Valve has put the Steam Deck OLED back on sale, then mugged wallets with a brutal price rise.
According to the Verge, Valve has announced that the Steam Deck OLED is back in stock, but the base 512GB model has jumped from $549 to $789, while the 1TB model has climbed from $649 to $949.
That means the cheaper OLED model is now $240 more expensive, while the larger storage version has been whacked with a $300 rise. Valve blamed the increase on “rising memory and storage costs” and admitted the handheld PC itself has not changed.
“Steam Deck itself hasn’t changed; these new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole,” Valve said.
It is bad news for anyone eyeing Valve’s incoming Steam Machine, because the same component squeeze is likely to make that thing pricey too. It would be daft to see a two-year-old Steam Deck getting a chunky rise and not wonder what this means for Valve’s next hardware punt.
Reports last month suggested the Steam Machine and Steam Frame had both been hit by higher memory costs. The hopeful version is that Valve is raising Steam Deck prices to soften the blow if it sells the Steam Machine and Steam Frame at a loss. That is possible, but it is hard to imagine either device arriving for less than the new Steam Deck OLED price.
It is not great news for a future Steam Deck 2 either, whenever Valve eventually drags that into daylight.
The only comfort is that Steam Deck 2 still seems far enough away for component costs to change before launch. Of course, given the state of the hardware market, things could easily get sillier by then.
Valve has brought back refurbished LCD models for those who still want a Steam Deck without having to sell a kidney. The refurbished 64GB LCD model costs $279, the 256GB version is $319, and the 512GB model is $359. That makes the old LCD stock look almost sensible
