Submitted 2 days ago by simple@piefed.social to games@lemmy.world
https://www.ign.com/articles/the-steam-deck-is-sold-out-again-even-after-the-huge-price-rise
The $950 Steam Deck Apparently Isn't Too Expensive, As it Sold Out in Under 24 Hours
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.
At this point of history I wouldn’t be surprised if Nvidia, Nintendo, Meta, Google or OpenAI buy it and shred it.
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
ROG Ally is measurably better in every category and cheaper
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.
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.
scalpers live on the ‘theres a sucker born every minute’ ethos. theyve been proven right a lot
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.
I posit it’s a consumer culture issue.
Look at Temo, Tiktok, Amazon, YouTube; people are bombarded with “buy this on impulse!” every day, 24/7, through notifications. They’re urged to buy high by dozens of influencers.
So they do.
And now that’s the culture. Competition isn’t going to fix that, and doesn’t naturally arise in that kind of environment anyway.
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.
Yep, you can’t fix stupid.
So the prices never go back down.
So, the bottleneck here is really the memory prices, and while Steam Deck sales do affect memory prices — as with anyone buying anything with memory — my guess is that it’s a pretty small factor relative to other devices using memory.
According to WP, the Steam Deck has 16GB and sold uh, 4 million units over its entire lifetime as of February this year. It’s been out for four years. So figure ~64 petabytes of DRAM over its lifetime, or ~16 petabytes of DRAM per year.
For comparison, in a single year, looking at smartphones:
wifihifi.com/1-25b-smartphone-units-produced-in-2…
1.25B Smartphone Units Produced in 2025, Apple & Samsung Tied for Tops
counterpointresearch.com/…/Global-Smartphone-Aver…
Global Smartphone Average DRAM Hits Record 8.4GB in 2025
8.4 GB is the per-phone average, including older phones, so this is probably a conservative estimate, but assume for 2025, that meant that phone manufacture consumed ~10,500 petabytes of DRAM in a single year.
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.
People are now conditioned to need INSTANT GRATIFICATION FOR EVERYTHING ALWAYS!
you haven’t read anything about credit cards and the 20th century, have you? how old are you? like 19?
I was 19 in the '90s.
When nobody paid $20 to have GrubHub deliver their $5 McDonalds order from down the street to their house.
We don’t live in a progressive society that almost universally pans impulse buys, unfortunately.
Many of you are lying about being unemployed our there.
Same reason scalpers struggled to keep stock of cards being sold at 4x the price during covid, which directly lead to nvidia and AMD skyrocketing prices the second stock stabilized.
The world is full of idiots who have more money than sense, and refuse to comprehend the damage they cause by unloading dumptrucks of money for the shinnies that they just cant possibly do without.
You can afford to pay more for this like this when you live with your parents and have no plans on moving out
Not that surprising - people are perfectly willing to spend money they don’t have on stuff they don’t need and then complain about how bad the economy is.
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.
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.
If you search the old ones on ebay, the scalpers all have photos with a room full of steamdeck boxes
I bought a steam deck when they came out (the cheapest one so I could upgrade the storage myself), and it’s a pretty nice device. But I honestly couldn’t come up with a use case for it. I think I just don’t like games as much as I used to.
Same here, I bought a play station 4, and it was collecting dust. I couldn’t find the energy to play, when I had time, I just opted to lie down and rest.
Is this old age?
I went with the Lenovo legion go for the switch-like removable controllers. It’s running CachyOS and I use it more as a mini computer than a gaming device. Same, gaming just doesn’t do as much for me as it used to
So, what do you do with it? Browse something? Play media? Or you connect external peripherals to it? I just can’t imagine much use case of gaming controls outside games, but I might be less creative.
This may be my pessimism talking, but I feel like PC and Console gaming are probably both going the same route as Disney Theme Parks. If you have to ask how much it costs… If you aren’t willing to blindly shell out too much for too little… Gaming won’t be for you anymore. When it boils down to it, these things are luxuries. They’ve found their latest “limited production” excuse (AI gobbling up SSD, GPU, and RAM production) to pump up cost and there’s definitely excess demand. Or at least enough scalpers willing to take that risk. Sure the cost spike will probably come back down some once the bubble pops, but if they keep selling out, then why would they ever lower the price again?
Don’t worry, for just 50 dollars a month you can subscribe to the basic peasant tier version of GeForce NOW that entitles you to a whopping 4 hours of game play per month, as long as its played between the hours of 3am and 4am local time.
(With ads)
It’s definitely getting worse, but I feel like it won’t get that bad. I don’t think that the unaffordabiltiy of PC components will result in gaming becoming a niche commodity, I think it will result in people either not being able to play certain games, or not play them at the settings they want. I think gaming will persist via things like cheaper or used hardware. I think also some game developers will adjust the performance requirements of their games so that it meets (or attempts to meet) the reality of what people are able to buy. Triple A gaming might die tho if they don’t adapt.
It will shift to streaming that can run on anything and things like mods, running older clients, and cheats will essentially be impossible. Unless of course you pay for them with in app purchases, which publishers love
Short sighted consumers will eat it up because “oh now I don’t need an expensive console, I can just run an app on my tv!”
Then comes the death of all the above, as well as a generation of kids having access to not just gaming, but 3d modeling and serious digital art, programming (as well as learning through modding and finding ways to cheat), music production, video editing, etc. how many of those things were only available to kids via piracy? Capitalists don’t give a shit about this. They’re salivating at everything become a streaming client which both essentially eliminates piracy as well as turning a one time software purchase into perpetual subscription hell.
