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

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

#61

Post by mcphage »

amarant wrote: post #51
Lord-Jobo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are we really complaining that good people make money now? Is poverty a requirement for being a good person? Sounds like thinly veiled self-righteous jealousy to me...

> Is poverty a requirement for being a good person?

Do you suppose those are the only two options? Poverty or billionaire?

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

#62

Post by joezydeco »

k3liutZu wrote: post #40

Anyone remember when hardware prices used to go down?

Yeah, we drove Moore's Law into a wall about a decade ago. Getting smaller and cheaper is now exponentially more expensive and slower to achieve. Call ASML and ask when you can get an EUV machine delivered.

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

#63

Post by kotaKat »

jasonjmcghee wrote: post #36
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…

Not trying to be an apologist for anyone, but if the epic store could charge 30%, it's hard for me to believe they wouldn't.

They charge 63% for user-created items inside Fortnite as of next year. No, you don't get to build your own store inside Fortnite, but you do get to bend over to Epic's price gouging and profiteering of its own.

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

#64

Post by JKCalhoun »

ryukoposting wrote: post #24
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…

Prices for other handhelds have gone through the roof, too. And no, there probably isn't a way to retrofit. Deck OLED's internals were overhauled, too. The entire board is different, up to and including a die shrink, and rotating the SOC. I wouldn't bet on any of the internal ZIF connectors being in the same place.

Guess I'll have to write another game… Bummer.

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

#65

Post by rtkwe »

pjerem wrote: post #55
jammaloo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean, the thing is literally tied (by default but few people are changing that) to the biggest video game selling platform of the planet. Actually given how Valve prints money without doing anything, I'm impressed they don't sell it for 99.99, they would immediately kill Nintendo and Sony (Xbox doesn't need that).

The big question becomes, does a Steam Deck owner buy enough more to make up the subsidy or do they buy about the same as they would have without buying the Deck? For consoles there's little question because the console maker gets a cut of every single sale and it would be REALLY weird to only play previous generation games on a console so that math is easier but for Steam they're looking at people buying it as a secondary device (mostly) as an augment to their existing PC(s).

I also think Valve has/had enough demand at the non fully subsidized price there wasn't much point in selling it for less. They could already sell as many as they wanted to make at the $600+ price point so why subsidize if farther and leave money on the table? That has changed now that they're having to jack the prices up but I think they also just don't want to get into that model and would rather have an ecosystem of healthy competitors they sell games onto.

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

#66

Post by mort96 »

movedx01 wrote: post #18
datakan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally find Valve's software quality subpar but their ethics to be vastly superior to anyone else's. For that reason they are the only place I'll even look for games anymore. They aren't perfect but they at least don't hate me like Epic does.

What ethics do you see being superior in the company known for exposing underages to gambling? The anyone elses must be really bad guys. Yes I like my deck and I respect their contributions to gaming on linux, but Valve is no saint.

The gaming market is full of gambling. Steam has problems in that area but they're miles better than what Apple is doing. My impression of Steam is that it's a game delivery platform where some games sadly have gambling elements. My impression of the App Store is that it's a "gambling for kids" delivery platform.

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

#67

Post by mort96 »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #56
idiotsecant wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care why the experience is the best in the industry, only that it is.

But the comment explicitly says the opposite, that the experience is subpar but they value the ethics more. This comment is pointing out the ethics are not so great.

No, they said the software quality is sub par. I generally agree: Steam isn't a great piece of software, but it works tolerably well and everything surrounding it makes it a better experience than any alternative I know of.

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

#68

Post by NekkoDroid »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #58
amarant wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we really complaining that good people make money now? Is poverty a requirement for being a good person? Sounds like thinly veiled self-righteous jealousy to me...

They are not complaining that Gabe makes money. They are pointing out that Valve can actually afford to make the cube affordable while still making money if they wanted to. It's a choice not forced on them they way it's forced on you.

> They are pointing out that Valve can actually afford to make the cube affordable while still making money if they wanted to.

They could, but since its literally just a PC it would just be subsidising PCs for something they likely aren't gonna make their money back, unlike XBOX or PlayStation, which are locked down and you are forced to use their store where they make the money back.

Will they make some of the subsidisation back? Sure, there will be some gamers that will be able to buy it just from pure numbers, but I feel like a massive chunk would just end up as office PCs with Windows on them in some office if subsidised.

The deck might make more sense to subsidise, but to do it for the gabecube doesn't make sense in the world we live in.

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

#69

Post by joshstrange »

It's a shame because the Steam Deck is the best gaming device I've used in many years. My Xbox One and Xbox Series X are both lackluster compared to my Deck IMHO. And that's without me ever "docking" it, just using it handheld.

I won't buy another Xbox, the Series X was a massive disappointment and AAA games all suck. I found I was just playing decade+ old games on my Series X and while load times might have improved on the newer hardware, it wasn't enough to justify the upgrade. I regret my Series X purchase.

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

#70

Post by schmookeeg »

movedx01 wrote: post #18
datakan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally find Valve's software quality subpar but their ethics to be vastly superior to anyone else's. For that reason they are the only place I'll even look for games anymore. They aren't perfect but they at least don't hate me like Epic does.

What ethics do you see being superior in the company known for exposing underages to gambling? The anyone elses must be really bad guys. Yes I like my deck and I respect their contributions to gaming on linux, but Valve is no saint.

Really? when you hear "steam" you think "the pioneers in exposing underage kids to gambling" ?

I can't even picture gaben with a wispy moustache to twist evilly. I think that would look ridiculous on him. :)

Your "bad guys" are my "people are apparently and inexplicably mad that steam doesn't do their parenting for them" guys.

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