Valve Won't Increase Steam Deck Price, But Might Look at 'Higher End' Versions
If you were worried that Valve might increase the price of the Steam Deck, fear not. Co-founder Gabe Newell confirmed that the pricing for its portable gaming PC will remain untouched, although the company may look into 'higher end' new models.
During a recent interview, Newell told IGN that Valve has no plans to increase the price of any of the three original hardware configurations for the Steam Deck. "I mean, part of what you do with pricing is you're making a promise to customers. [...] But we wouldn't expect to be adjusting the SKU pricing," Newell said.
That's no surprise in and of itself. Last July, Newell said that hitting the Steam Deck price was "painful" but "critical," noting that the company had to be "very aggressive" with the handheld's cost. Yet the confirmation of no price increase for the current Steam Deck's SKUs is reassuring.
The ongoing chip shortage has been a near-constant negative factor for the industry in recent years. With demand high and supply struggling to keep up, especially in the gaming space, we have seen street prices of graphics cards move higher than the announced MSRPs. Similarly, Analogue announced it had increased the price of its Pocket handheld because of the chip shortage.
Interestingly, Newell said he "would not have guessed" that the $649 Steam Deck model, which includes 512GB of NVMe SSD internal storage and an anti-glare etched glass, had outsold the $399 entry-level model, which has 64GB of slower eMMC internal storage.
According to Newell, the preorder numbers (not disclosed to IGN) and the popularity of the flagship model, has led Valve to think about whether it "should continue to look at higher-end configurations." When asked if Valve was thinking about new Steam Deck
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