alt Hacker NewsI just assumed that Valve ran out of the APUs AMD made for Steam Deck LCD.
There were news/rumours that it was originally designed for Magic Leap 2 and Valve got the leftovers for cheap: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/steam-decks-... .
If they're going to spend a premium on ordering a new batch, they might as well order the APU for the OLED model they charge full price right?
Replies
Ekaros • today at 8:40 AM
In general they probably have run out of parts. Set order quantity of everything going on original LCD model. Some like SSD are semi-fungible. But you get only so many custom pcbs you expect to use. At some point you have perfectly functional or superior model and you decide to kill the old one.
I think this is the correct explanation. The OLED version came with a simplified PCB layout and the chip was manufactured on a smaller process, it seems like your standard mid-life console hardware upgrade, makes sense that they were just getting rid of the old stock of release hardware which has finally run out.