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I coudnt afford my steam deck today. Honestly.
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2026
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During the height of the crypto boom, I couldn't have afforded my own gaming PC that I built ~4 years earlier. Hardware prices have been such madness lately.
I get that. I'm still chugging away in the 1080 got in 2017, already behind the curve.
So glad I bought my Deck OLED back in ~~2022~~ 2023. Might be my first, last and only gaming rig at this point.
I bought right before the oled but im happy.
The OLED released in late 2023.
I'm so glad that I scored my OneXFly F1 Pro OLED with AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU, second hand on eBay last year. I got it for just around $750 and it was almost mint. I can't see it anywhere close to that price anymore.
I'm going to hold off purchasing gaming hardware for as long as possible, the market is simply ridiculous right now.
I believe it was Plato who once said "Fuck Nintendo".
Mark Twain. Mark Twain said it.
Fuck Nintendo
- Mark Twain
- Plato
This comment had been flagged for copyright by Nintendo for mentioning the name without permission.
Mark Plato gave me permission.
He was one of Cleopatra's husbands so that checks out
Mark Twain actually COULD have said it.
Nintendo existed during his lifetime.
Also, Nintendo still made playing cards as late as the 1980s (for the Japanese market). Kind of crazy to think that they're arguably more experienced at playing cards.
That's cool, I hadn't thought to check.
And they sell boards and pieces for Shogi and Go, apparently.
You go in there and make it about Nintendo
And then everybody started clapping
damn shame. the Deck remains a wonderful device that's plenty powerful for the vast, vast majority of games out there.
I am so damn glad I got the special smoky translucent 1tb OLED when I did. It's served me and my husband very well for gaming and media PC duties, and if push comes to shove I could sell it for more than I bought it for.
I don't envy anyone looking to buy into PC gaming right now, though, that's for damn sure.
Yeah, it's my only gaming device and I'm very happy with it. If they release a steam deck 2 I'll definitely be buying one. Might have to sell a kidney though.
Yeah it's my favorite piece of tech I've gotten in so long
My only regret was not getting the white special edition one, but my OLED is fantastic. Especially with the Satisfye grip. Endless comfort playing slay the spire and Pokemon ROMs.
Be sure to loosen the screw on the back before the case cracks. The one near the vent.
what??
Seems to be a pretty common issue, mine cracked within the past 2 months or so.
Is it also common with the black case?
I believe it's just the clear special edition.
I had been waiting to get one until I could afford it… fuck me right?
fukkin saame
To be fair the Steam Defck being pumped in price puts it on the level of a Ally X, which has better hardware, and I suspect most who wanted a Deck are capable of installing their own OS on better hardware for the same price...
Plus a 2280 slot so if SSD prices are ever sane again you can drop 8TB + 2TB on a sd card in it instead of the horrible overpriced tiny storage slot Valve used. To be fair ASUS did the same with the Flow, and the original Ally, but enough people complained they changed it for the new model.
As someone with the Steam Deck OLED and a Nintendo switch 2 with the LCD screen, I couldn’t imagine paying Ally X prices for an LCD screen.
Deck OLED screen is far and away the best option and I got it for sub $700 back when it launched.
NS2 is incredible piece of kit for the price, and the best way to play any Nintendo exclusives… but I’d rather play any multiplat games on deck OLED.
Well, at least Valve isn;t actively evil.
Nintendo spends more money on lawsuits than they do development and has no concept of quality control these days as opposed to everything up to the NN3DS that still works, even my original brick of a Gameboy. I went through three Switches, before trying to just copy out my saves, only to find they had sued the guy who wrote the utility to protect their crappy cloud storage they use to justify the worst paid online service ever created.
They earned a reputation, and now they ride on it, with inferior hardware and terrible corporate greed as well as an actively antagonistic approach to customers and developers both.
But, to be fair, my ROG Flow tablet from several years ago plays Nintendo games better than Nintendo hardware via Eden. So I guess they are justified in their paranoia as everything works much better now that I quit giving them money.
Well, almost, still have some issues with Xenoblade 2 that played fine on official Nintendo hardware.... Until it broke, again, and they wanted to charge me more to fix it than the whole machne was worth. Losing a $100 pre-order complete pacakge is a smal price to pay for not having to put up with their horrible hardware..
If the Ally X hasn't increased in price it's because they're burning stock. The RAM price increase will hit them too so they will inevitably go up in price or stop selling.
Plus, the Ally doesn't have trackpads and doesn't officially support SteamOS, and I suspect the opposite, i.e. the majority of people who buy a Steam Deck don't want to install their own OS.
Bazzite beats SteamOS, if you want an immutable, though I prefer to have access to my system without trying to jam parts into an image or tack them on with flatpaks.
The Ally X also doesn't officially support Bazzite, so the point I was making remains.
Also, just as subjectively as Bazzite beats SteamOS, NixOS beats Bazzite if you want immutable.
Yeah fair but Lets be fr Here. Steamos and bazzite are Both handheld and General gaming tailored OSes while as you mentioned i doubt that people who wouldnt want to install their own os are willing to tinker with nix
Unfortunately, the Ally X doesnt have trackpads which is must have for games like strategy and point&click. The lack of trackpads in this hardware category is astounding, actually.
Why not just use the touch screen?
The "mouse" moves where my finger lands, and works fine for any game I've played, though I'll admit right clicks ca be a bit fiddly with touch.
Using touch forces me to place the handheld on a table or hold it with one hand repeatedly which I find very uncomfortable. It is also not as precise and I can’t hover for tooltips (essential for point and click).
It doesn't help that the hardware is also quite dated. If they release a more powerful version this at least would justify the price increase to some point, but with the current HW, it is a hard no for me.
... Is that why it sold out immediately and continues to be out of stock?
Not really surprising, when the price goes up for an old device. Its not like consoles that the Steam Deck would be the only way to play PC and Steam games, let alone all the competition on the market for handheld PC devices. On top of it, the availability wasn't guaranteed either.
It is what it is.
I got my LCD Steam Deck in April 2025 for $400 in reaction to Nintendo's Switch 2 reveal being so terrible at the time. Times change. Valve charging $300 more for the SD spooked me and I got a Switch 2 while it's still $450. I figured I won't getting any more gaming hardware for a long time, so I might as well get the last decently affordable console for the foreseeable future.
Hopefully they'll be able to release half-life 3 at a regular price when the time comes
The regular price being $59.99 USD or less.
The Steam Deck should already have been undesirable compared to the more capable rivals that have launched since. The OLED has a brilliant screen but the whole package is just far too bulky in my opinion. I bought a 1TB OLED Deck at the start of the year and returned it immediately and bought a used ROG Ally for half the price.
The more capable rivals were massively more expensive in my opinion, even with the steam deck being way more underpowered, it was still more valuable on a price per performance level.