When Valve announced the Steam Deck back in 2021, it attached an attractive $399 price tag to the handheld gaming device’s starting configuration. While this edition has gone through some changes since then, like upgrading the 64GB storage from eMMC to 256GB of NVMe, the price has remained the same. However, Valve is finally letting go of this cheapest model.
A tenner says this is due to the component price inflation we’re in the middle of
I honestly thought they were selling stock given how low the price was. No idea they were still making them.
It makes some sense, the parts cost on the lower priced models could be a lot more painful.
I’m not gonna try to do a proper estimate on build prices on the Steam Deck, but the price of 16GB of DDR5 RAM was around $40 or even less a year ago and now we’re looking at $140. If that’s comparable here, that makes the margin look a lot rougher.
I would imagine it has more to do with the OLED version being way more popular. I just wish the OLED had been out when I bought my Deck. no point buying it again just for the upgrade, but I would have gladly dropped more for the better screen when I first bought it.
Nah, they were gonna phase it out even before the price hike was a thing.
Who said anything about raising prices? How do you know they won’t just drop the price on OLED to simplify manufacturing and distribution?
This end of production means that the $549 512GB OLED Steam Deck has now become the entry model.
It isn’t. You can still buy the LCD, last I checked.
I checked in multiple regions and you seem to be simply wrong.
Damn, they sold out fast, I guess.
Just checked, in Canada at least LCD is out of stock.
