ValveValve has announced a price increase of more than 40% – or nearly £200 – for its two Steam Deck models, citing “rising memory and storage costs”.
The 512GB tier of its OLED handheld gaming PC – the newer model with an upgraded display – will now cost $789 (£649, €779), an increase of 43% or £170. The larger 1TB model will cost $949 (£779, €919), an increase of 46% or £210.
In a blog post, the gaming giant said the Steam Deck itself had not changed, and the price changes reflected “the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole.”
“There goes my hopes of ever getting an OLED,” posted one disappointed gamer.
Valve no longer sells its cheaper LCD models directly, meaning customers can only buy the OLED version if buying from the firm.
These newer models had been out of stock for months before Valve’s announcement.
The increase from Valve has left some wondering what it could mean for the price of the company’s anticipated gaming PC the Steam Machine, which still has no release date or confirmed price.
It recently launched its version of the Steam Controller, an official pad by which to play its games, which also divided gamers over its £85 price.
Chris Scullion, deputy editor of Video Games Chronicle, told the BBC increases of components such as Ram meant the Steam Machine “could end up being so expensive to manufacture that Valve might even reconsider releasing it at all”, or the company might wait “until the situation is hopefully resolved”.
Industry hikes
The industry has seen several increases across hardware and subscription prices recently, with companies frequently citing hardware tariffs, ongoing inflation and shortages of Ram – a type of memory chip used in computing devices.
Ram price has also gone up because of the explosive growth in the data centres which power AI and which need the chip too.
In March, Sony raised the price of the PlayStation 5 by £90 in the UK and by $100 in the US, which it said was due to “continued pressures in the global economic landscape”.
In the same month it also increased the cost of its PlayStation Plus subscription service in some regions, citing “market conditions”.
Nintendo also announced the price of the Switch 2 will increase globally from September, rising from $449.99 to $499.99 in the US, and €469.99 to €499.99 in most European countries. it said a revised price for the UK – where a Switch 2 currently costs £395.99 – would be confirmed at a later date.
Xbox recently went against the trend by lowering the price of its Game Pass subscription service – at the cost of dropping day-one access to new Call of Duty games.
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