Valve has today announced some enormous new price increases to its Steam Deck handhelds. Over the past few months, the largest question surrounding Valve has been tied to the release date and price of its upcoming Steam Machine device. The streamlined PC, which is still slated to launch in the first half of this year, has had its arrival indefinitely delayed due to ongoing RAM shortages, which have sizably increased manufacturing costs for various tech products. Now, these same shortages have had an impact on the Steam Deck, and have seen the platform get a big jump in value.
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In a new update to its Steam Deck website, Valve has sizably increased the cost of its two current models. The 512GB version of the Steam Deck OLED has seen its price go up by over $200 from $549 to now sit at $789. Conversely, the 1TB Steam Deck OLED has gone up by a whopping $300 and is now retailing for $949. Given that LCD models of the Steam Deck are no longer in production, these are now the only options that potential customers have to purchase the PC handheld directly from Valve.
As for the reason behind this move, Valve didn’t say much on the matter. Instead, it simply said that these price changes had to be made as a result of “the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole.” Valve also stressed that the Steam Deck units themselves haven’t changed otherwise, which means that these increases aren’t due to other internal tweaks to the hardware.
While this is disappointing news for anyone who was currently looking to buy a Steam Deck, it perhaps bodes even worse for the Steam Machine. In the past, those at Valve have likened the Steam Machine to the Steam Deck while also making clear that it has more power at its disposal. Because of this, it’s hard to see a scenario in which the Steam Machine launches at a cost below $1,000 since the 1TB version of the Steam Deck is now pushing up against this price.
As mentioned, the Steam Machine still doesn’t have a release date, but Valve has continued to reiterate that it should launch before the end of June. When and if we get new information on this front, we’ll be sure to share it with you here on ComicBook.
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