Valve recently raised the price on the Steam Deck, making the handheld gaming PC cost up to $949 for the 1TB OLED model. While that’s a massive $300 increase over its original price, the Steam Deck is once again sold out.
People are now conditioned to need INSTANT GRATIFICATION FOR EVERYTHING ALWAYS!
“I want a Steam Deck! I can’t actually afford these new prices! I’m buying it anyways!”
Then retailers see the insane prices people pay for stuff without blinking. Steam Decks sell out after a 40% markup. RAM & SSDs & HDDs sell out at 4x what they sold for a year ago. So the prices never go back down.
And everyone goes full surprised-Pikachu-face when everything is now always goddamn expensive.
Show some fucking restraint for once, people!
Goddamn.
As we have seen, they won’t and never will. This is arguing for gravity to stop pulling so hard.
The mechanism to fix the problem you’re describing has broken long ago and everyone stopped trying to fix it. Your money needs more choices of where to be spent, then businesses will force each other to price things reasonably. If anyone can name all the companies that make a type of product, then that is not enough companies.
The thing is… I’m lucky enough to be able to afford all of this. In part, because I avoid terrible-value purchases. When the price of something goes up 40 to 400% percent, I say to myself, “Wow, it’d be really stupid to buy that thing RIGHT NOW.”
Too many people apparently lack that critical judgment, and just have FOMO in its place.
People really underestimate how much money other people have. $950 is expensive, but there are so many people out there who can afford that.
Our economy has been running on debt for a long time now, and debt is a bottomless pit.
Also I speculate that these were almost definitely picked up mostly by scalpers.
I love the Steam Deck, but it’s definitely not worth $1000. That’s absolutely ridiculous. I guess I’m going to find a new hobby, gaming is becoming way too expensive.
Gaming can be very cheap, you dont need to spend thousands to start gaming, you need to in specific settings
Most games do not need expensive hardware.
Last month I bought a retro handheld for 30 bucks. It can play all the existing catalogue of consoles up to PS1, and also pico8, tic-80, and small pc games via portainer.
Well yeah.
It’s got the Steam logo on it.
G*mers have been brainwashed to accept anything with that on it.
The Steam Deck is objectively excellent, what the hell are you talking about? Yea, that’s way more expensive that it was only a few years ago and people need to not accept the price, but still.
I wonder if this just means the supply was really low.
Considering the current ebay pricing, it doesn’t really make sense for any scalper to buy it unless they think it will become some weird coveted collectors item.
Either way rip steam machine. I hope they continue to fund Proton and Lepton because it really made a massive impact for gaming on Linux.
There are millions of ‘gamers’ in the usa who are well off financially, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it was a normal size shipment and people genuinely just were fiening for it
In a more perfect world: Philanthropic scalpers buy up Steam Decks to sell back to regular joes at previously low price, taking a loss on the sale.
Anbernic it is then
Did it sell out to actual individuals or did scalpers buy up a bunch?
I’m not a scalper so idk what is normal, but I wouldn’t think it would be smart to buy something $300 over face value in an attempt to resell it for more? Especially hardware that is already long in the tooth internally. Aaaand from Valve who typically has consistently restocked these over time.
Idk though maybe there is a market for $1300 SD OLED resellers 🤷♂️
Used Decks were priced very far above MSRP on Facebook Marketplace a couple weeks ago. I assume that means that the demand is there.
That’s awful. I wish valve would limit it to one per account and just be done with it.
If you search the old ones on ebay, the scalpers all have photos with a room full of steamdeck boxes
Anything to create scarcity in the market. If they can buy high and sell it to some idiot that pays higher, thats all they care about.
“Superyachts aren’t expensive, Gaben owns several”
Jensen Huang bought them all because fuck you.
Time to get comfy with a forever game that will run on a potato like Cogmind or something.
Cogmind is such an amazing game! Add Caves of Qud and Dwarf Fortress to the list as well!
Forever games indeed.
forever game
TeamFortress 2 lol
Yeah, I’ve had my steam deck a couple of years now, crazy that it’s now worth more than I paid for it. Don’t know what I’d do if it dies.
haha I bought one for my wife that is mostly gathering dust and was about to turn it into a microserver. Not anymore I guess.
Or just wait until china crashes the ram market
Honestly, the way shit is going, get what you can while you can. Gaming is only going to get worse and more expensive by the week.
a steal if you consider tomorrow’s prices
Only if AI continues to ramp up.
We’re seeing a lot of cracks. I don’t know if any bubbles are going to burst, but the hype is far less common than the frustration these days.
I would say it depends who you ask. Nvidia is all up for the hype. https://isaiprofitable.com/
Im going to steal because I considered tomorrow prices
A lot of people going to be feeling that way which is why I’m done walking around with my Deck out.
But what about decks out for Harambe?
Put your deck away Waltuh
Trade one for a fidget Spinner!
