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

Post by amarant » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:57 PM UTC

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #33

JKCalhoun wrote: post #10

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 m…

Yep. I love valve but let’s not forget that they are making 17+ BILLION dollars a year, 50+ million per employee. Gabe seems like a pretty good guy but he bought a $70m mansion and builds yachts as a side business… If they want to increase or keep market share they need to eat costs somewhere in this. Maybe they are positioned to do that soon if they anticipate another doubling of ram prices like Microsoft does, we c…

Post by functionmouse » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

mashlol wrote: post #34

pipes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to agree with this sentiment. But now I think they engage in some nasty practices, like not allowing developers to list their games on other online stores at cheaper prices. That and they take a large cut (30 percent I think) Vs epic store at 12 percent as far as I can recall. I mostly buy from gog because they give your the download to keep for life. Also I just like them. However getting their games to work…

Valve does allow listing on other stores at other prices. They even allow you to sell Steam keys for your game on other stores for lower prices - and they earn $0 for that while still providing the infrastructure for those players to download/play. Edit: I think for steam key sales actually you're supposed to sell for the same price as Steam, but I can't seem to find the documentatiom stating either way Edit 2: Ah, h…

Post by pjerem » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

jammaloo wrote: post #49

JKCalhoun wrote: post #10

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 m…

Loss leaders only work if they can make the customer spend money to make up for that loss. Commodity hardware can't be sold as a loss leader, because companies will just buy it up at the discount, and then not use it for gaming. An example of this was the PS3, being able to run linux. The US Air Force bought ~1700 PS3s, and built a supercomputer. At launch, the PS3 reportedly lost Sony about $300 per console sold, so…

Post by leoc » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:11 PM UTC

pjerem wrote: post #50

stonedivot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Valve software have you used that is subpar? It must be a lot of it since you said you "generally" find this to be true.

Steam client is pretty bad. It's slow, full of ads, inconsistent, complex ... Its only quality is that everything else is worse and that it have an interesting ecosystem and ok tier customer policies (but that's unrelated to the software). The thing takes several seconds to start on my brand new gaming rig. Not insufferable but given its only usefulness is to list my games and start one, that's a lot.

Post by gramie » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #46

nottorp wrote: post #4

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

Nintendo has already raised the price of the Switch and has announced plans to raise it more, but it's still cheaper because the hardware is worse. I feel like Nintendo is actually really well positioned for these component price increases, because now they benefit from having the weakest hardware. There is only so much most consumers are willing to pay for a gaming console, and now the Switch may be the only one in…