Yes, consumer electronics are constantly increasing in price alongside huge inflation and everybody getting laid off, but have you considered the value in having a personal assistant AI agent that can lie about the time for your appointment and autonomously delete your entire calendar? Some compromises have to be made in the AI-driven future.
Well hey, at least these systems also consume massive amounts of electricity either raising your electric bill or your gas bill depending on how they decide to power the data center. Nothing like a 30% increase in your power bill because your local county commissioners got a sweet $300k campaign donation from a foreign billionaire.
And of course if they burn natural gas for their power you get polluted air from your neighbors.
Don't forget that this is all intentional and by design. If the tech oligarchs have their way we will all have no choice but to rent compute by the token within the next 3-5 years. The era of the personal computer is over. Current supply chains & production capacity can't accomodate both the AI hyperscalers and regular consumers.
Trillion dollar companies like Apple will still be able to get their hands on whatever they need, albeit at worse prices. Individual consumers trying to buy those components directly probably won't.
I really can't see the Steam Machine being a success at this point, if it ever even releases. It seems like they were really banking on hardware steadily getting cheaper like it pretty much always has in the past. A $1000+ Steam Machine makes the PS5 look like a good deal even after the price increases.
That was my first thought, there is no way they are going to hit that console price point anytime soon... so they can either release now at a price that reflects the reality of the market, or hold on even longer hoping for a near-term miracle. If they wait too long, they risk not being a good value due to aged hardware.
The performance envelope was already uninspiring. They said it does better than some big percentage of the people on Steam, but it's not an obvious upgrade over my 2023 Legion Go handheld in anything but a bit more RAM (and it's only 8GB discrete VRAM, which may be paltry for 4K).
Its not unless its subsidised which valve may chose to do given that the enthusiast PC marked is crashing, which in time will eat some of their growth.
It won't, but that's an arbitrary number, and due to the sudden spike of inflation, $2000 is the new $1000. Yes your wage just got cut in half and you didn't notice.
The only silver lining here is potentially that companies will try to optimize a bit more. I just bought that Marvel Cosmic Invasion game and it's pretty fun. You can can turn the TDP and GPU clock all the way down on an LCD Steam Deck and still hold 60 FPS. I get that it's effectively an indie game, but it's nice to see something with -- dare I say -- appropriate system requirements.
Like high gas prices leading to sudden releases of fuel efficient vehicles in the 70s during the embargo. I love that most indie games I can find will run on a toaster.
I bought an OLED version when it was released, but still haven't gotten around to selling my original LCD version. Never has laziness been so profitable. I'll probably at least break even on the LCD model, if not pay for the price of the OLED model itself.
Really tempted to sell mine. I have a 1TB OLED that I think I paid $649 for last year. It's a dumpsterfire* of a device and I hate it and never use it. Could easily sell it for more than I paid for it.
* Too big and heavy to hold without sitting and resting it on my lap, which is a horribly-unergonomic position with neck strain. Controls are widely-separated such that even with my giant sasquatch hands, it's hard to reach all the buttons. So many buttons on it that there's nowhere to hold it without accidentally pressing them (I accidentally turn it off every time I use it). Loud fan and hot air blowing out. Few games I like that work well without a keyboard and mouse. Even fewer that have readable text on the tiny screen. CPU/GPU too weak for many games. Almost no games targeting the platform so UX feels hacky. Honestly I don't know what the market for this is. I bought it to use in my RV and figured even if I didn't use it as a console, it'd be good connected to a proper monitor/keyboard/mouse, but a lot of titles don't work well under emulation, even after eliminating the hardware UX issues.
I got an Xbox Ally X (with bazzite as Gabe intended) after enjoying the steam deck so much. I get it's not for everyone, but I wasn't playing games on my desktop due to life/kids/etc. The handheld is awesome for my personal case, I love casual games and use it on the couch/plane/bed. If you want a PC with a keyboard and mouse that works with everything, get a gaming laptop. If you want to pull out a game for 15 minutes, play, then hit sleep and come back later, a handheld is absolutely the best way to go.
I bought two LCD models before the OLED came out and have constantly bounced between buyer's remorse (I only use one of them) and feeling okay about this decision.
Currently, I'm feeling like it was a pretty wise move.
There is a good reason not to buy OLED deck. Once you play on OLED screen you will certainly want your laptop and or deaktop screen to also be OLED. That's it.
Never had such issue with a phone, but after Deck started feeling I missing that screen quality elsewhere.
One pro of the LCDs is that I'm moderately sure they don't flicker (PWM) as (bad) as the OLED ones would.
