Steam Deck completely out of stock in the US, Canada and Asia

Let's hope the bubble around AI will burst soon.

Hope that this accellerates their decision to drop the x86 arcitecture for handheld compute and go all in on ARM for the future version of the SteamDeck, pushing down the cost, size and weight.

Then issues like this will dtill be felt but not as much.

Quoting: LampHope that this accellerates their decision to drop the x86 arcitecture for handheld compute and go all in on ARM

Isn't the CPU that's the bottleneck.

It's RAM, storage and GPU.

ARM processors still need good old main memory.

I wouldn't be surprised that they would introduce some kind of hardware revision to justify price increase. Maybe not steam deck 2 but something like nintendo did with switch oled

Quoting: foxyDRXI wouldn't be surprised that they would introduce some kind of hardware revision to justify price increase. Maybe not steam deck 2 but something like nintendo did with switch oled

Well, they already did that once.

Another reason would be to fill the gap between generations, if that is starting to look wide enough, but it still all depends on what AMD is/was able to supply.

I'm still on the LCD, and it fits my purposes, but if SD2 is likely to come much later than anticipated I'd consider a revised unit. With, say, a bigger battery and some revised hardware design to carry it even further.

And AAA developers still make games like RTX 5080 and 32GB RAM grows on trees!

Quoting: ZlopezLet's hope the bubble around AI will burst soon.

I'd say, before it's too late, but the environmental damage is already being done. Because of this, at least in the US, our dictator-in-chief has thrown us all in on AI, so when it bursts, the economy is going to tank hard. He likely won't even suffer consequences because he'll just blame the democrats or China and his followers will eat it up.

Last edited by Tethys84 on 12 Feb 2026 at 3:31 pm UTC

Quoting: syylk

Quoting: LampHope that this accellerates their decision to drop the x86 arcitecture for handheld compute and go all in on ARM

Isn't the CPU that's the bottleneck.

It's RAM, storage and GPU.

ARM processors still need good old main memory.

You are correct, and I realise I didnt finish my train of thought, that is the cost savings in going over to arm, smaller device etc, can be used to dampen the effect, even just a little, on the sum price with the more expensive memory for the standard sku with a x86 apu with memory and such.

But that is just an arm chair thought, I'm not to well versed in component prices in these devices, there might not be any cost savings at all with the higher end snapdragon cpu's from qualcom.

There is a goldmine of RAM sitting around in e-waste. Who is good with BGA soldering?

Hopefully this does not stall the momentum of Linux on gaming devices. Proton and Steam Deck were driving adoption. Every deck sold was a potential new Linux user. We need more users, to demand more support from studios.

Quoting: ZlopezLet's hope the bubble around AI will burst soon.

Im not sure it's a bubble like the dot.com or 2008 housing crash. This is a different thing entirely. Im not sure a crash would occur in the same way. Even then the RAM that is already taken is not for consumer machines and the contracts to produce Ai server RAM are fully locked in until 2029 in most cases. This probably isn't ending soon, And when it does, the next grift will be incoming using those very data centers.

The fact is the longer this goes on the less budget friendly end user hardware it is reasonable to manufacture vs demand. Everyday office staff requiring a 'budget' $2500 Computer per seat VS a tempting $20 USB dongle + wifi Andriod windows terminal 'with free license' cloud PC. Then for home there is Windows-Xbox CloudOS, ChromeOS or an associated android tablet app ( these tablets end up with minimal inside RAM and specs). And we move to what all tech-corporations have been dreaming about since forever which is:

Tiered access Subscription Cloud OS,
Tiered access Subscription Cloud Applications
Tiered access Subscription Cloud Application Support
Tired access Subscription Cloud Gaming
Tired access Subscription Ai services

No end user control. Own nothing, Be miserable and poor unless exec / shareholder.

Of course just like with Vinyl it never went away, you pay much more for the privalage of owning your own Music physically. But for most regular people, if prices don't normalize then i think we might be doing Google stadia again ..

Quoting: Lofty

Quoting: ZlopezLet's hope the bubble around AI will burst soon.

Im not sure it's a bubble like the dot.com or 2008 housing crash. This is a different thing entirely. Im not sure a crash would occur in the same way.

I think it is very similar, actually . . . sort of to both of them combined. The dotcom crash happened when a whole bunch of high-flying internet startups, which had been handed a whole bunch of venture capitalist investment and whose stock prices had risen very high, turned out to have no prospects of making any money, at which point the stock prices crashed, the companies went bankrupt, and they never paid back the money. The big AI firms do have some revenue, but far, far less than their operating expenses, certainly nothing like enough to pay back their debts. When the optimistic "animal spirits" of the investors give way to the fear that maybe there might not be any more "greater fools" to flip the stock to, they will start to sell, stock prices will tank, and lenders will refuse to lend more money. The companies will go bankrupt, and they will never pay back the massive amounts of money that have been invested in them.

So far, so just like the dotcom crash. However, it is far bigger than the dotcom bubble, and the investment in it has involved a lot of clever dodgy financial shenanigans, which probably involve a lot of leverage. When these go south, the impact will be magnified and wreak havoc in balance sheets of a lot of apparently unrelated places, like the 2008 crash. The fallout will probably bring down crypto and may crash property again, and between all that a whole lot of financial institutions will be deeply vulnerable.