Steam Deck was the best tech expenditure I’ve made in the last five years.
Honestly coolest piece of tech since the iphone.
Wait I thought consoles are supposed to be getting more expensive for old hardware? Did Valve miss the memo?
Valve originally expected to lose money on every Steam Deck sold, but thanks to high volume of units sold and other factors this ended up not being the case. Even with tariffs affecting that bottom line, I think the Decks still ended up being more profitable than they ever expected and they can afford to do sales like this, even if they potentially result in hardware being sold at a loss.
Speaking of which, @Railcar8095@lemm.ee you told me 6 months ago to ping you if tariffs come into effect and the price of the deck doesn’t increase.
Valve is paying the tariffs for now, like most businesses do, but as an overall tactic it’s unsustainable for the long run. And half of them aren’t actually in effect yet anyway because trump keeps pushing the dates back.
My guess would be that they are literally just doing a clearance sale on excess stock to free up some warehouse space somewhere.
Warehouse rent costs money, maybe they dont wanna pay it for nothing, or maybe that’re working on some new shit they need that space for.
FYI lemm.ee doesnt exist anymore but maybe @Railcar8095@lemmy.world is the same person?
My dude Railcar, we are all waiting for your reaction on the price of the steam deck over here.
It’s me haha! But the tariffs war are on hold with the most outrageous frozen until November so…
And this is on a sale of the first version? I would be surprised about a permanent across the board discount, not this.
Sorry, but:
It’s me,
DioRailcar!Yep, yep, I’m never gonna get that baseline level of internet brain poisoning down to zero, am I. -sigh-
It’s me! Do you have the comment by any chance or just remember by heart? As mentioned below, the tariffs are mostly in hold until November (or people start asking again about some files and a distraction is needed).
I vaguely remembered being told to ping someone over tariffs, so I did a search for tariffs within the community. The first post that came up was the one, and I found both your comment and mine pretty easily. Here’s the sopuli link to it.
Valve originally expected to lose money on every Steam Deck sold, but thanks to high volume of units sold and other factors this ended up not being the case.
Link? I thought they never confirmed whether they were making a profit on hardware or not
I’m not sure they ever said it explicitly, but they said that selling the original 64GB LCD deck for $400 was a “painful” price point, and there were hardware pricing estimates that guessed each steam deck cost Valve around $500-550 at launch. It’s been awhile since I looked at it, I’ll see if I can get some of the relevant quotes together.
Would anyone recommend an LCD over an OLED model?
I had both and I find the OLED massively overhyped.
I have an LCD Steam Deck which I got used for around 300$ since I already have a Ps5 and the Deck was my first time trying pc gaming.
Because of how everyone was praising the OLED, I thought the screen would be bad, but it is awesome to my eyes.
The battery management is the annoying part of an handheld, but you also have it, maybe less, with the OLED.
If the prices were the same, I don’t see why someone wouldn’t get an OLED model, but it ain’t the case and I wasn’t be ready to pay more than 300$, so an used LCD was perfect.
I wouldn’t say I recommend it over the OLED, but they both work great. My OG LCD still holding up strong, but the OLED is definitely an improvement in both screen quality and battery.
I mean, I am an OLED Deck owner, and at this price point, if I didn’t already have my OLED Deck?
This is a fucking steal at this price, compare it to non OLED laptops of similar specs/capabilities, then just tack on the price of like a portable membrane keyboard or something.
Yeah sorry, didn’t intend to discourage anyone from the deal - it’s great hardware at an incredible price. If you’re indifferent on the screen or it’s not applicable to your use, you know who you are and should jump on it. If you can’t reasonably swing the dollars for OLED, you should also jump on it.
I still wouldn’t recommend LCD over the OLED, it’s undeniably the better configuration for handheld gaming.
Oh no need to apologize, I too very much prefer the OLED for my own most common use cases…
… but yeah, just wanted to point out that if you maybe want a pretty rock solid mobile gaming device ma bob that is also a laptop when you plug K+M into it, maybe also your existing desktop mon if you have one…
$320 bucks is a fucking steal, if you are maybe, price concscious, in these uh, economic collapse times, yeah, dont go for the premium model, black out your windows and play under the bedsheet like the good ole days rofl!
Lol, better deal than a Switch 2 if you like playing more than just Nintendo games!
(Also you can play almost every single Nintendo game in existence on it)
Pirating Nintendo games is the morally right thing to do.