This is why I went ahead and bought one last January, It’ll probably last at least 5 years(i hope), and I can pirate and emulate games much more easily than on a console to keep my entertainment budget lower. Just a year early
I bought one at launch (not OLED though), it’s still going strong. They made a really solid device and if anything breaks (which hasn’t happened yet), it’s easy to replace. I used GeForce now for the first time this month and it was really smooth and it’s great the console doesn’t heat up with it.
That being said, I think it’s too expensive now…
Or maybe save some money because everything is going to get worse.
Is money going to hold its value? I’m debating on just stocking up on non perishable food and decent quality tools while I still can.
solid self-repairable or renowned long-lasting tools is my thinking. You can learn lots of basic plumbing and electrics in small doses
Sure. I guess it depends on your anticipated financial situation and your priorities.
What marketing agency wrote this? Dumb fucking idea. No one in the world needs Steam Deck and no company has ever responded to more sales with lower prices. Boycott that shit
Nobody needs any entertainment, but some people enjoy hobbies like gaming.
no company has ever responded to more sales with lower prices
Prices are going up rapidly thanks to AI data centers exploding demand by orders of magnitude more than retail customers. There is no end in sight to the price increases.
If you want a gaming device, buy it sooner rather than later. That’s all I am saying.
Is there not a future in which the AI bubble bursts, and we are in a glut of datacentre memory and storage with no buyers?
There should be a cataclysmic bottoming out of the market that leads to a period of cheap, abundant parts.
What is life without entertainment? Do you think all what life is about is to barely make ends meet while making extra profit for the billionaire class? I even got told that I don’t even need healthy food, just be mindful how much I’m eating of the cheap unhealthy stuff, do some intermittent fasting, and eat apples as snack instead of sweets.
Where are all these people getting their money from??? And time to play video games???
I work full time so my screen time is limited, but the steam deck is my only gaming device, and in terms of enjoyment per ££ spent, it’s probably the best thing I’ve ever bought.
Maybe an unusual take, but I use the SD in desktop mode for working.
The USB-C supports Display Port, so I have 2 external monitors connected and keyboard as well as mouse obviously.
With another USB-C powered portable monitor as alternative it’s an even kinda portable setup.1000$ isn’t all that much for a purchase that should last for several years if you’re an adult with a steady job and your primary hobby is gaming.
“Its not that expensive if you’re rich”
Rich? Definitely not, more well off than the lower average, yes.
Steam Deck is already out of date in terms of capabilities, it’s not lasting several years
That doesn’t make sense. I have a PC older than my kids that I still game on. I think your statement needs more qualifiers.
I guess it’s my imagination all the games I’ve been playing. Too bad, I’ll have to throw it away now.
I’d need another lifetime or three to go through the catalog of classic games it can run. Not everyone is chasing the dragon. If you’re not pixel peeping or prone to crashing out every time the FPS dips below 60, you’ll survive just fine. Turn the graphics slider down a notch and just enjoy the game. And as a portable PC I could probably get another decade out of the thing so long as the battery holds up or replacements remain available. It’s not like anything revolutionary is coming that’s gonna require me to have a better GPU just to fire off some SQL queries, fuss around in office software, compile some TeX, or whatever else.
Depends entirely on what games you play. Older audience are probably more likely to be into older less demanding games too. Personally the most recent game I’ve touched are from 2020 and 2023, and those are two big exceptions.
can one play all, or just the best ps1-2, nintendo, and pc games in a few years?
There is now a selection of handhelds out there that are newer and arguably better, but they’re also expensive. I kinda think the Lenovo legion go gen 2 might be cool with steam OS installed - but it costs like 2k
The same group of people who have the money to buy an iphone 17 pro.
After reading so much hate on Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft for years, especially over their pricing, its somewhat hilarious to see only one or two comments out of dozens here calling out the high price of this handheld console.
Like Nintendo raised the price of the Switch 2 by $50 to a whopping $499 and people will mock and berate you if you say you bought one.
Every Steam Deck has 16GB LPDDR5-6400. I’ll use regular DDR5-6400 as a stand-in. In 2 years, that’s gone from $100 to $300. So, +$200 in memory costs.
The cheapest 1TB M.2-2230 has gone from $70 to $170. So +$100 for the highest-tier OLED. (512GB M.2s are harder to find history on… but they also seem to have gone up about $100.)
So, the RAM & Storage in a Steam Deck now cost another $300. (Yes, I realize the components are probably cheaper for Valve. But it just puts the prices into perspective.)
I mean it’s not hard to do the math.
Steam has 15 years of good will so they get the benefit of the doubt.
The others have more sordid history so people are less charitable.
No they don’t, this was a bad move, beaten in best practice by fucking Nintendo. Shameful. They should have handled this better. I expect better from them in the future.
This and the handling of the steam controller don’t look like good signs.
