Valve hikes Steam Deck prices by more than 40%, blaming rising costs

Valve raises Steam Deck prices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48297976 - May 2026 (267 comments)

I have seen some thoughts via comments on this news on other platforms and the prevailing kneejerk response to this is somehow that Valve is bad at managing their supply chain as opposed to being one of the last hardware manufacturers to raise prices in the gaming space. The Ally family, while faster, launched at the higher end, Sony raised the cost of the PlayStation, Microsoft with the Xbox, and even Nintendo. All to say, I think this is a bummer but also believe that Valve deserves some credit for having navigated the market as best they could before raise the price.

Whether the hardware is worth the price hike is a different question all together. Even further, the question is what this may mean for the other hardware products that they have still in the pipeline.

"blaming rising costs" makes it sound like they're actually doing something shady.

It's not exactly a secret that memory and storage costs have gotten more expensive. It should not be a surprise when a piece of hardware that depends on those gets more expensive too.

This does give us an unfortunate glimpse into the Steam Machine's potential price point. I can't imagine those would be any cheaper than this hardware, which is a real shame. I do not envy the position Valve is in, personal PC hardware pricing is becoming exponentially expensive for the average person. The Steam Machine, I would imagine, was Valve trying to create a sort of entry-mid level PC to get users hooked into the Steam ecosystem, but I don't see that being the case anymore.

Still excellent hardware, and I don’t entirely fault the company for the price hike (though I do believe they could’ve eaten part of it for the goodwill and told Gaben he’d had to forego another yacht or tender ship for a year or two), but man this price makes it a non-starter for me.

I regret not buying one when I had the chance, but I’m not paying a grand for four-year-old hardware. That’s dangerously close to Framework money.

Someone like Nintendo or Sony is making a whole lot more devices, so they probably have not just longer term contracts, but the scale to negotiate prices down. Valve might not even contract a line making it all the time: Theri total sales are in the low single digit millions, while Nintendo selst 15+ million a year, and expect 5+ years of a console's lifetime.

So it's unsurprising that when prices of components go up, a company that has a much lower scale ends up facing worse production problems. Just look at how the price of consumer RAM has basically tripled in the last year. And the Steam deck has to pay for the ram and the internal SSD, and those are also going way up. It's not a cost of goods situation anymore: Prices are now basically set at auction.

It will continue until AI demand for memory goes down, or Micron and such manage to get a whole lot more manufacturing capacity online. And just like during Covid, anyone raising capacity is taking big risks on how long that capacity will need to remain online. See the companies that upped production in 2020 and were wrecked in 2022 because demand collapsed.

I love my Steam Deck aside from the quality control issues I ran into, one of which required an RMA. It's really hard to justify $1000 for it when the Switch 2 is $450 (soon $500).

I do think there's a bright future for PC handhelds, especially when (not if) ARM processors can be utilized. I'm less sure about that if prices keep rising since that quickly becomes the difference between niche hobbyist device and mainstream gaming portable.

If I didn't love my Steam Deck I would consider re-selling it for profit. This feels like the same thing that happened to used car resale prices during covid. For a year or two you could sell the used car you just bought for a profit

This has ruined my optimism for the steam machine. I love my Steam Deck OLED, I don't play high end games at low settings or low framerates. I play older games, simpler indie games and it's an absolute joy for that.

This price increase is a hard sell still, makes me stick to the mantra of don't upgrade or buy anything unless there is no other option.

I'll just play different games, read a book, watch TV. There so much media out there, I don't want to be drawn into this AI RAM pricing war on products.

/rant

I loved my Steam Deck, lovely bit of kit bought on a whim, but ended up selling it as I just don't game on the go.

I definitely wouldn't have done an impulse purchase at that price point.

Not loving the price of hardware right now.

apparently not high enough. already OOS.

It's wild that the OLED Deck is now the same price as the Ally X I bought to replace my own deck about 18 months ago.

Still incredibly worth it, IMO. The Deck is some of the most fabulous and exciting hardware I've seen out in the last decade, perhaps only trumped by the M-series Apple chips.

Several new DRAM fabrication plants are expected to come online in 2028: https://manufacturing.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/hi-t...