Source: 99% of oleds cause terrible eye strain. Flicker affects people even when they don't realise it (studied for office workers during the CFL era iirc.)
That must be a small percentage of the Steam Deck userbase that's impacted by this as I have the OLED model and it does not flicker or cause _me_ eye strain, even when at the absurdly low brightness levels it can reach.
I don't think it's much of a wonder why people are turning to 'anti-tech extremism' as everything around them suddenly is no longer consumer priced. Seeing computing rise anywhere from 1.5x to 2x in pricing while the job market is fucked is enough to make me extremely bitter.
Inflation adjusted gaming is about the same as its always been. Hurts to see prices go up but it happened during the SNES days too, and the job market was more fucked then.
Exactly. Not only have the prices gone up, they've gone up for no real reason other than some CEOs are attempting to take over society. The average person isn't even seeing much of the upside of modern technology anymore, just the downsides. Gadgets no longer get cheaper over time, experiences no longer improve over time, and every new startup or innovation seems to be used to make their lives worse, whether directly or indirectly.
The average person does not really benefit from recent AI tech - and the minuscule benefits they may possibly sometimes get are easily outweighed by the negative effects. Say what you will about the morality of bread and circuses, but making them increasingly out of reach seems like a very bad idea to me.
Doesn’t help that prices are skyrocketing because of circular investing and spending between companies trying to amass as many data centers as possible to cash in on AI hype. These same companies keep pushing this idea that everything you know and do is worthless in the face of prompt-fu and that you have to use these platforms they’re pushing or you’re NGMI.
I’m much more concerned by the skyrocketing cost of housing, energy, food, and transport than the cost of tech luxuries.
If I never buy another GPU or console again, there’s more than enough quality gaming for several lifetimes available on older hardware and often very inexpensively.
>I’m much more concerned by the skyrocketing cost of housing, energy, food, and transport than the cost of tech luxuries.
I'm with you, but given that I have no control over any of them I wouldn't have minded that my luxury fun was still cheap. About a decade or so ago, I remember saying something like "We're in an odd period historically: if you except housing, healthcare, and education, everything else is _stunningly_ cheap by historical norms." I wasn't trying to discount the importance of those things, but it felt like there was at least some relief among the rising costs there. Now, it seems like "everything else" has caught up and it's simply that everything is expensive.
Those same components are contained in tech everything, not just "luxuries". If you want to stick with your current hardware, you just need to hope that your existing setup will outlast you and never have any part failures.
I'm glad at least this happened after consumer electronics plateaued. I don't know about you but in my estimation a 5 year old phone and mid-tier gaming PC are holding up fine. The limiting factor in features is more crappy software than hardware. Unless you're looking to run local AI stuff, I guess? But I don't figure the anti-tech crowd would want to do that.
Give us replaceable batteries and the right to update our own operating systems and I think we can survive unaffordable RAM for decades if it comes to it.
I'm completely on board with your view, I'm still rocking a 1080ti. But I'd also like to buy my kids a gaming computer someday, and I don't know when that will be, especially with prices being what they are. It took a shockingly long amount of time for a graphics card to come out at 1080 performance that costed less than a 1080.
My thirteen year old PC is holding up fine. I've replaced the disk (condition of me getting it; it was a disused Windows machine), installed Ubuntu, Debian, then Kubuntu, and upgraded the video card, but beyond that...basically as it shipped from Dell. The last BIOS update was 2013.
Yes, consumer electronics are constantly increasing in price alongside huge inflation and everybody getting laid off, but have you considered the value in having a personal assistant AI agent that can lie about the time for your appointment and autonomously delete your entire calendar? Some compromises have to be made in the AI-driven future.
I have not, please tell me more.
Well hey, at least these systems also consume massive amounts of electricity either raising your electric bill or your gas bill depending on how they decide to power the data center. Nothing like a 30% increase in your power bill because your local county commissioners got a sweet $300k campaign donation from a foreign billionaire.
And of course if they burn natural gas for their power you get polluted air from your neighbors.
Never thought I'd be living in a world where my tech hardware purchases INCREASE in value over the years.
This feels like a sign of something very bad happening soon
Don't forget that this is all intentional and by design. If the tech oligarchs have their way we will all have no choice but to rent compute by the token within the next 3-5 years. The era of the personal computer is over. Current supply chains & production capacity can't accomodate both the AI hyperscalers and regular consumers.
Thats one hell of a leap you got there. Things have gotten more expensive before. It won't be the last
8x more expensive? I doubt things have ever gotten anywhere remotely near this crazy this bought out this not for sale this fast.
Tulips?
