t’s certainly been a journey for Valve. A week prior to the Steam Frame’s launch, we spoke with two engineers at Valve about the project: Joy Lyons, hardware engineer, and Jeremy Selan, software engineer. The memory crisis and the price were a big part of that conversation. From that chat, we can confirm that Valve had aimed for a lower price point than the one it’s launching the Frame for today.
Here’s Lyons on the memory crisis:
“We set out to design this hardware with one particular price in mind, but we’ve made choices to make sure that we’re making a product that is choiceful, that people can purchase, they can upgrade with different features later. But we wanted to make sure we had a base product with really great performance. Then that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world.”
Lyons also said that forecasting for the cost of certain components used in the Steam Frame is an ongoing challenge.
Not exactly boding well of the Steam Deck 2.
if you can delay it, i would seriously postpone buying new hardware today. maybe in a year or two it will be cheaper again, i hope
I’ve been thinking this long enough to reflect upon it, gauge my position and realize I should’ve already jumped on it, then consider that a bit more waiting will work, and then reassess to realize that I should’ve really bought before the second reassessment, and now I still see prices rising. I hate the news as much as you do, but the waiting game is not the optimal route for basically anyone on this platform. Things are not improving anytime soon.
Yeah, I am saying the best time to consume product is now.
There is no chance. All the forecasts for RAM and component shortages are for multiple years, backed up by the fact that contracts for RAM have been signed for multiple years into the future between the fabs and the big tech giants.