Valve Brings Back Steam Deck With €200 Price Increase

This is less a single-product pricing story than a live read-through on the memory market’s bargaining power. The important second-order effect is that consumer hardware is now competing with AI infrastructure for the same constrained input set, so the marginal unit of supply is being allocated to the highest-ROI buyer. That shifts pricing power away from device OEMs and toward memory vendors and OEMs with stronger volume commitments, while leaving low-ASP consumer electronics exposed to margin compression or forced price resets.

For gaming hardware, the risk is not demand collapse so much as demand deferral: enthusiasts may still buy, but mainstream buyers will delay until promotions or secondary-market alternatives emerge. A 20-30% price step-up on a mature device typically triggers a disproportionate hit to conversion at the low end, so the elasticity risk is greater than the headline suggests. This also creates a channel-fill problem over the next 1-2 quarters: if retail inventory rebuilds into a weaker demand backdrop, discounts can reappear quickly and punish near-term pricing assumptions.

The broader implication is that AI is effectively putting a floor under DRAM/NAND pricing, but with a lagged benefit to suppliers and an immediate tax on consumer OEM margins. The market may be underestimating how long this can persist: memory capex takes quarters to translate into supply, while AI demand is being pulled forward now. Any easing in pricing likely requires either a slowdown in AI capex or a larger-than-expected fabrication response, both of which are months away rather than weeks.

Contrarian view: the headline price increase may ultimately improve unit economics by filtering out low-intent buyers and protecting the brand from discounting, especially if supply remains tight. That means the bear case on consumer gaming hardware should be focused on volume and mix, not absolute units alone. If the Steam Machine follows with premium pricing, it could validate a higher-end market structure rather than signal broad weakness.