2026-05-28 11:00:00
The original Steam Deck launched four years ago to massive praise, and I was one of those people who absolutely loved it. It released with a very reasonable entry price of $399, making handheld PC gaming accessible to a massive audience. In 2023, Valve followed up on that success by putting out two new editions of the product featuring OLED screens and a couple of minor hardware tweaks to make the experience a bit nicer. Those models went for $549 and $649.
For a while, this lineup was in a really great place. For a modest amount of money, you could buy the entry-level model, which played games beautifully and just lacked the premium screen, and if you could put up a little extra cash, you could get a better screen and those extra little refinements. This balanced pricing structure held steady for a couple of years, but as we entered 2026, things started to get a bit…rough.
First, Valve announced that the $399 base Steam Deck was no longer being produced. Once the company sold out of its remaining inventory, that budget-friendly model was gone for good. That single move pushed the starting price of the Steam Deck lineup from $399 to $549, which is a pretty significant jump for anyone looking to get into the ecosystem.
Then came the challenges facing the current tech supply chain. A few months ago, both of the OLED Steam Decks went completely out of stock with no word on when they would be available again. Today, they finally came back in stock, but they arrived with a massive catch.
Steam Deck itself hasn't changed; these new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole. We’ll keep you updated if anything changes.
While the hardware is exactly the same as what Valve released in 2023, the pricing has been adjusted. By adjusted, of course, I do not mean the price went down, as console and PC prices historically have done over time. Instead, they were adjusted up by a pretty staggering amount. The two OLED Steam Decks received $240 and $300 price increases, bringing them up to $789 and an eye-watering $949. That's an increase of around 45% for each, which is blistering. And let's not even talk about how close we are to a $1,000 Steam Deck that's mostly full of 2022 tech.
As Valve mentioned in their post about the update, this isn't a case of them simply raising prices to screw over their customers. The reality is that their component costs to build these devices have gone up significantly. We are currently living through a perfect storm of AI companies gobbling up every hardware resource they can find, combined with heavy tariffs across a wide variety of computer hardware, and the result is that we are paying significantly more for tech than we did just a couple of years ago.
It is incredibly frustrating to look at the landscape today. A year ago, the entry price for a Steam Deck was $399. Today, the entry price is double that. That just means fewer people can even consider jumping in.
This looms large over Valve's upcoming hardware, specifically the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame, both of which were supposed to launch this spring, but they were delayed due to these same supply chain struggles. Given what we are seeing with the Steam Deck pricing, I can only suspect these new devices are going to be far more expensive than even our worst predictions. I genuinely worry that the manufacturing costs might be high enough that Valve potentially decides not to release them at all.
That would be a real shame, because the Steam Machine in particular looked like a product where Valve had totally nailed it. The hardware looked great, and SteamOS has evolved into a fantastic experience…it's a console-like ecosystem that I think could have won over a lot of console gamers who are curious about PC gaming. We will have to wait and see what happens next, but for now, this reality absolutely sucks.
2026-05-28 10:03:26
Verity Townsend writing for IGN: about how Dragon Quest 12 has been completely restarted
In a special video to mark Dragon Quest’s 40th anniversary on May 27, Dragon Quest 12 executive producer Yosuke Saito and game designer Yuji Horii shed light on the upcoming game’s current state.
Add Dragon Quest to the list of video game franchises that used to release mainline games every year or two, and now the gaps are enormous. The last game came out 9 years ago, and today they just told us that they have restarted work on the next one. What are we thinking, it'll come out in another 3…4…5 years? More???
Here's another way to look at it: in 2016, the company celebrated their 30th anniversary and there were 10 games in the series. In 2026, they're celebrating their 40th anniversary and there are 11 games in the franchise. Compare that to 6(!) games in their first decade, 2 in the second, and 2 in the third.
2026-05-26 23:15:21
This micro app is properly micro. It's literally just a Mac app that runs in the background that waits for you to hit a keyboard shortcut (Command + Option + Control + N) to see what my next meeting is.
This app solves a problem that basically every other calendar app tries to do in some way as well. The typical way I've seen is to display a countdown and a meeting title in the menu bar, which is okay when you want it, but I find it clutters the experience and can potentially be a distraction as you see the numbers count down through the day. Next Up aims to be a quick way to get what I want to know when I wonder, "wait, what was my next meeting?" and then get out of my way once I know what it is.
This one was a bit of a fun experiment, but it's way too much hassle to finish building this out in any meaningful way. And honestly, it really is a feature that a calendar app should implement, not something I necessarily want to have a dedicated app to do. Fun experiment either way, though.
2026-05-24 23:00:45
2026-05-20 20:14:29
From the Railway blog: Incident Report: May 19, 2026 - GCP Account Suspension
At 22:20 UTC on May 19, Google Cloud placed Railway’s production account into a suspended status incorrectly, as part of an automated action. This action extended to many accounts within Google Cloud. As this was a platform-wide action, there was no proactive outreach to individual customers prior to the restriction.
Quick Reads experienced its first downtime due to this outage, which sucks. I will be very curious to hear what caused the automated suspension.
Railway remains the best solution for me, and this post lays out plans for how they will remove GCP as a blocker as it was in this case to avoid something like this in the future, so here's hoping they nail it.
2026-05-20 20:10:38
Here's a quote from Quinn Nelson's latest video about the MacBook Neo:
The Neo is dominating in its segment because of price, and surrendering that advantage to protect margin would forfeit this entire strategy. Cracking the low end of the market is just the cost of doing business. If they want this beachhead, and I wager that they do, they're willing to pay for it.
Which also means that the recommendation I give is a little bit different than what I had planned. Past Quinn would have said, "Well, just hold off on the Neo because a refreshed 12GB model is right around the corner, probably before a year's end. It's all but inevitable."
Well, but now I don't think that's happening, and the gap in between an 8GB and a 12GB machine that you intend to keep for many years is significant. Now that that bets off the table, it seems that the Neo that you can buy today is the Neo that you'll be able to buy the foreseeable future. So either pull the trigger and suck it up, or, as my recommendation has always gone, find a used MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with more memory, a better chip, faster disk, and frankly, longer-term support for similar amounts of money.
Having said all that, this is a very important computer, and people who buy one will like it.
This can't help but remind me of one of my most controversial reviews I've written in years:
Do I recommend people buy this computer? Sure, it's a capable machine that feels outstanding in the hand, but I’d encourage anyone considering it to also look at the refurbished market. If performance and overall features matter more to you than having the newest thing from Apple, you might find something that better fits your needs for a similar, if not better price.
I still think we're both right here. If your requirement for a new Mac is that you can buy it from an Apple Store, then this is a good Mac you'll enjoy, but if your requirement is more that you want to spend around $600-700 on a Mac, look around at the few year old models you can get. Seriously, just search "MacBook" on Amazon and you might be surprised what other Macs you can get for that money.