Classic BBC headline trying to claim there’s more to the story than they’re actually is. They’re not blaming it on anything, they’re citing the reason.
Component prices have gone up because the AI industry is gobbling everything up, we already all know that. Sony have also increased the price of the PS5 so I don’t think there’s any conspiracy here
Aaaaand, they sold out.
Before you say scalpers, you can get a new 512gb version for 699 on eBay right now which is cheaper than what valve was selling them for.
Blaming. If you sell freshly printed paper books and the price of paper rise up overnight. Is your fault for the rising of the prices?
I mean they were out of stock for weeks, presumably waiting on manufacturing new devices, which are now more expensive than when they were first released, it’s not like they were sitting on a ton in a warehouse or something.
Depends…does the bookmaker have a superyacht? Are they a billionaire? Could they take less profit because they are not a public company? Could they raise the price by less and still be profitable?
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Well yes of course they could but why should they? I also think it’s hilarious that people acknowledge that we live in a capitalist society, and then get upset when the realities of that society hit them.
If you want to go seize the means of production I won’t stop you, but otherwise stop whining about increasing production costs been passed on to the user.
It’s a fairly common sentiment that ‘good billionaires’ like Newell will demonstrate that seeking profit by making things people want to buy is more profitable than ruining things people were already buying so margins are higher, thereby making the bad billionaires want to copy them, and then capitalism will start working for the common people, and that therefore seizing the means of production is unnecessary as long as they praise gaben. Pointing out that he’s still accumulating the value of other people’s labour as quickly as he can and he’s just less short-sighted about it, rather than aiming to do good, can be helpful.
Im not whining, the commented acted like it was out of their hands when it isnt. Simple as that.
Reading the rest of this article, it’s crap journalism. About half of it is just rumors and speculation off of social media. Do better, BBC
Bought the 1 TB as soon as the OLED version released. So glad i did that, it is a fun little machine, but the new price point is rough.
I also bought a Raspberry Pi 5 with 16GB RAM back in september. Just checked the current price on that, and it has increased by almost 150% from the same retailer. Holy shit.
I always wanted one of the white Steam Decks, but I have yet to be able to afford one regardless of color. Now it looks like I never will.
Sometimes there are good deals at pawn stores. Not always, but it worth checking out if you have time.
Even if you could afford it at this price, it’s simply not a good value.
I’m curious what exactly you mean; Like are you saying it’s just too expensive for what it is or too old or what?
for just 200 dollars more, you can get the lenovo go s (running on steamos) with a much better screen and performance just to name a few. all you’d be missing out on are the big trackpads and two of the rear buttons (L5 and R5).
the allure of the steam deck was how cheap it was. not anymore unfortunately…
For me the touchpads are one of the big selling points. I see what you mean by the only $200 difference offering an entirely newer processor and screen, but I honestly don’t know why they would’ve done it with only a tiny touchpad on one side.
One question I immediately have though, because it took me a minute to even find the Legion go S and there are apparently two different versions of it (2025 & 2026), is how much is valve style support worth? Even though Lenovo is my go to for prebuilt machines right now, I’m not sure I trust them with $1000 handheld over the amount of time that the steam deck has existed.
This is the allure for me as well. The trackpads make it so I can play any style game I want on the handheld, which is amazing. I’m playing emulated console games, modern steam games and games from the 90’s early 2000’s that were designed with mouse and keyboard in mind. I wouldn’t want a faster device without the trackpads, as it would cut down on a lot od games i’d like to play.
There’s no way you’re gonna be able to play Age of Empires, or similar games with joysticks, thats for sure.
The Steam Deck is the best device for old games and old game emulation. If you want to play newer games it’s woefully underpowered. Something like RDR2 or like The Witcher 3 are vastly superior on a Lenovo Legion Go. More powerful and with a much bigger display. I’ve had both devices and they both do different things well.
Detachable controllers and two USB-C ports are really nice on the Legion as well.
Precisely. I got the 256GB LCD for $400, and it was an excellent performance-to-dollar value. $780 minimum is simply not worth it when newer and more powerful PC handhelds are hovering close to $1000 minimum now.
Thanks! But $500 is still more than I can afford right now. I almost got one when they had the refurbished LCD model for like $280 or whatever it was but I couldn’t even swing that at the time.
Edit: Wow, at least one person on there has their 64 gig LCD model listed for $900…
Soulphite hikes their going rates by more than 50%, blames rising costs of everything.
I could barely afford your rates before the increase, and now I am expected to shell out more? Dirty pool, internet person…dirty pool.
That’s it, I’m just gonna pirate Soulphite
Well I guess my soulphite phun is over
I have the LCD Deck, but tbh i’m fine with that. I plays the same games, and i have good power banks to get me over the day if needed even with the lower runtime (one of my power banks even has a solar cell integrated - it makes it bulkier, but it’s free extra charge!)