They handled the steam controller launch basically perfectly? To the point they actively screwed over any scalpers and made it essentially scalp-proof after the first drop got vacuumed up. No other product launch I’ve ever tried to buy has done as good a job as this.
I would be curious to know what are the manufacturing costs of the steam deck and how much profit is made. I’m guessing it’s a single digit percentage, but TBH I don’t know shit.
AND Nintendo told you the price was going to increase before they increased it, so you could buy it at the lower price if you knew you wanted one.
1000$ may seem like a lot but its a small price to pay when you think of the new boat Gaben will be able to own soon.
Neither Gabe nor Valve will earn much from the higher price, because they have to pay a lot more for the Hardware that makes the Steamdeck. It is not that they raised the price out of smite but due to AI companies with their gigantic Hardware glutony.
It IS too expensive. Having no stock for months would make the same for almost every electronic device.
I can’t imagine paying $1000 to play my backlog of under $5 games.
I mean…how big is that backlog and how much are you playing on the go? There’s been no better device for handheld gaming, IMO, though I can see why it isn’t tempting at that price.
While the steam deck is a good device, it and every other modern handheld is designed like the switch which is more of a couch gaming experience rather theb a true portable for playing on the go
I think the difference is that in 10 years when the steam deck is on its final legs, we can still play our games unlike most other consoles.
It might be a spare laptop, steam machine, or something else entirely. But we will presumibly be able to play.
I can still play games on my 13 year old PS4, 20 year old Xbox 360, 30 year old N64, etc. What are you talking about? The PS5 is already 6 years old and shows no signs of not being able to play games.
At least until Sony and Microsoft shutdown the servers for the consoles and they can’t validate themselves anymore.
If Valve ever stops supporting the SD and you still want to use it so some reason, then just install a new clean OS or just leave it in desktop mode and move on with life.
No NEW games coming out on those though
True, but thats also true for every other modern gaming handheld other then the switch/switch 2 since they all run windows, linux or android
Either way doesn’t invalidate my point
Playing on the go is all I do with mine. Beats the hell out of a laptop.
Ha, no.
3DS, please come back!! The AYN Thor is trying. It would be cool if valve built something like it. Preferably with the autostereoscopic display. I know it’s a gimic and nobody uses it much, but damn is it a cool gimic.
So much fun!
ROG Ally is measurably better in every category and cheaper
windows 11
Lmao
You can very easily downgrade to Win10 and there’s a sizable community on r/LinuxOnAlly but it’s also Microsoft/XBox so what else do you expect? Still beats giving Valve 45% more money so GabeN can buy another yacht company and sell kids gamble boxes.
Set your expectations accordingly. ROG Ally is only cheaper until they have to build more with today’s component prices (if they choose to). And it’s not like Microsoft executives don’t have yachts or sell kids gambling boxes.
That’s all fair but it just seems weird to me to say “company X jacked their prices up $300 and company Y might, therefore they’re both the same.” Wait until the Ally gets a price bump and reasses. As it stands today, the Deck is now a substantially worse value
They will jack up their prices if they sell through their stock and decide that that demand will stick around long enough to justify another batch of them at higher prices. As it stands today, it is doing your fellow Lemming a solid to point out the current price discrepancy in favor of the Ally. When both of those devices are priced for stable market conditions, my recommendation leans heavily toward Steam Deck, but we are not currently in stable market conditions.
I’ve never had a Rog Ally, but couldn’t you wipe the whole thing on day 1, and install bazzite?
Sounds neat; I just wish they made an SKU where you didn’t have to pay for Windows (before removing it)
If you’re playing basic-ass games, an ARM/Android handheld may be a better bet anyway.
Especially considering you could play something like 50k emulated games that span 4 gaming consoles on a handheld that cost $35.
The SteamDeck is now a luxury.
Wait what? What’s this?
The steamdeck was always a luxery.
All video games are a luxery.
It’s just now it’s also expensive.
What’s the best $35 handheld to get?
at that price point, the R36S clones on Aliexpress, i got one on sale for ~€22. they play everything up to ps1/dreamcast, n64 not so much though. the romsets they come with and their metadata are really bad, and the sd card is prone to die spontaneously, so it requires some tinkering
For $35 I’m guessing whatever on FB marketplace.
Android phones tend to become pretty worthless after like 5 years, but are still perfectly good for emulation. Hell 10 years ago I was emulating the DS without any issues.
Just make sure you don’t store any personal data on those devices. They become useless because they slowly turn into a security nightmare
I want to get something with a physical D-pad and buttons off Aliexpress or whatever, but I have no idea how to sort through all the random no-name choices. The only other criteria I have is that I want it to be fully Free Software with no malware and the best value for money I can find.
Here’s a good place to start:
Have prices stayed the same on those? Isn’t valve funding arm support since their headset uses it. Maybe prices will drop and steam deck 2 will be using similar architecture to those instead.
