Steam Deck sells out in North America within 24 hours of price hike

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/05/despite-price-hike-steam-deck-is-already-sold-out-in-north-america/

by frutiger • 2 months ago

44 17 2 months ago

joe_mamba• 2 months ago

TL;DR: Scalpers doing scalper things.

fooqux• 2 months ago

Yeah, but the fact scalpers can immediately turn around and easily sell it for 1k on eBay doesn't detract from the point.

LeoPanthera2• 2 months ago

No-one knows how many they had in stock. It might have been 6.

ironhaven• 2 months ago

No? The website has units available here[0] in the US. I think this article is old. There must have been a very small first shipment that got sold out before the next batch came in

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck

arvid-lind• 2 months ago

the article was posted on 5/28, three days ago. both steam decks are showing as available for me too.

jasonjmcghee• 2 months ago

Note: Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages.

Misleading article

asadotzler2• 2 months ago

"Sold out" is mostly meaningless if we don't know the inventory they moved. Perhaps 5,000 units have rolled off the line over the last week and those all sold. Or maybe 200,000 sold out in one day. We simply don't know what it means to sell out.

My guess is they could sell low double digit thousands per month, in which case selling out temporarily in some regions is an entirely meaningless measure hardly worth an article or even a tweet.

jim334424• 2 months ago

It's not normal for things like this to sell out. Most businesses want to be able to fulfill the sale when the customer is already on their site ready to pay, not make them look elsewhere. Either they're having inventory problems, or they're testing pricing, or they're trying to build hype. It's interesting even though I don't care to own a Steam Deck.

asadotzler2• 2 months ago

It's quite normal because they do have inventory problems because component suppliers are stretched ridiculously thin. Apple, the master of one of the biggest tech hardware supply chains in the world, couldn't get Sony to step up beyond 1M display panels in year one of Vision Pro component production. Now with RAM being not just expensive, but hard to come by, those problems are exacerbated beyond the challenges of the niche display panels that have no market outside of these HMDs. When BOE, Sony Semi, Samsung and SeeYa have maxed their factory space making simple displays that sell at scale, they're not in a hurry to devote precious production lines to niche panels with terrible yields.

canyp• 2 months ago

Looks like arsTechnica mastered the clickbait. The title is misleading, the first sentence contradicts it, the claim is false (there is stock), and even if it weren't it's irrelevant without knowing inventory size. I can think of 0 positive things going for this article.

binarycrusader• 2 months ago

No, they weren't wrong -- it was listed as sold out almost immediately after. It's just out of date now already since it looks like it has been restocked again. Source? I had checked shortly after they said they restocked only to see it was sold out again.

Also, they addressed the inventory size in the fine article. Maybe the snark isn't warranted?

jim334424• 2 months ago

I agree, the title and article say exactly what happened

rationalist• 2 months ago

I used a tracker to be notified of when it become in stock. It went in and out of stock several times that day.

jim334424• 2 months ago

Was curious about the price hike. 512GB OLED model was $549 and is now $789.

bhouston• 2 months ago

It is a little underpowered though compared to modern processors.

LeoPanthera2• 2 months ago

Software is more important than hardware.

jim334424• 2 months ago

Isn't the whole point of this thing the hardware? Cause it runs free software, but you can't find many pocket PCs. But yeah the specs don't matter so much.

Steam Deck sells out in North America within 24 hours of price hike

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