I have a LCD too and the battery is starting to show signs of ware. I was thinking of getting a OLED and giving the LCD to my son. But I have the deckmate and the bag, it works great for attaching and swapping power banks. You’re right though, depending on the bank it can get pretty bulky and heavy.
You could always replace the battery. There’s guides and parts on iFixIt
My Battery is still at 98%, but i use it mostly plugged in, so the battery has not seen many charge/discharge cycles yet. If the battery is going bad, i would recomment just going to iFixit and order a new one - the replacement really isn’t hard to do.
I had to replace the display and even that wasn’t really hard even when you have to take the thing apart down to the last screw when doing that.
Mine has lost more than half capacity, I’m really tempted to replace it but tbh using a heat gun to melt the glue is kinda scary.
I do these. I replace phone parts, tablets, and various devices. It’s not complicated and you don’t need a heat gun. You can use a hair dryer and if that’s too much. A heating pad turned on high for about 15 minutes sometimes not even that long. A guitar pick ot similar. Go slow. Cheap 15 dollar or less phone kit with a suction cup helps.
i didn’t need a heat gun to get it out - i used the heating thingy iFixit offers which you put in the microwave and then just lay it on the battery. Even tho iFixit says that this might not be enough, it was enough to loosen it, but it took a while and 2 reheatings of the pad.
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At that price point why not just get a gaming laptop?
I have a gaming laptop that I bought for 1000 bucks and I can stream to anywhere from it. With the controller and my cell phone I can play whatever games I want. Yeah I’ll pass with Steam deck.
My issue with the gaming laptop is the massive brick needed to charge. My laptop has a 4070 and requires a 280w barrel jack charger to fully power it. The brick is about the same size as my steam deck lol since I travel for work I have to carry that laptop. Even better I use the same charger for my laptop and steam deck.
Does your gaming laptop have a large brick? How do you manage if so?
I mainly leave it in my office. I don’t take it with me. I stream it through my phone and tablet if I move around. Kinda like a desktop that can move around if needed.
I have a slim q charger for my laptop and it’s about the size of two phones stacked on top of each other. The factory brick is pretty slim too so I never really cared. It fit well in the bottom of my backpack.
Also many modern high end machines come with smaller GaN chargers. It’s mostly the cheaper models that come with the classic brick.
I’d pass too if I had a laptop that I could just bring places. Let alone the streaming thing.
Yeah and even though the Steam Deck seems as good as a handheld can be, my phone/iPad stream games with a lot less heat and noise. If you have a gaming rig already it seems like the logical choice to stream.
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The LCD deck was even cheaper, and this is the second OLED price hike as well, after having removed the cheaper LCD version.
I legit think they are hiking prices because they can’t bring down the cost of their other upcoming products. You can’t have a 300$ LCD steam deck next to a slightly better 1200$ steam box. At least it’s easy to blame someone else right now, no one will call it greedflation when steam does it.
I think you misunderstand the logistics of having multiple products on a line using the same hardware but different price points. First of all, Valve isn’t Nintendo. Despite them being very profitable and making a lot of money, they don’t have the power like Nintendo does to mass order special parts for their devices.
With the AI hardware apocalypse, the cost of everything surged, even for OEMs. So with that in mind, if you had an offering of multiple devices that use the same components but one is cheaper and may potentially lose you money, do you keep that, or just consolidate everything into a single product line? Valve didn’t remove the LCD because they didn’t want to sell a cheap product, hell they put the device on some amazing sales while it existed. They removed it because selling a $300 device while the cost to build that is almost the same price is pointless, and at the end of the day, the purpose of Valve is to make money.
The new price of deck OLEDs reflect the reality that even a billion dollar company can’t procure hardware contracts at a reasonable price. Even Nintendo is going to be raising switch 2 price and who knows if another hike to that will come later.
I assume that after this deck price hike, the steam machine is basically dead. If Valve does go through with the release, the cost will just be too high for what it is, and people would rather just buy a console at that price point.
The AI bubble is truly ruining the hardware industry, and I know it feels like an excuse right now, but Valve has no reason to be greedy. They already make enough money from the store, and the hardware that sold has always been fairly priced. Things are just truly fucked right now.
I think a price increase was inevitable but 300% between the cheapest model in the space of a year is hard to swallow. Any other company would be getting dragged through coals.
It’s not like they are open about their costs, and steam already takes advantage of its clients (both gamers and game devs), so it’s not like taking a bit more profit than they need to is below them.
Just the ram costs now 250$, was 60$ April 2025. NVME SSD 256 costs now 90$, was 30$ on April 2025. That is 250$ more on the cheaper model from just these two components. All parts costs more now, and shipping is more expensive.
Valve doesn’t buy their ram off Amazon, I don’t think we can estimate so easily. Sorry if I don’t trust the guy that spent 1000 million on boats to be greed immune.
The funny thing is that the LCD is still listed on the site, even after they’ve made all these changes. And the “won’t be restocked” verbiage is gone. So I’m wondering if they’re going to restock those as well.
