Portable PC gaming's moment arrives with Valve's Steam Deck
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
The Steam Deck. A dock that allows for easy connections to monitors will ship later in 2022. Image: Valve.
One of PC gaming’s top companies is making one of its biggest bets with today’s launch of the Steam Deck.
Why it matters: Valve hopes Steam Deck can make portable high-end PC gaming a lasting thing.
- It’s “the beginning of a new category,” one of Steam Deck’s project leads, Greg Coomer, tells Axios.
- And it’s one that Valve will “be developing and iterating on for a long time to come,” he says.
The details: The Steam Deck ($300-$650) is a powerful portable, a bit larger than a Nintendo Switch but similar in design: a screen flanked by the inputs of a game controller.
- Its face includes a “Steam” button, signaling its capacity to smoothly launch Valve’s Steam store and any customer’s library of games.
- Not all run on Steam Deck–a slow, manual compatibility test is underway, which Coomer estimates has checked about 1,000 games so far. But a great many do, including today’s hot release Elden Ring, Sony’s PlayStation 4 ports Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War, and piles of indie games.
- It’s also kept the system open, letting users of the Linux-based device switch to a desktop to install apps and even other operating systems, such as Windows.
Between the lines: Valve is a software company first, maker of acclaimed games and operator of Steam, the dominant online PC gaming marketplace.
- Its efforts with hardware have had middling success, at best.
- The Valve-backed line of gaming PCs called Steam machines was discontinued years ago.
- Its Index virtual reality headset has impressed, but, like all VR gear, remains relatively niche.
Origin story: Valve had been considering a portable PC for a while, Coomer says, but had to wait until chip development led to a viable intersection of processing muscle and low energy conception.
- “We spun the effort up and gained all the confidence about three years ago that we were actually going to be able to ship it.”
Our impressions: I’ve dabbled with the Steam Deck for a couple of weeks and consider it a revelation.
- The ability to play high-end PC games and quirky indies from my bed or while relaxing is as refreshing as it was to first play Nintendo’s best franchises on a Switch.
- That makes the occasional discovery of an incompatible game–Destiny 2 doesn’t currently run on it–disappointing.
- Navigating its menus is a little clunky, but daily firmware improvements have helped.
What’s next: Steam Deck, as with most hardware launched in this pandemic, will be supply-constrained for a while.
- “We're going to be ramping up as the year goes on into very high volumes, but it's not going to start that way,” Coomer said.
