Valve has dramatically increased the price of its Steam Deck OLED lineup, pushing the price of the 1TB model past even the PS5 Pro.
In fact, the price increase here is staggering: the 512GB model goes from $549 to $789, while the aforementioned 1TB model goes from $649 to $949. Yes, that a $300 price increase.
The new prices are as follows worldwide:
- Steam Deck 512GB
- $789/£649/€779
- Steam Deck 1TB
- $949/£779/€919
What this will mean for Valve’s Steam Machine-like device, which is expected sometime later this year, is unclear.
But there has already been renewed talk about whether the PS6 will be operational in 2027, which is when the next-generation hardware is expected to be released.
I think it’s worth remembering that Sony has a stronger purchasing power than Valve, since its consoles are designed to sell in the tens of millions.
That gives it an advantage over the Steam maker, as its hand had shipped about six million units as of 2025. PlayStation will always have economies of scale here.
But there are no two ways about it: things are looking very bad complete the consumer electronics sector right now.
This isn’t a case of one company being greedier than another: we’ve seen Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and now Valve. everything plagued by uncontrollable global economic problems. I don’t think so anywhere these companies want to do this.
There is controversy about these extraordinarily profitable organizations he can they eat into their huge profit margins to keep prices down, but I don’t think anyone is motivated to lose $100 or $200 on hardware yet. So this is the situation we are in.
My biggest concern is whether it’s PS6 it does delay, there is no guarantee that the current situation will improve. I have a belief that if Sony plans to release the next generation console next Christmas, they can do it again and hopefully lower the prices later.
But I think at this point we can all agree that sticker shock is going to hit hard.
The technology sector has been rocked by rising memory prices, driven by demand from AI. The economy was also hit by a variety of different storms, including several wars and spending.
There is a suggestion that Sony may have designed the PS6 with cost-cutting in mind, but even if that was their plan when the console was created, much of their hard work will be affected by the current economic climate.
I don’t really know where we go from here: there is still a lot of demand for video games, but the cost of playing them is quickly becoming unaffordable for many.