wait, they're making a brand-new Amiga in 2026? yeah — and the AI chip crunch just delayed it

THEA1200 — a full-size, fully working replica of the Commodore Amiga 1200, HDMI out, 25 built-in games — was supposed to ship June 16, 2026. Retro Games Ltd just delayed it again, to December 4. That makes it the third hardware story this month we've traced back to the exact same root cause.

The chip shortage keeps showing up in unrelated places

This is the third time this month we've traced a 2026 hardware story back to the same supply squeeze. Nvidia's RTX 50 Super got held up by 3GB GDDR7 pricing. Evercade raised cartridge and Super Pocket prices over DRAM and NAND flash costs. Now a small UK studio building a from-scratch Amiga replica is citing the same global chip shortage for a six-month slip. None of these companies compete with each other, or with Nvidia, for the same components — they're all just downstream of the same squeezed memory and component supply chain that AI datacenter demand is pulling from.

The OS isn't yet where it needs to be. — Retro Games Ltd, on the second half of the delay

What's actually in the box, if you're new to this

THEA1200 isn't a Raspberry Pi running an Amiga emulator in a nice case — it's a purpose-built machine with a full-size working keyboard, the original-style 2-button mouse, a new 8-button gamepad, HDMI out, and a real Workbench desktop install underneath. WHDLoad support means you're not limited to the 25 pre-loaded titles; you can side-load more Amiga software and demos over USB. That's the pitch: closer to owning a modern-built Amiga than owning an emulation box shaped like one.

The one piece of good news: pricing is holding at $189.99 through the delay, which is not a given in this category. The less good news is that this is the second slip inside a year, which is worth remembering the next time December rolls around.