Steam Deck Sales PLUMMET Since The ASTRONOMICAL Price Hike

[00:00:00]I just wanted some sauce on those zingers.

[00:00:06]>> All right, everybody. Welcome to the show. I hope you're having an awesome day. A couple shameless plugs. First and foremost, make sure you sub to this channel, Review Tech USA. Leave a like and a comment. It helps out in the algorithm. I also upload on a pretty regular basis and stream on a fairly regular basis as well. Also, make sure to check me out over on Twitch and now Kick as well. And last, but definitely not least, make sure you check out my ASMR channel. I actually have a new video up there about the MacBook M5. I almost said G5. What error is it? And it was an interesting video. I had a lot of fun making it. And it's it's Don't worry, I'm not nibbling on the microphone. Anyway, I have links to everything I mentioned below in the description and top pin comment. Thank you for the support. So, as you may remember, in late May, the Steam Deck models got astronomical price increases.

[00:01:00]You had a feeling, we had a feeling, I should say, uh that that was going to happen, but it was way worse than we could ever imagine. Uh the 512 GB OLED Steam Deck went from 5.49 to 7.89. The 1 terbte OLED Steam Deck went from 649 to almost a,000 bucks. At that point, just get a goddamn Xbox Ally X, which is significantly more powerful. Well, because of these price increases, the sales of the Steam Deck have cratered.

[00:01:31]They have plummeted an insane amount.

[00:01:34]This comes from kotaku.com. I'll read it to you, then we'll discuss. In May, in response to the multiffactorial cluster of component shortages and RAM prices, Valve significantly raised the price of the Steam Deck between 240 and 300 bucks, depending on the model. I just showed you that. Now, boiling steam is reporting via WCCF that this led to a colossal plunge in purchases with the outlet claiming that since the hike, sales have dropped 82%.

[00:02:09]Now, let's go into more numbers here.

[00:02:11]The Steam Deck OLED to 512 GB went from a reasonable 550 to a hard to justify 790 bucks. While the 1 terbte version leapt from an extremely reasonable 650 bucks to $950, which for about $50 more you could get an Xbox Ally X. Need I say more? At the time, Valve wrote, "Steam Deck itself hasn't changed. These new prices reflect the current state of component costs and the other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole. It's funny that they wrote that this does the Steam Deck itself hasn't changed because with how much the price jumped they they were like people may think there was a hardware upgrade like it's a nextG Steam Deck. So that's why they had to say that that's how bad that price jump was and Valve knew it. Now these numbers here really show you how dire things have gotten for the Steam Deck. It seems this had a pretty brutal effect on sales with the handheld dropping from fifth place to 14th on Steam at the time WCCF wrote its article. Looking at the current US sales charts, it's now slightly higher at 11th, but still significantly down.

[00:03:19]Now, how we got to the 82% drop in Steam Deck sales. This comes from boiling steam did some mathematical wizardry and concluded that this represented, like I said, an 82% decline in weekly shipment volume. And just to really bring home how bad things are for the Steam Deck, they show you how many units they were shifting per week pre the price increase and how many units they're shipping now post the price increase. The site estimates this is a drop from selling between 11,000 and 18,000 Steam Decks a week in 2025 to just 1,400 to 3,000 in July 2026. Now, they're saying to keep in mind that one of the other factors could be that the LCD Steam Deck is discontinued, so there's not that option to buy that cheaper model, which may impact sales, but that's still a huge price drop. And it happened right around the time that the Steam Deck price increases were announced and were official. And again, all these price increases are because of the RAM crunch that's going on because of the demand from AI data centers. And if you think there's going to be any relief from this, the uh ADATA chairman says that this could last for at least not almost at least 10 years. Is he right? Who knows? But just the fact that that number is being floated should alarm the hell out of you. On top of that too, Valve is warning that because RAM prices keep going up, they're saying, "Yeah, the prices you're seeing right now that are already insane, there's a lag in the supply chain." Meaning that there's going to be more price increases. And they said, "We can't rule out that we're not going to have to give the Steam Machine another price increase." As a matter of fact, they kind of hinted that they're probably going to have to. And if you remember this past May, PlayStation hardware sales dropped 58% year-over-year, making this Sony's worst May for hardware sales since the year 2000. I mean, it's it's just common sense, too. It's just common sense. If people don't have the money to buy your product, they can't buy it. You could raise Oh, we have to raise the prices cuz component prices are going up. Okay, great. I can't afford it. You can raise it as much as you want to, but it's going to sit on the store shelf because I can't afford to put it in my home. So, people aren't going to buy it. So, the consoles are going to rot on store shelves. It's just common sense. Look at the Steam Deck. We just talked about it.

[00:05:45]It's almost $1,000 for the highest model of the Steam Deck.

[00:05:50]The one TBTE OLED model is almost a,000 bucks. It literally doesn't make sense anymore. You You're better off buying an Xbox Ally X and putting Steam OS on it.

[00:06:00]It'll it'll give you not only the Steam Deck experience, but it's way more powerful and will handle AAA games way better. And on top of it, too, I just checked. You never know. Prices are increasing all the time. You could still get an Xbox Ally X for $1,000 right now.

[00:06:15]$50 more, way more power. What the hell is the point? But that's not even the point of this video. What I'm getting at is without getting sidetracked is if people can't afford something, you're going to make zero money on it. If they can't buy it, I understand you're talking about component prices and it's more expensive to manufacture the hardware. But if people can't get it, that's it. You're going to make zero money and you had to put out the cost of actually manufacturing it. And here we are. There's only so much you could squeeze out of people before they're like, "No, man. I have to survive. I don't need this toy right now." And here we are. I really think that we're beginning to see this is just the beginning. But all signs are leading to right now another video game crash. The industry will never go away. It's not like it was in the early 80s. But I do see that we're about to hit an iceberg and there's going to be a fundamental shift within gaming. And you know what?

[00:07:12]Maybe it's necessary. May maybe it was time because even without this RAM data center price increase where RAM is astronomically expensive, I think the industry needed a reset. It wasn't sustainable the way it was. I think the RAM AI data center crisis just accelerated its downfall. This is Rich of Review TechUSA signing out. Have a good one. Also, make sure to check out my boss game VTA-439 Mini PC. I think it's a really interesting alternative to the Steam Deck. Link below in the description to that video. [music] >> [music]