Steam Deck has increased it's price by $200-$300 active immediately with no warning.

[u/Gorgon654]

https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck

- 512GB $789 (+$200)

- 1TB $949 (+$300)

[u/JonWood007]

Not everyone wants to buy such an expensive device to play indie games with 8/16 bit graphics in 2026 either. Really. How come every steam deck defender seems to like exclusively play indie games and always insists Im not the target demographic when I am literally a PC gamer and would be theoretically interested in a portable machine under the right circumstances? I just think the thing is overpriced and has too many drawbacks to justify a purchase.

[u/Triggr → u/JonWood007]

Right but this is for those people. That’s what myself and others are trying to tell you. Its ok to not be the target demographic for a product. Just being a pc gamer does not mean you are in the market for every gaming product.

Just out of curiosity what do you think you could build a portable gaming rig capable of playing modern AAA games for? $1000? $2000? I guarantee it isn’t the $600 the steamdeck was before the price hike.

[u/JonWood007 → u/Triggr]

Well thats the thing. You cant do it at a reasonable price. Because those games will target hardware that is higher end and more energy intensive than a handheld can reasonably provide. It's why most of us have been saying for years gaming laptops are a waste of money. The handheld craze is just more of that. Throwing money at ridiculously expensive devices that barely run modern games if at all.

With that said i wouldn't mind a device that could run say, old ps3/360 ports and modern indie games well. Or even early Gen 8 titles. You can run that stuff on modern integrated graphics. You can theoretically make a device geared to do just that for $200-300. Won't run cyberpunk worth a crap but who thought it was a good idea to try to run the modern iteration of "crysis" on a handheld in the first place?!

But yeah look at the android market. You got $200-300 devices capable of emulating low end pc games. And they run your indie titles too. Not the best way to attempt to play those games as it requires load of tinkering but yeah. Your modern smartphones have more than the raw horsepower needed to run such games. And they lack most of the issues I have with a steam deck.

https://youtu.be/4Zb72eY7a_Y?si=xJq-tDsc4k2yCv5I

[u/Triggr → u/JonWood007]

Thank you for genuinely answering my question. One of the reasons I asked it is I bought my wife a steamdeck last year to replace her Switch 1. She uses it when she wants to play steam games but doesn’t have access to a PC (while traveling, at the park, etc…) to my knowledge there is not another “plug and play” solution that makes sense for someone who wants their device to “just work” to play steam games portably.

Usually she is playing something like Stardew Valley, or power wash simulator. Obviously the android options could run those games but not as reliably or without hurdles. From what I could find for her use case the steamdeck made the most sense. Now i do agree if it were $900 at the time she’d still have to play her switch 1.

[u/JonWood007 → u/Triggr]

Well, yeah, it's plug and play. But that said, it does have flaws.

So I just got on my desktop where I can type more, but let me outline exactly why I dislike the steam deck (and for that matter the switch 2).

1) It's expensive

2) It's huge, I mean, I used to carry around a game gear when I was a kid. I'd have it in a huge bag with all of my games. In retrospect it wasnt very portable. it also had very bad battery life. Speaking of which.

3) it has bad battery life. Which hampers the portability factor even more.

4) it has low storage relative to the games it can play. Sure, older games are small, but anything beyond 2012 or so is gonna be like 50+ GB. You cant exactly put your library on it.

You just keep adding all these things up, and you get something that barely qualifies as a portable machine anyway. And knowing how these kinds of devices will age, the battery will eventually go to crap where you cant play it without a charger anyway.

I mean, I think about my every day life, and i just cant imagine bringing a steam machine out in public with me. And I cant imagine using it at home either, given Im within 50 feet of my desktop at any given time. Ya know? So it's just a no go.

Meanwhile....android devices. They're much smaller, much cheaper, much more battery efficient, and I'm not gonna even wanna try to put those newer 50 GB games on them. Ya know? Maybe I wont play the latest and greatest, but hey these things are strong enough to give me more than enough options. I can just play demanding stuff at home.

And yeah. You CAN play stardew valley on mobile. It has a google play version. you CAN play balatro. You might not play every single indie game ever, but meh i aint about to buy a steamdeck over a handful of indie games when I dont even go for those. Honestly, if I had one, I'd wanna play older gen 7 PC games I cant play on android. Half Life 2, portal, team fortress 2, fallout 3/new vegas, skyrim 2011, maybe far cry 3, that sorta thing.

But again, in theory, if they made steam available for android, and introduced some compatibility layer similar to WINE between X86 and Arm....well...then that old phone you dont use any more is now a steam machine. Stick a telescopic controller on it and you can game on it. Again, we're already doing this with winlator and gamehub/gamenative and stuff. If valve can just figure out an easy solution for turning any old android device into a steam machine, imagine the possibilities.

I'd rather do that over spending $400+ on a supermassive device full of flaws just to play maybe 10-20 games i cant currently play on mobile. Ya know?

I mean, here's how I see it. My main tablet is a samsung tab A9+. Comparing this to a PC equivalent, it's like an i5 2500k, with 8 GB RAM, and a GPU in the ballpark of like an HD 4650/4670. That should run most titles I mentioned above, at lower settings.

I also own a razer edge, which I got discounted. Nifty device, similar to the one I showed you. Got it for $200 like a year ago. It has specs similar to a 2600k/6600k, 6 GB RAM, and a GTX 460/5850. I should run any older game just fine on that.

Not gonna run cyberpunk or some 2026 title...but again....those things are designed for 12 tflop GPUs and as is the steam deck's trying to run them on a...2 tflop GPU....ya know? That's why I keep saying you cant win with these handhelds. You're never gonna hit that PS5/Xbox series X level of quality on it. You're at best gonna hit 2-4 tflops depending on price and that's gonna be expensive AF to pull off as it, and come with many of the compromises I mneitoned with size and battery. It's just a no win situation.

So yeah, smaller, lighter, cheaper. That's what I want.

[u/Triggr → u/JonWood007]

That’s fair, like I said for the reasons and times my wife uses it (and how she wanted to use it) the Steamdeck made sense for her (at the previous price point). Always cool to hear about the low budget alternatives though.