Whether the hardware is worth the price hike is a different question all together. Even further, the question is what this may mean for the other hardware products that they have still in the pipeline.
Gamers are one of the angriest customer bases you can have in tech. It's a vocal minority, but they make a lot of noise.
The angry-gamer audience capture is pulling a lot of journalism outlets more toward ragebait stories. Some of the hardware review sites I visited have started to have more headlines about the current thing we're supposed to be angry about than hardware news. YouTube channels are really bad at this, with channels like Gamers Nexus and others shifting to more drama and attack content.
It's not exactly a secret that memory and storage costs have gotten more expensive. It should not be a surprise when a piece of hardware that depends on those gets more expensive too.
That said there is hope for the Steam Machine to at least be similarly priced. I'd expect the COGS to come in cheaper than the deck because it doesn't have a screen, battery, joysticks etc and it's likely easier to assemble in general
I do think there's a bright future for PC handhelds, especially when (not if) ARM processors can be utilized. I'm less sure about that if prices keep rising since that quickly becomes the difference between niche hobbyist device and mainstream gaming portable.
I had a Nintendo Switch 1 and sold it. My wife wanted to play the latest Pokemon release, she did for 2 months, then it sat unused for 3 years in its charging deck.
If you like some titles that Nintendo has to offer, then sure (I never understood the appeal of the Zelda saga for instance).
If you want a portable PC optimized for gaming with a huge library and where you can also do anything else you want, including modding it, 1000$ is still a bargain for what it offers. EDIT: and the library will keep expanding as Proton keeps maturing.
For someone without an existing library, sure, but if you have a massive existing Nintendo/Switch1 or Steam library, that's going to drive your decision making far more than the price tag.
There's definitely a price point for some where it will make sense to rebuild your library on the Switch vs pay the higher cost of a Deck.
I bought an original LCD Steam Deck and wouldn't purchase one if it was that price. This is great news for the Switch, but the Ally X would be the only other viable option right now (~$650)
Maybe if RAM prices go down and hardware becomes affordable again.
I regret not buying one when I had the chance, but I’m not paying a grand for four-year-old hardware. That’s dangerously close to Framework money.
So it's unsurprising that when prices of components go up, a company that has a much lower scale ends up facing worse production problems. Just look at how the price of consumer RAM has basically tripled in the last year. And the Steam deck has to pay for the ram and the internal SSD, and those are also going way up. It's not a cost of goods situation anymore: Prices are now basically set at auction.
It will continue until AI demand for memory goes down, or Micron and such manage to get a whole lot more manufacturing capacity online. And just like during Covid, anyone raising capacity is taking big risks on how long that capacity will need to remain online. See the companies that upped production in 2020 and were wrecked in 2022 because demand collapsed.
This price increase is a hard sell still, makes me stick to the mantra of don't upgrade or buy anything unless there is no other option.
I'll just play different games, read a book, watch TV. There so much media out there, I don't want to be drawn into this AI RAM pricing war on products.
/rant
I definitely wouldn't have done an impulse purchase at that price point.
Not loving the price of hardware right now.
Still incredibly worth it, IMO. The Deck is some of the most fabulous and exciting hardware I've seen out in the last decade, perhaps only trumped by the M-series Apple chips.
It's genuinely great hardware and a great experience. So much so (and because Windows is such a shitpile) I actually moved my Ally to SteamOS too. No regrets.
I think a big part of this is that many (most?) modern games are designed to be played on big screens at a distance (e.g. TV <-> couch). The apparent size of the display in that scenario isn't much different from a Steam Deck held naturally.
I just wish the Deck had VRR. That and the general lack of power are my only real issues with it, and the power isn't that big a deal given the massive back catalog it supports.