I think a lot of people expected it to be in the ~$600 price range, maybe ~$800 at worst. RAM prices made it quite expensive...
Yes, so many people were claiming that it will be around that price point. That seemed straight up delusional to me. Memory price has roughly quadrupled and 32GB DDR5 basically cost the same as the original cheapest steam deck.
It’s not just the ram now, it’s also the storage. A double whammy.