[delayed]
You're acting like companies like Apple would simply let "the tech oligarchs" make 20% of their revenue disappear
Trillion dollar companies like Apple will still be able to get their hands on whatever they need, albeit at worse prices. Individual consumers trying to buy those components directly probably won't.
See what happens when China is not around to save you with manufacturing?
Pray China figures out semiconductor manufacturing at scale. Of course, that will spell the end for <redacted>.
China already figured out RAM and SSD chips manufacturing. Even Apple wanted to make a deal with YMTC and CXMT:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/is-apple-set-to-turn-to-china-...
Both were struck by US sanctions.
Save us with their cheap labor and worse working conditions? Damn, if only we were more like China we wouldn't so dependent on them...
The wages of the Taiwanese workers aren't that different. At least be consistent.
By <redacted>, you mean the USA and Israel? I guess you don't just mean the USA, or you wouldn't have redacted it. Or maybe you mean capitalism?
I think they meant Taiwan.
I think they mean Taiwan
I read <redacted> as “Taiwan”?
> The 1TB OLED model got a $300 price increase, and now costs $949.
How is it possible for the steam machine to be under $1,000?
I really can't see the Steam Machine being a success at this point, if it ever even releases. It seems like they were really banking on hardware steadily getting cheaper like it pretty much always has in the past. A $1000+ Steam Machine makes the PS5 look like a good deal even after the price increases.
That was my first thought, there is no way they are going to hit that console price point anytime soon... so they can either release now at a price that reflects the reality of the market, or hold on even longer hoping for a near-term miracle. If they wait too long, they risk not being a good value due to aged hardware.
The performance envelope was already uninspiring. They said it does better than some big percentage of the people on Steam, but it's not an obvious upgrade over my 2023 Legion Go handheld in anything but a bit more RAM (and it's only 8GB discrete VRAM, which may be paltry for 4K).
The console price point will go up too and set different expectations.
I'd be interested in a bare bones version. That way I could shop for RAM and an SSD myself.
Its not unless its subsidised which valve may chose to do given that the enthusiast PC marked is crashing, which in time will eat some of their growth.
It won't, but that's an arbitrary number, and due to the sudden spike of inflation, $2000 is the new $1000. Yes your wage just got cut in half and you didn't notice.
Yeah, in this climate that won't be happening.
...no OLED screen?
I'm grasping at very few straws here...
It very specifically says:
> The 1TB OLED model
That said, I thought HN was annoyed at Valve for taking a 30% cut, so that's probably how they can keep the Deck under 1k.
The only silver lining here is potentially that companies will try to optimize a bit more. I just bought that Marvel Cosmic Invasion game and it's pretty fun. You can can turn the TDP and GPU clock all the way down on an LCD Steam Deck and still hold 60 FPS. I get that it's effectively an indie game, but it's nice to see something with -- dare I say -- appropriate system requirements.
Like high gas prices leading to sudden releases of fuel efficient vehicles in the 70s during the embargo. I love that most indie games I can find will run on a toaster.
I bought an OLED version when it was released, but still haven't gotten around to selling my original LCD version. Never has laziness been so profitable. I'll probably at least break even on the LCD model, if not pay for the price of the OLED model itself.
https://archive.is/In4qW
Really tempted to sell mine. I have a 1TB OLED that I think I paid $649 for last year. It's a dumpsterfire* of a device and I hate it and never use it. Could easily sell it for more than I paid for it.
* Too big and heavy to hold without sitting and resting it on my lap, which is a horribly-unergonomic position with neck strain. Controls are widely-separated such that even with my giant sasquatch hands, it's hard to reach all the buttons. So many buttons on it that there's nowhere to hold it without accidentally pressing them (I accidentally turn it off every time I use it). Loud fan and hot air blowing out. Few games I like that work well without a keyboard and mouse. Even fewer that have readable text on the tiny screen. CPU/GPU too weak for many games. Almost no games targeting the platform so UX feels hacky. Honestly I don't know what the market for this is. I bought it to use in my RV and figured even if I didn't use it as a console, it'd be good connected to a proper monitor/keyboard/mouse, but a lot of titles don't work well under emulation, even after eliminating the hardware UX issues.
Ok, I have to ask. How do you accidentally turn it off? The power button is at the top and it's flush. It's not like you can hit it accidentally.
I got an Xbox Ally X (with bazzite as Gabe intended) after enjoying the steam deck so much. I get it's not for everyone, but I wasn't playing games on my desktop due to life/kids/etc. The handheld is awesome for my personal case, I love casual games and use it on the couch/plane/bed. If you want a PC with a keyboard and mouse that works with everything, get a gaming laptop. If you want to pull out a game for 15 minutes, play, then hit sleep and come back later, a handheld is absolutely the best way to go.
