The Great Steam Deck Crash of 2026: How the New Pricing Decreased Demand by 80%

nashashmi

RAMpocalypse are making computing pricey again. This is a complete rollback. Now I am going to stick with my 3 year old a little bit longer

glenncal

Well, it's quite old hardware now too, I'm sure that has a big effect.

nottorp

But will Nintendo and the like be able to retain pricing for much longer? Of course they have better contracts but for how long?

stonogo

I wish I had a product whose 'near-total collapse' meant I was 'only' selling two thousand of them a week

lenerdenator

Something desperately needs to pop the AI bubble. There's plenty of value to be generated with all of these other applications of computer hardware, value that could be generated much sooner than the horizon over which GenAI expects to see its first dollar of profit.

haburka

I think people really underestimate the brand loyalty that valve has. They have consistently shown for 25+ years to strive for quality and I know I’m unlikely to get a headache if I purchase from them. Their hardware is really top notch, I have used a steam deck LCD for years and it was not until very recently that I had a single issue with a button that was easily fixable. Probably the purchases went down due to some people buying the steam machine. I’m surprised the article doesn’t mention that.

JKCalhoun

If competitors are not raising prices dramatically, then they're eating that loss. Steam should follow suit—at least with something like a loss-leader model. When I rewrote/released an old shareware game to Steam some years ago I made just enough money to buy a Steam Deck. Since then OLED Decks came out and I'm jealous. (With the prices of the new Steam Decks, I'm wondering now if there is instead a way to retrofit my old Deck with an OLED…)

ece

72% revenue decline from a 54% price increase, but how did profitability change? Some of the features of the Deck are still differentiating like the OLED screen and touch pads, and maybe some of the price increase is meant to keep it profitable at a low volume. I personally think a controller and a VR headset that isn't standalone would be fine products for Valve to sell. Maybe they can't justify working on Steam OS without the Deck, Steam Machine or Frame. If they can still sell low volume differentiated products, good for them.

k3liutZu

Anyone remember when hardware prices used to go down?

paxys

Valve just chose the worse time to make a big hardware push. Sad because the hardware is genuinely good, but there's no way any company new to the space is going to be able to compete in today's reality.

joshstrange

It's a shame because the Steam Deck is the best gaming device I've used in many years. My Xbox One and Xbox Series X are both lackluster compared to my Deck IMHO. And that's without me ever "docking" it, just using it handheld. I won't buy another Xbox, the Series X was a massive disappointment and AAA games all suck. I found I was just playing decade+ old games on my Series X and while load times might have improved on the newer hardware, it wasn't enough to justify the upgrade. I regret my Series X purchase.