Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
The Almighty Buck Handhelds Hardware Technology

Valve's Steam Deck Sells Out Again, Even After 40% Price Increase (ign.com) 46

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
Valve's Steam Deck has sold out again despite a steep price increase that pushed the 1TB OLED model as high as $949 -- about $300 above its original price. "Even with the $300 price bump, the Steam Deck sold out after less than 24 hours back in stock," reports IGN's Jacqueline Thomas. "I don't know how many units Valve was able to stock into its store, but it does seem like Valve spent a couple weeks building up its stock before putting the handheld back on its store." IGN reports: Over the last couple weeks, Valve has been receiving plenty of "game console" shipments from China. At first, I thought this was a sign that the company was getting ready to finally release the Steam Machine, but it looks like at least a portion of these shipments â" if not all of them -- were Steam Deck restocks. That's a lot of Steam Decks to sell through at these inflated prices, but it's also possible that Valve is just staggering its stock so that its delivery infrastructure isn't overwhelmed.

Now its just a question of when the Steam Deck will come back in stock. Before yesterday, the Deck was sold out for months. At the time, it was the most affordable way to get into PC gaming, especially in the face of the RAM crisis. That's no longer true, but it looks like the Steam Deck's popularity is enough to make it sell out regardless. Maybe the higher price will at least help Valve keep it in stock for people who still want to buy it, no matter the cost. Earlier this week, Valve announced a price increase of more than 40% for two of its Steam Deck models, citing "rising memory and storage costs."

The price changes, according to Valve, reflect "the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole."

"The 512GB tier of its OLED handheld gaming PC -- the newer model with an upgraded display -- will now cost $789, an increase of 43%," notes the BBC. "The larger 1TB model will cost $949, an increase of 46%."

Valve's Steam Deck Sells Out Again, Even After 40% Price Increase More | Reply

Valve's Steam Deck Sells Out Again, Even After 40% Price Increase

Comments Filter:
  • I'm surprised. I have a steam deck. I really don't use it. I find phone and PC gaming are much easier than holding that huge device.

    • Re:Not a fan (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ichthus ( 72442 ) on Thursday May 28, 2026 @03:11PM (#66164636) Homepage
      But, you do own one.

      • I'm in a similar position with the Playstation 4. I've barely used it since I bought it, and it's been collecting dust for years. But, I do own one.

        The catch is... I don't own a Playstation 5.

    • Then this is good news, because it looks like you can get some additional resale value out of it.
    • I use my Steam Deck all the time. I hate playing games on a phone, and my computer isn't portable. Even at home sometimes I like to be somewhere other than my computer desk, to play in my yard, or to play a game while I have just a few minutes where I can't really go back to my computer (while I wait for a pot to boil for example). It isn't that much bigger than a GameGear (GameGear was 210mm x 113mm x 38mm, SteamDeck is 298mm x 117mm x 49mm), and is only about 40 grams heavier than a GameGear full of batte

      • It's actually lighter than a Switch 2, surprisingly. It was so much heavier than the original Switch that I was sure nothing considered "handheld" would ever top it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by GoJays ( 1793832 )

      I love my steam deck and use it all the time. I have the original run model and it is still holding up great. I added emulation so I can play old console games on it, in addition to my Steam library. I can play games from the NES era right through to PS3. I play all kinds of games on it, from Super Mario Bros 3 to Super Mega Baseball. I find it is perfect for games in that mid range tier, things like Hades, Rayman Legends, Tony Hawk etc...

    • I'm surprised. I have a steam deck. I really don't use it. I find phone and PC gaming are much easier than holding that huge device.

      Then this is a good time to sell it. You can get your money back or even maybe make a profit.

  • It doesn't matter what the price is, this is the only way to get real money out of the Steam economy. After selling all those CS2 skins for insane amounts, you buy a Steam Deck and hock it for cash. Of course it's going to sell out.

  • I'd like to buy one, but not at that price.

    I will wait for the price to come back down, and probably lose interest before it does -my current htpc does a good enough job of gaming for my needs.

    • edit: Nevermind... this is their handheld gaming device. I don't want one of those. I was thinking of the new livingroom gaming box..

      • You can use it as a living room gaming box; my wife uses it like that often. She uses it as a handheld when playing old arcade games on an emulator, but for more serious games she hooks up a big screen, keyboard and mouse in the living room.