The crazy part is everyone but the tiniest sliver of people will be fucked by this. You know how musicians have shifted to basically making dick from streaming, and view it essentially as advertisement to funnel people into physical merch and concert ticket purchases, their only remaining revenue streams? Developers will be in the same place. It’s arguably advantageous now to be on something like gamepass but that’s because Microsoft is purposefully taking a small percentage barely above costs (10.5%). Once it’s dominant do you think they won’t shift to 30% like apple, steam, and google? And probably even more once distribution outside of their platform is unfeasible?
And for the short sighted consumer saving $3-500 on a console once every 5-10 years becomes another $30 subscription, which outpaces the cost of a console in 2 years and also robs you of the shred of autonomy you did have
Gaming in general has been going to the wayside. Time spent gaming nowadays is spent on social media and online forums like this one. I’m not saying gaming is dead or even that it’s remotely near that point (it will be still be around and thriving when I, a 17 year old, die) but coupled with the obscene prices, Gaming is not what it USED to be and it will be that way til something revolutionary comes…
Sold out to whom, though… customers or scalpers?
$950 handheld gaming device that I’d only ever use on a plane or long ass road trip in which I’m not driving.
Or, play games on my phone.
OR, gasps read a goddamn book.
Thats has hardware thats 4+ years out of date, and was already long since showing its age with running newer released stuff.
Its a neat device, but its… at this point… an old neat device.
I use it mainly as a home media pc. I got it as a gift though.
How tf are there so many people who have this much money just lying around? We are in a freakin recession (or damn near close to one), the most sensible thing to do currently is to NOT spend large amounts of money.
My best friend does landscape design and her clients are in the rich neighborhoods. The rich have plenty of money and in return makes her plenty of money.
The people with money still have plenty of disposable income.
Then there are plenty of people without that financial security that make poor decisions. The people that are actually struggling like myself aren’t the ones purchasing this.
It’s the furrys
Can’t be, all Furries work in IT, and everyone in IT is being replaced by AI, hence they don’t have any money any more /s
PC and steam boys are pathetic. They all think Steam is THEIR corporation and Gabe is THEIR billionaire. Bunch of cultists
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.
There’s countless good games that work on older equipment. You could play for the rest of your life on just that slightly older stuff and not get through half of it.
Exactly. I’ve put more hours on my retro handheld playing ps1 and SNES games in the last year than I’ve spent on my desktop. It was $26, and I’ve hardly even dented the library it’s got.
Gaming can be very cheap, you dont need to spend thousands to start gaming, you need to in specific settings
Tell that to devs. Motherfucking Slay the Spire 2 runs like dogshit on my 1st-gen ROG Ally.
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.
I love retro gaming so much, and there are enough games out there from decades past to last a lifetime. (This, of course, depends on continued availability to this library via unofficial channels.)
There also are a vast quantity of newer indie games which don’t require high end hardware. I’d love to see a renewed interest in smaller scale projects.
I got a Steam Deck LCD 64GB for $350 and then put a 1TB SSD in it, so like $430 total. I love the SD, but it’s just not worth double that. A gaming laptop with a 4050 goes for about $800 now, so the current pricing isn’t really that good of a deal even at today’s prices.
Can you share a link of that laptop? My sister in law needs a new gaming laptop but everything I’m finding is waaaaay more like expensive than that. Granted, she’s doesn’t live in the US so whatever retail you send me won’t work but if the laptop is cheap the same brand/model would probably be cheaper there.
MSI Thin 15 B13VE is the model. The only place I see it for $800 is Amazon at the moment.
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.
Ain’t no world that perfect.
Scalpers gotta scalp.
I saw another article that mentioned that eBay has them for cheaper than valve was selling them for. I checked and sure enough I can buy a 512gb version for 699 right now.
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
This article is untrue. I can literally buy one right now in the US. This is just fake FOMO hyping. Image
Looking at the bottom of your screenshot, I note the text:
“Note: Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages.”
They run Superman ragged with these orders. Poor Clark can’t catch a break flying shelf-to-shelf.
Where are all these people getting their money from??? And time to play video games???
Jensen Huang bought them all because fuck you.
“Superyachts aren’t expensive, Gaben owns several”
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.
I’m so happy I got a white limited edition one off marketplace for 650 last week. Sold my LCD for 400 so it wasn’t a bad upgrade for the price.
Half these “sold out” stories don’t tell you if it was 500 units or 50. Supply was already a mess before the price hike … AI ate the RAM market and now everything downstream pays for it. The device is great, the timing is just bad.
So glad I bought one in January
Insert the “we aren’t going make it, humans I mean.” Meme.
It is too expensive for me.
theparadox@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
blah3166@piefed.social 2 days ago
a steal if you consider tomorrow’s prices
Makhno@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Im going to steal because I considered tomorrow prices
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
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.
cmbabul@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
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
AngryPancake@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
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.
PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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
theparadox@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Nobody needs any entertainment, but some people enjoy hobbies like gaming.
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.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
artyom@piefed.social 2 days ago
Or maybe save some money because everything is going to get worse.
pilferjinx@piefed.social 2 days ago
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.
theparadox@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Sure. I guess it depends on your anticipated financial situation and your priorities.