Steam Deck stock returns but there's a big price increase

Valve announced today that the Steam Deck is finally properly back in stock, but they now come with a much higher price tag. I was wondering how long it would be until it happened, as Valve held off quite some time on it while seemingly every other hardware vendor put their prices up.

In the announcement Valve said "Steam Deck itself hasn't changed; these new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole. We’ll keep you updated if anything changes."

New prices (inclusive of VAT where applicable):

• Steam Deck OLED 512GB:

  • USD $789 (originally $549)
  • CAD 1,129 (originally $689)
  • EUR 779 (originally €569)
  • GBP 649 (originally £479)
  • AUD 1,199 (originally $899)
  • PLN 3,279 (originally 2,599 PLN)

• Steam Deck OLED 1TB:

  • USD $949 (originally $649)
  • CAD 1,349 (originally $819)
  • EUR 919 (originally €679)
  • GBP 779 (originally £569)
  • AUD 1,429 (originally $1,049)
  • PLN 3,879 (originally 3,099 PLN)

Those prices are quite a tough pill to swallow compared to the originals, which were pretty great value. That brings the pricing a fair bit closer to more powerful systems from other hardware vendors. Although still nowhere near the price of the likes of the Legion Go 2 (which starts at £1,440!).

What this does is leave me even more concerned on the upcoming Steam Machine and Steam Frame, if we're seeing such prices for the Steam Deck, both are likely to be a bit more than anyone was hoping for.

But, I do hope this means some more developers might look to actually optimise their games further, because hardware to run the latest AAA games is getting crazy expensive. We can certainly hope anyway.

Thank you once again to all the companies pushing generative AI, you're truly destroying everything.