when Japanese shops started limiting SSD, HDD, and RAM purchases due to shortages, and GPUs with 16GB VRAM and up had to be rationed because resupply shipments failed to arrive on time.

These price increases are indeed plausible given the chip shortage pummeling the PC gaming industry, but we’re hoping that this is just a fluke in the local Japanese market and not a preview of things to come for the global GPU market. But in case you’re on the market for a new graphics card and have been following our GPU price tracker to get the best possible deal, you shouldn’t delay your purchase any longer, as there’s a chance that these price increases will eventually land on American shores.