Valve's Steam Deck Sells Out Again, Even After 40% Price Increase (ign.com)
- Reference: 0183436908
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/05/28/1713246/valves-steam-deck-sells-out-again-even-after-40-price-increase
- Source link: https://www.ign.com/articles/the-steam-deck-is-sold-out-again-even-after-the-huge-price-rise
> 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 รข" 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 [3]BBC . "The larger 1TB model will cost $949, an increase of 46%."
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/the-steam-deck-is-sold-out-again-even-after-the-huge-price-rise
[2] https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz725d5d1x7o
Money Laundering (Score:2)
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.
Guess the economy is doing fine (Score:3, Insightful)
Given that people can some how afford to drop $900 on a personal gaming device, the economy must be fine.
Re: (Score:3)
A $1000 one-time cost is quite different than the 1600+ every month average cost of rent, or the $2000 every month (median mortgage payment in usa not including property taxes, maintenance, utilities etc).
Add transportation costs, food costs, and other need-to-survive costs, and it becomes clear how a person could both afford a toy like this while living barely above paycheck-to-paycheck. And equally clear the need for entertainment to help cope.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone living paycheck to paycheck shouldn't be paying median prices. They should reduce their expectations and buy/rent something less costly. (Ok, I have known people who made a lot of money who still lived paycheck to paycheck, but if you're in that category, just get your spending under control.)
Re: (Score:2)
> Someone living paycheck to paycheck shouldn't be paying median prices. They should reduce their expectations and buy/rent something less costly.
Many people weren't living paycheck to paycheck until the price of everything skyrocketted. What you suggest, people move house en-mass?
Re: Guess the economy is doing fine (Score:2)
These are all smurfs, proxies and mules buying it.
Re: (Score:2)
Scalping would imply that people are willing to pay even more.
Re: (Score:2)
Not if it is one of the few ways to get cash out of steambucks, then even selling for a loss can be worth it.
Re: Guess the economy is doing fine (Score:2)
Or maybe a bunch were snapped for Ukrainian remote gun turrets.
[1]https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-fielding-machine-gun-turrets-controlled-by-steam-deck-2024-9?op=1
Re: (Score:1)
well, a phone costs $1500 these days, so a gaming device for $900 is not really *that* expensive
That's because the economy now runs on debt. (Score:2)
Adding more debt is also how to boost the economy. When all you have is debt what's a little bit more matter? When you are close to losing the house you don't own you might as well go all in.
Re: (Score:2)
> Given that people can some how afford to drop $900 on a personal gaming device, the economy must be fine.
Depends on who you consider people. For the upper middle class, especially the subset who own a house and don't pay rent, the economy very much is just fine. For everyone else it's fucked.
Re: (Score:2)
If there is anything we know from past economic downturns, it's that people make really stupid decisions right before the downturn.
See: everyone getting rid of fuel inefficient vehicles in 2009, just to return to them in 2019, just to want to get rid of them again in 2026 because fuel prices.
We've now seen fuel prices go to "shock" levels about once a decade due to various disruptions and events. But people keep doing the same stupid shit - buying a vehicle that meets every single edge case they can think
Why don't they make more!? (Score:2)
Insensitive clods.
I'd buy one (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
edit: Nevermind... this is their handheld gaming device. I don't want one of those. I was thinking of the new livingroom gaming box..
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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:2)
That is the [1]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.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/hardware/steammachine
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah... thats the one I would like. But as I said, my current htpc is good enough to play steam games on.
Re: I'd buy one (Score:2)
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).
"There's a sucker born... (Score:2)
...every minute".
-- Karl Marx.
I use mine all the time. (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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).
Not a fan (Score:2)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
But, you do own one.
Resale Value (Score:2)
Then this is good news, because it looks like you can get some additional resale value out of it.
Re: (Score:2)
That was my second thought, yeah.