Steam Deck prices shoot up amid RAM crisis

NineFortyOne Staff

— 2 min read
Share
Steam Deck prices shoot up amid RAM crisis
Valve's Steam Deck OLED is an updated model of the ever-popular Steam Deck, now with an OLED display. Source: Valve

It was just too good to be true.

Today, Valve updated the Steam Deck's store page to reflect the new, much higher prices, which are most likely due to the RAM crisis plaguing all aspects of technology currently. The Steam Deck, essentially the last hope for a somewhat affordable, but still powerful, PC handheld, is not the incredible value it used to be now, and prices are not nearly as appealing.

This news also follows the discontinuation of the Steam Deck LCD model late last year, with Valve only offering the 512GB and 1TB OLED models. For a few months now, the 256GB Steam Deck LCD sat on the website, but unavailable for purchase, with a persistent "out-of-stock" label. This current price increase also brings about the official removal of the 256GB LCD Steam Deck from the website.

Valve's Steam Deck page. Source: Valve

The Steam Deck page now only lists the 512GB Steam Deck OLED at $789, up from $549, and the 1TB Steam Deck OLED at $949, up from $649. These price increases, of nearly 40 percent, are a major shock to the community.

For a long time, the Steam Deck 64GB, while not an exceptional value with its barely usable 64GB of EMMC storage, was still placed at $399, an incredible value proposiyion compared to the $750+ competitors in the PC handheld space it was going up against. Furthermore, all Steam Deck models, even the 64GB one, can have its storage upgraded to fast, NVMe SSD storage, negating the storage issue altogether.

Now, with the cheapest option for the Steam Deck being $789, up against, sadly, similarly priced competitors, the Steam Deck is not the immediate buy like it once was. The quirks of gaming on Linux still have a long way to go before they are ironed out, and the Windows based machines that already exist for similar amounts of money may just be a better buy. The performance of the Steam Deck is still great, but its competitors are gaining ground on it.

The price hikes on the Steam Deck are sad, but necessary if the console is to stay on the market, due to the ongoing RAM crisis. We will have to wait and see what Valve does soon.

Read more