Oh no, I was hoping to get the Frame under 1000€
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steam_hardware/announcemen...
Good thing I bought two already.
I bought two LCD models before the OLED came out and have constantly bounced between buyer's remorse (I only use one of them) and feeling okay about this decision.
Currently, I'm feeling like it was a pretty wise move.
There is a good reason not to buy OLED deck. Once you play on OLED screen you will certainly want your laptop and or deaktop screen to also be OLED. That's it.
Never had such issue with a phone, but after Deck started feeling I missing that screen quality elsewhere.
One pro of the LCDs is that I'm moderately sure they don't flicker (PWM) as (bad) as the OLED ones would.
Source: 99% of oleds cause terrible eye strain. Flicker affects people even when they don't realise it (studied for office workers during the CFL era iirc.)
That must be a small percentage of the Steam Deck userbase that's impacted by this as I have the OLED model and it does not flicker or cause _me_ eye strain, even when at the absurdly low brightness levels it can reach.
I don't think it's much of a wonder why people are turning to 'anti-tech extremism' as everything around them suddenly is no longer consumer priced. Seeing computing rise anywhere from 1.5x to 2x in pricing while the job market is fucked is enough to make me extremely bitter.
Inflation adjusted gaming is about the same as its always been. Hurts to see prices go up but it happened during the SNES days too, and the job market was more fucked then.
Exactly. Not only have the prices gone up, they've gone up for no real reason other than some CEOs are attempting to take over society. The average person isn't even seeing much of the upside of modern technology anymore, just the downsides. Gadgets no longer get cheaper over time, experiences no longer improve over time, and every new startup or innovation seems to be used to make their lives worse, whether directly or indirectly.
The average person does not really benefit from recent AI tech - and the minuscule benefits they may possibly sometimes get are easily outweighed by the negative effects. Say what you will about the morality of bread and circuses, but making them increasingly out of reach seems like a very bad idea to me.
>The average person does not really benefit from recent AI tech
Really? Most people I know seem to have found the chatbots tremendously helpful. It's much faster than researching via a bunch of google searches.
Doesn’t help that prices are skyrocketing because of circular investing and spending between companies trying to amass as many data centers as possible to cash in on AI hype. These same companies keep pushing this idea that everything you know and do is worthless in the face of prompt-fu and that you have to use these platforms they’re pushing or you’re NGMI.
What does this have to do with the steam deck?
PC hardware like the Steam Deck is more expensive due to demand from AI hype.
Where do you think all the supply that the Steam Deck was previously leveraging went?
RAM is expensive and there is scarcity in getting a supply of it = all consumer electronics will cost more
I’m much more concerned by the skyrocketing cost of housing, energy, food, and transport than the cost of tech luxuries.
If I never buy another GPU or console again, there’s more than enough quality gaming for several lifetimes available on older hardware and often very inexpensively.
>I’m much more concerned by the skyrocketing cost of housing, energy, food, and transport than the cost of tech luxuries.
I'm with you, but given that I have no control over any of them I wouldn't have minded that my luxury fun was still cheap. About a decade or so ago, I remember saying something like "We're in an odd period historically: if you except housing, healthcare, and education, everything else is _stunningly_ cheap by historical norms." I wasn't trying to discount the importance of those things, but it felt like there was at least some relief among the rising costs there. Now, it seems like "everything else" has caught up and it's simply that everything is expensive.
Those same components are contained in tech everything, not just "luxuries". If you want to stick with your current hardware, you just need to hope that your existing setup will outlast you and never have any part failures.
I'm glad at least this happened after consumer electronics plateaued. I don't know about you but in my estimation a 5 year old phone and mid-tier gaming PC are holding up fine. The limiting factor in features is more crappy software than hardware. Unless you're looking to run local AI stuff, I guess? But I don't figure the anti-tech crowd would want to do that.
Give us replaceable batteries and the right to update our own operating systems and I think we can survive unaffordable RAM for decades if it comes to it.
I'm completely on board with your view, I'm still rocking a 1080ti. But I'd also like to buy my kids a gaming computer someday, and I don't know when that will be, especially with prices being what they are. It took a shockingly long amount of time for a graphics card to come out at 1080 performance that costed less than a 1080.
My thirteen year old PC is holding up fine. I've replaced the disk (condition of me getting it; it was a disused Windows machine), installed Ubuntu, Debian, then Kubuntu, and upgraded the video card, but beyond that...basically as it shipped from Dell. The last BIOS update was 2013.