Steam Deck Sales Drop By Reported 80 Percent

Steam Deck Sales Drop By An Estimated 80 Percent After Huge Price Hikes Published Jul 22, 2026, 5:58 AM EDT James Lucas is an Executive Editor at TheGamer who has worked in professional journalism since 2018. A Newcastle University graduate with a degree in Journalism, Media, and Culture, they have written hundreds of guides, news stories, and original reports, with bylines in IGN, NME, GaymingMag, and VG247, sourcing interviews with studio heads, legendary industry figures, prominent actors, and more. An expert on FPS games, Soulslikes, RPGs, and survival horror, James has intimate knowledge of a wide variety of titles, providing in-depth coverage and exclusive profiles. Some of the games they have extensively covered include: Half-Life 3, Counter-Strike, Elden Ring, and Fallout. They pride themselves on their consistently thorough research, leveraging nearly a decade of industry experience. You can reach them at James.t@thegamer.com Sign in to your TheGamer account Gaming is already bordering on unaffordable, as publishers dabble with $80 games and expensive subscription services, but the global memory shortage threatens to pile on the costs with $1,000 next-gen consoles and bloated PC component prices. Valve has been hit especially hard by the ‘RAMpocalyse.’ The Steam Machine costs an eye-watering $1,049 despite being weaker than a base PS5, while the Steam Deck price rose by roughly $300. Expectedly, a $789–$949 handheld isn’t selling nearly as well. In a new analysis by Boiling Steam, it estimated that demand has dropped by nearly 80 percent after plummeting from the top five bestsellers on Steam to the bottom-end of the top 15. That might not sound especially bad, but as it explained in its napkin math breakdown, games and hardware ranked between #4–5 make a weekly revenue average of $6–$10 million, whereas those placed between #10 and #15 make around $1.2 to $2.5 million. $800 Handhelds Might Only Be The Beginning Considering those figures, slipping from the top five to #11–14 means that the Steam Deck’s revenue has shrunk by approximately 72–82 percent. And since Steam’s top sellers list is based on overall revenue, not units sold, that placement is actually worse than it seems, as the Steam Deck’s average sales price is now roughly $300 higher than it was before. Valve also discontinued the LCD model. To put that into perspective, Boiling Steam explained that a 72–82 percent decline is equivalent to a drop from selling 11–18k units per week in 2025 to just 1.4k to 3k per week in July 2026. Valve has hit the threshold on what consumers are willing to pay for gaming hardware, and evidently, $789–$949 is too steep for most buyers. Unfortunately, it's only going to get more expensive. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Valve engineer Yazan Aldehayyat explained that “it’s still getting worse,” and that the Steam Machine will likely rise in price even further, tying an anchor around the company's new hardware. Considering the impact the global shortage has already had on tech, thanks to the insatiable demands of AI data centers, we can only expect the Steam Deck, or possible Steam Deck 2, to follow suit. Brand Steam (Valve) Original Release Date February 25, 2022 Original MSRP (USD) $399–$649 Operating System SteamOS 3 (Arch-based) Processor Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32) Resolution 1200 x 800