A massive price hike for Valve's console.
Unless you live in a cave, it's impossible to have missed the massive inflation in two key components for our machines - and many other devices for that matter - DRAM and NAND. The gargantuan needs of artificial intelligence for RAM and storage space have completely swallowed up the production of these two components, leaving only crumbs for all the other sectors... whose needs have not diminished! What was bound to happen has happened, and since last October, prices for both RAM and SSDs have risen sharply.
This has been seen in retail sales, of course, but machine manufacturers have not been spared. For many weeks, Valve had pretended to keep its handheld console - the famous Steam Deck - at the same price: the 512 GB OLED version was priced at 569 euros, while the 1 TB OLED version reached 679 euros. In February, however, the console ran out of stock worldwide. Even more embarrassing, Valve didn't communicate when its flagship product would be back in stock, and weeks went by with nothing to show for it.
The new prices of the two Steam Decks are marked by inflation © Valve
Now we've seen it. The Steam Deck is now back in stock on the Valve store. Well, only the OLED versions, but we knew that: Valve had announced the end of production of the LCD model. However, Valve has undoubtedly been forced to renegotiate its DRAM and NAND supplier contracts, with an immediate effect on console prices. The 512GB OLED version is priced at 779 euros, while the 1TB OLED version is closer to 1,000 euros, at 919 euros. In the former case, we're talking about an increase of 37%, and a further 35% for the larger of the two machines. With the announcement of the Steam Machine just around the corner, this is no time to celebrate, even if we were somewhat expecting it.
