Old Steam Deck Models Get Price Drop After Being Discontinued

You can get a pretty good deal on a Steam Deck right now, so long as you're ok with an outdated model. Over the last handful of years, we have seen a pretty big increase in interest for portable gaming. Things like the Gameboy, the Nintendo DS, and the PSP/PS Vita were pretty good handheld gaming systems, but in many cases, you were getting a totally different version of the console version of a game. The Nintendo Switch began to change things, but still had compromises such as significantly worse graphics. Other companies saw the possibilities for portable gaming devices at a higher cost, but much better performance. The biggest one thus far has been the Steam Deck, a fairly affordable system that allows you to play your Steam games on the go.

It's a really amazing device and can be modified to do more than just run Steam games. Other companies have taken note and tried to release their own competitor, but the Steam Deck seems to be the mainstream solution at the moment. Valve surprised fans earlier this week when it announced that it was releasing a revised Steam Deck with an OLED panel allowing for a much better screen with higher quality images, a variant with a 1TB SSD, better battery life, faster download speeds, and much more. It's a really impressive new model and it's available right now. For those that want to get in on the Steam Deck craze, this is a good starting point, but there is an even cheaper option. If you're ok without the OLED screen and other new additions, you can get two of the old Steam Deck models at a discount. 

While one version of the LCD Steam Deck (256GB model at $399.99) will remain, the other two are being discontinued. The 64GB LCD is now discounted to $349.99 and the 512GB LCD is now $449.99. The latter was previously the most premium option, so it's worth exploring if you're interested in a Steam Deck. Stock will be limited as they've stopped production on these unit, but you can order them on Steam if you're interested. Valve also confirmed that the Steam Deck successor is still a couple of years away, so if you're not in any rush, it may be worth waiting for the second iteration.