2026 is going to be a very painful year in tech

As of writing, the Steam Deck is completely unavailable to purchase from Valve in the US with this note at the bottom of the page:

Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages. Steam Deck LCD 256GB is no longer in production, and once sold out will no longer be available.

I don't think it's too bold to say that 2025 was a worldwide shock to the economy and hardware generally, but despite prices rising nearly across the board, the real pain didn't hit yet. But what I'm hearing more and more is that the real pain is coming in 2026. Companies had enough inventory and margins to push the real challenges down the road, but they can't do that forever. The one-two punch of severe tariffs on basically all foreign goods coming into the US, as well as a seemingly infinite demand for RAM, storage, and high end chips (driven largely by AI demand) is really starting to do some damage.

See also:

• Asus confirms their prices will rise in 2026
• Dell prices could go up 10-30%
• All PC prices to rise 8% in 2026, some pre-built PCs shipping without RAM
• Sony likely delaying PS6 until 2029 due to cost/inventory
• Switch 2 price hike likely
• Lenovo and HP expect prices to jump upwards of 20%