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.
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.
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.
Tbh I can’t be bothered to confirm who exactly is managing the Ally but XBox’s new CEO is on a goodwill-gathering streak right now. Brought down the price of game pass and seems to want to bring people back to the brand proper. MS certainly has the capital to subsidize console costs to gain market.
Again, all this is conjecture and came from me saying that right now, because Valve raised the price of the Steam Deck and MS hasn’t done so for the Ally, the Ally is a better value. Today.
Oh, you sweet summer child.
You do you. The Ally is a better value today. Good spot; pass it on until they sell out, because it currently looks like Best Buy is pricing it as a thing that’s in their inventory and not selling. I would recommend that you don’t trust that Xbox is going to right the wrongs of Game Pass price increases just because the removal of Call of Duty brought it down to still-higher-levels-than-it-was-in-the-very-recent-past. And definitely don’t trust lip service to things the new boss is “thinking about” and “treating seriously”. In a world where the next Xbox is definitely for sure just a PC that allows you to buy games from any store you like, and the Ally is that too, they’re not subsidizing hardware. Neither is Valve, hence the price hike.