Valve stopped selling the cheaper LCD Steam Deck, leaving only the pricier OLED versions. Based on new estimates, that decision may have hurt sales, with weekly units down about 82% from 2025. Even with the higher prices, revenue has reportedly fallen almost as much.
The estimates come from Boiling Steam, a publication that has previously applied the same method to estimate sales of Valve’s Steam Machines. It tracks the Steam Deck’s ranking on Steam’s global best-sellers chart for games and hardware to model approximate sales over time.
Back in 2025, the Steam Deck regularly showed up near the top of Steam’s best-sellers list because buyers could choose between LCD and OLED models. Things looked different after Valve dropped the cheaper LCD version in 2026, leaving only OLED models that started around $300 more. The OLED launch got off to a strong start, but the latest estimates suggest that sales have since slowed considerably.
Boiling Steam estimates weekly Steam Deck sales have declined from approximately 11,000–18,000 units in 2025 to between 1,400 and 3,000 units, a decrease of 82%. Estimated revenue has also fallen by 72%, indicating that higher prices aimed at covering increased supply-chain and component costs have not offset the lower sales volume.
According to Boiling Steam, the Steam Deck made a lot more sense when it cost around $650. At roughly $1,000 for the 1TB version, though, it’s a harder product to justify. The publication says many gamers with that kind of budget will probably end up looking at more powerful options like the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ or the Asus ROG Ally X instead.
The hardware industry has been under pressure as AI-driven chip shortages push costs higher, leaving companies with tough choices on pricing. Boiling Steam says that, if its estimates are accurate, Valve’s upcoming Steam Machines could experience a similar decline in demand. Although it is too early to draw firm conclusions about the Steam Deck’s future, the estimates point to a significant slowdown, and Valve engineers have recently said that the situation could worsen.
Maybe you liked another interesting article?