Steam Deck now costs up to $949, and the Steam Machine looks pricier still

Valve has raised Steam Deck prices by as much as $300, with the change live on the Steam store immediately. The 512GB OLED model jumped from $549 to $789, a $240 bump. The 1TB OLED climbed from $649 to $949, the steeper of the two. That puts the top-end Steam Deck above a PS5 Pro in the US, an odd place for an aging handheld to land.Valve kept things brief. "Steam Deck itself hasn't changed," the company said, pinning the move on rising memory and storage costs plus wider supply pressures across the industry.The real culprit is memory, and AI is why it's scarce. Hyperscalers are buying chips in bulk to feed data centers, draining supply and pushing prices up for everyone else. Valve isn't alone here. Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Lenovo have all raised hardware prices over the past year for the same reason.There's a bit of good news, if you've got the cash to spare. Both OLED models are back in stock after months of patchy availability, with delivery pegged at three to five business days. Refurbished units cost less, though those went up too: $629 for the 512GB OLED and $759 for the 1TB. The discontinued LCD model stays the cheapest way in, at roughly $359 refurbished.The timing raises harder questions about Valve's unreleased Steam Machine. The console-like PC was delayed earlier this year over the same shortages and still has no price tag. Hardware analyst Brad Lynch says he was told months ago the Steam Machine would start higher than current Deck pricing, which now means above $789, possibly past $1,000.For years, gaming hardware got cheaper as it aged. That pattern has flipped. The Deck launched at $399 in 2022 and now starts near $800 for the cheapest new OLED.Whether prices ever fall again is anyone's guess. Valve's only promise was a vague one: it'll say something if anything changes.