Asus and Lenovo’s handhelds get price hike as Valve pauses some Steam Deck sales

An ROG Ally X show astatine Best Buy shows the higher prices. | Photo by Sean Hollister/The Verge

The archetypal third-party SteamOS handheld, the Lenovo Legion Go S, was expected to outgo $499. The Asus ROG Ally X became the champion Windows gaming handheld astatine a $799 sticker price. But up of the Nintendo Switch 2's launch connected June 5th and Microsoft's Xbox Ally announcement connected June 8th, Asus and Lenovo's handhelds abruptly outgo $100 much than primitively promised successful the US.

And, separately, Valve has temporarily stopped selling the $649 1TB exemplary of its Steam Deck OLED successful the US and Canada, citing unspecified proviso concatenation constraints:

Steam Deck OLED 1TB models are temporarily out-of-stock successful the US and Canada arsenic we accommodate to caller proviso concatenation constraints. We expect being backmost successful banal by extremity of summer, and presently expect prices volition stay the same. We'll update present arsenic soon arsenic we person much clarity connected what the timeline yet looks like.

Mind you, the $549 512GB Steam Deck OLED is the exemplary I'd urge anyhow. But combined with the information that the Intel-powered MSI Claw AI 8 Plus besides got a $100 terms hike soon aft launch, it feels similar Windows makers are nary longer meaningfully competing with the the Steam Deck oregon Switch 2, and I'm opening to wonderment if Microsof …

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.