The golden age of mobile gaming has truly ended

For a few glorious years, a $399 portable gadget could play just about anything you wanted to play. In 2022, Steam Deck finally makes PC gaming portable and At a reasonable price. I’ve played through the vast majority of Al-Din ring On deck, amazed that such a rich world could fit so comfortably in my hands.

Today, try out the Steam Deck Starts at $789 -Almost twice the price.

Likewise, the Nintendo Switch cost $299 at launch — but after Nintendo Switch 2 upgrades and “changes in market conditions,” the starting price for Nintendo’s portable gaming experience is today It will soon be $499more than the cost of a non-disc PS5 at launch.

You might say So what: doesn’t everything cost more now? Welcome to Ramagdon,definitions, and High oil prices Because of Trump’s war on Iran. And I can’t put the blame entirely on Nintendo or Valve. Heck, I applaud them for being among the last to raise prices.

“Console gaming continues its slow, steady march toward becoming a luxury, niche good,” says my colleague Andrew Webster. he wrote earlier this monthpointing out how both Sony and Microsoft had raised prices multiple times and that Nintendo was one of the last companies to hold out. (He also wrote how Everything about purchasing games has become more confusing and expensive – And remember when gaming consoles It used to go down in price instead of up?)

Meanwhile, desktop gamers are starting to worry that their hobby may never become affordable again, now that RAM and storage prices have skyrocketed and every chip maker is chasing AI servers. (Nvidia isn’t even officially a gaming company anymore.)

But mobile devices are a different hit. They were meant to be an affordable alternative to consoles and PC, and I can’t help but feel sad that they’ve had such a short time in the full sun.

There hasn’t been enough time for a real competitor to Valve or Nintendo to emerge – no other manufacturer has meaningfully challenged them on price, Assign the market accordingly. When Microsoft finally woke up to Steam Deck’s threat to push Windows gamers toward Linux, I did it for $1000 instead of $400, Xbox Ally

At $789 instead of $399, Steam Deck may not pose a threat to Microsoft’s dominance in Windows gaming. For those with spare cash, this makes the $1,000 Microsoft/Asus Xbox Ally How much more power You get this price and how Microsoft keeps plugging away To correct its defects.

Every other gaming laptop is more than worth its salt right now: Lenovo Legion Go S Almost double its launch price At a staggering price of $1,579.99, The Legion Go 2 costs around $2,000 With the same chip as Xbox Ally Leaked retail listings indicate that Intel’s new mobile platform won’t be much cheaper. MSI Claw 8 AI Plus It’s gone from $1,000 to $1,299 (although I still see it on sale For “only” $1099.).

At these prices in today’s world, we are not talking about the same type of product anymore. No longer can you try out a mobile device and experience the joy of gaming everywhere. It’s “Maybe you should choose a mobile device instead of something else.”

This kind of zero-sum thinking might affect the value of these portable devices in other ways, too — one of the joys of the Steam Deck was How the biggest PlayStation games were made portablebut Sony said It won’t be bringing its big single-player games to PC anymore. She takes that ball and goes home.

When I bought my Steam Deck in 2022, I wasn’t sure it would pay off, and that I would truly become a portable gamer again. I already had a pretty good home computer.

But I didn’t need to be sure. It costs only $400. That’s not out of pocket, but it’s not rent money either. I know I wouldn’t have bought a $1,000 laptop at that time. I’m torn about whether to do it now.