        • No stand-alone game console in use here... I just run PS3, Switch, and XBox 360 games on my overpowered computer.
          The only games console I've ever had was a first-gen Sega Genesis (and, still have it).

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Himmy32 ( 650060 )

        That is the Steam Machine [steampowered.com] rather than the Steam Deck. The latest iteration of the Steam Machine is supposed to release some time this year. But the speculation is that the price will be unfortunately high with the increasing costs of chips and memory.

        And if you are going to wait for prices to come down, it will likely be a multi-year wait with high demand but no foreseeable increase in production.

        • Yeah... thats the one I would like. But as I said, my current htpc is good enough to play steam games on.

    • I doubt the price will come back down.

      It'll stay this price until the deck 2 comes out, and the deck 2 will release at this price (Valve has basically said they were shocked to learn that people wanted to spend more on more powerful devices than the steam deck, but people did).

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        This round of consoles is an oddity - the PS5 and Xbox Series have upended the usual discounting rules, and they cost more now than they did in the past. Usually by this time the price of new consoles would've decreased by 50% or more (remember, we're 6 years into the console lifespan).

        Now the Steam Deck costs more than what I paid for it.

        Though, at least I can say, I got my money's worth of play out of the Steam Deck - it suits my needs for portable PC gaming very nicely.

  • ...every minute".

    -- Karl Marx.
    • He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.

      -- Groucho Marx

  • I use mine all the time. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WolfgangVL ( 3494585 ) on Thursday May 28, 2026 @03:53PM (#66164704)

    Steamdeck is a great little workstation if you can get past the form factor. I have a couple of docks around my house, and moving the system from room to room for specific tasks is pretty great. It's sort of like a laptop in this regard, only I can swap the SD card out for a different one depending on the "Current" use case of the device.

    Pretty awesome utility, and I'm suspicious that this is the sort of thing driving sales. There's not a lot of devices with enough horsepower that can do this so seamlessly.

    • So, it's kinda like the Nintendo Switch, right?
      With some computer networking knowledge, you can share files across your house... on laptops and other desktops and tablets and game consoles and cell phones and even down to pacemakers (I'm sure there is a way to do it).

      • Re:I use mine all the time. (Score:5, Informative)

        by WolfgangVL ( 3494585 ) on Thursday May 28, 2026 @06:18PM (#66164950)

        Not really. A switch is a game console and does Nintendo stuff exclusively. It wont run Blender. It cant boot libreoffice, and Nintendo wont let me play playstation games or emulate my own collection.

        My Steamdeck is a real computer with a real desktop OS. I can pop the SD card in for production work and dock it in my office for some light CAD/Polymodeling, and then grab the unit and plug it into my TV and drop in the emulation card for the emulation-station on the 70'' TV, then drop the unit into the art station dock and it's a jukebox/reference station. When I'm done I can grab it on the way out and bring all of this anywhere I choose to go. This lets me convert any screen I can plug into into a workstation, a universal retro-game console, or a passive entertainment device for youtube/plex without having to log into public terminals.

        I have lots of computers, laptops, SBCs, and electronic projects all over the place, and I am super familiar with networking, RDP, VNC, and Moonlight. The unique use case for the steamdeck is that it can wear many hats depending on what it's plugged into and it's designed to be portable. The footprint is 1/4 or less of a laptop with the same features, and the internal storage of the device and SD card logic lets me have both swappable memory for specfici use cases while still having consistent internal memory for OS and utilities.

        It's also a neat little handheld, and does all of that stuff on the tiny little screen in a pinch, and it's pretty good a playing video games too.

        • Actually, you can do those things on a hacked Switch, although I have no idea how well Blender and libreoffice would run.

          • REALLY poorly.
            The steamdeck is capable of emulating switch games and they run way better than on the switch.

    • From what I recall of the specs it's like a decent laptop from a few years ago. I don't imagine it's too hard to get SteamOS into KDE mode, or to launch regular Linux software?

      No idea why I would walk around with a PC for "work" though. Gaming, maybe to get comfortable. All my work requires a keyboard.

      • Nope, not hard at all. Dumping to desktop mode is an option right under the power section of the main menu, and past that it works pretty much like a regular Linux distro.

  • Heard this is being done to push marketing.
  • Easy to sell out when you are only producing a handfull of devices

Slashdot Top Deals

"And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?" -- Looney Tunes, The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950, Chuck Jones)

Close