Windosill: Steam Deck Edition

While the Steam Deck is still one of the best handheld gaming PCs, it isn't worth these marked-up prices.

Ever since the Steam Deck debuted in 2022, it's been one of my favorite devices. It was relatively affordable for a handheld gaming PC, but still powerful enough to play pretty much anything I would realistically play on the go. And while I still love the thing, the recent price increases make it almost impossible to recommend to anyone looking for a budget gaming handheld right now.

In the six months since Valve announced the Steam Machine, PC gaming hardware has continued to get more expensive, and now that the Steam Deck has an official price increase, anyone hoping to get a Steam Machine for less than a thousand bucks is probably going to be disappointed.

Valve has announced a price hike for the Steam Deck OLED in the US--and it's a substantial increase. The 1TB edition is going up from $650 to $950, while the 512GB OLED model is jumping from $550 to $790. The certified refurb models are not going up in price, but if you want a new OLED Steam Deck, prepare to pay more. In a blog post, Valve said prices are going up due to "rising memory and storage costs." The company said the new prices "reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole." Here are the new prices: Steam Deck OLED

It’s one of the biggest questions following Rockstar’s GTA 6 preorder day reveal: will you pay $80 for the Standard Edition or $100 for the Ultimate Edition?