PlayStation and Xbox have both increased their prices, and the Nintendo Switch 2 will also increase in price later this year.
Valve announced on Wednesday it was raising the price of its Steam Deck OLED handheld gaming console by $300, citing rising memory and storage costs, the latest in a series of price hikes sweeping the world. gamble Hardware industry.
The 512GB OLED model is now priced at $789, up $240 from the previous price of $549. The 1TB model is even more expensive, rising $300 from $649 to $949.
Valve says the hardware itself hasn’t changed.
“These new prices reflect current parts cost conditions across the industry and other global logistics challenges,” the company wrote in a blog post. Certified refurbished models, including older LCD versions, are still available at lower prices.
Exploding demand for artificial intelligence data centers has fueled a global memory shortage over the past few months, causing RAM and storage prices for consumer electronics to skyrocket, a trend the tech industry has dubbed “lamigidon“.
Valve is far from alone. Sony raises PS5 price Earlier this year, it pushed the standard disc and digital versions to $649.99, and the PS5 Pro to $899.99. The PlayStation Portal remote player also climbed to $249.99. Microsoft raises Xbox console prices Twice in 2025. Lenovo’s Legion Go 2 handheld device, launched last October for $1,099, temporarily surged to nearly $2,850 for its high-end 2TB configuration, a 92% increase after component costs soared. The price of the Nintendo Switch 2 console has increased from $449.99 to $499.99 in the United States, effective in September.
Several analysts believe the root cause is a structural shift in the way memory chips are allocated. One report shows that by 2025, OpenAI alone will reserve 40% of the world’s RAM. According to technology research firm Omdia, mainstream PC memory and storage costs will rise 40% to 70% by 2025, and are expected to rise further. Samsung says it has sold out all memory production capacity for the rest of the year and warns of RAM shortages will Things will get worse in 2027.
Valve said it would update customers “if anything changes.”
