Even after the AI bubble pops, even after Trump is done (for good) with starting more wars, trade or otherwise - we clearly have a "new normal" for prices.

I'm not a pessimist in that I do think consumer computing will survive and we will not end up in a subscription-compute-only future. Prices will eventually go back to getting lower over time.

But I am guessing this one-time extreme re-pricing due to Trump's destruction of all consumer-focused price momentum, and the lack of AI regulation, have together cost us a decade before we're back at price parity per compute/RAM/storage costs even despite technological advancements.

Starting to think people are treating these more like Pokemon cards rather than a computer. Gotta scalp 'em all.

Scalpers, im sure

were there like 4 of them in total?

Comments like: They had only 4 or 6 units.

Actually Valve can't count to 3, so there were only 2 (one for each).

It is of course possible that they had something like six of them in stock.

I uhh, misread that as North Korea at first. I need to sleep

I don't get it. 007 has about 60k players so probably just as many sales in the last 24h, and the deck beat that. Who's buying +60k of it at this price?

Still in stock in Canada, so I guess the US part of North America is sold out.

People think americans have no money for anything. This might be true for tens of millions of americans! But there are hundreds of millions of them... and a lot of them have 1k to throw around like it's nothing.

It's just not much money for most of us. Just check our grocery bills, electricity bills, mortgages... a one time 1k is just not much. Especially true for urban areas with millions of inhabitants where rents start around 2k a month and go much, much higher.

People complain about the price, yet they bought it.\ Same didn't happen with Nintendo switch 2? People said "but my friends bought it", pathetic! Time to grow up, we are in differnt times.
Stop buying and you will see how companies will the impact in their pocket.

Well I mean this article is a complete lie. I can buy one right now in the US.

In spite of countless articles at the time littering my feed about the Deck's age, "better" alternatives, and so forth - I bought mine about two years after the initial release. Not one regret. Universal remote for anything I self-host, emulation monster, Cracktorio pipe... It's still easily one of the coolest pieces of kit I own. Glad I got it before now.

What a weird title! Yours, I mean. It's sold out within 24 hours of being made available again after weeks and weeks of not being available. The price hike is just ancillary information.

Price hike in 2 years incoming.

Also this is going to be the thing every kid wants for Xmas. It's almost exactly the same formula that happened with other fab toys over the years.

If I hadn't already bought one before all this AI-induced production chain ruination, but also knowing what I now know about it and how I've used it, I might still pay those prices for it.

They have beaten every other handheld in the ergonomics. After using it, I can't use any other handheld.

Guarantee it's scalpers.

And people will pay them $1200, $1500 or more. Crazy, eh? I would not expect scalpers to jump on the more expensive one that fast, but they must know something we don't.

Let's try to waste their money and not pay them anything?