Valve’s Steam Deck: The Future Of Portable Gaming

Steam Deck
Credit: Valve

The Steam Deck is Valve’s latest go at gaming hardware and gamers all over the world are now wondering if it may just be the future of portable gaming…

What is the Steam Deck?

It is a portable handheld gaming device that has full access to Steam’s ecosystem of titles. Just imagine having all your Steam games at your fingertips, or in this case between your two hands.

According to the details released by Valve, Steam Deck is essentially a portable handheld PC. Valve also pointed out that Steam Deck users will have the freedom to install any other operating system on the device. And they will not be just restricted to using Valve’s own proprietary platform for gaming.

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The Handheld Gaming Marktet

With exciting features, like being able to play any Steam game on the move, or installing Windows on a handheld gaming device, it is no wonder gamers all over the world are really excited about the device.

Since Nintendo Switch came out back in 2017, there hasn’t been any serious alternative handheld gaming device. And if we go back further, portable gaming devices were a dying breed before Nintendo Switch gave new life to this industry.

Smartphones were becoming increasingly powerful each year. And for a certain era, mobile gaming was pretty much just relegated to Android and iOS Smartphone devices.

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The Key Features

  • According to Steam’s website, Steam Deck will be powered with an AMD Zen-based APU, delivering great performance and power usage.
  • The device will come with a 7-inch 1280×800 60 Hz display with an aspect ratio of 16:10. The resolution may seem a little low for a 2021 device but according to Valve, this design choice was made so that the device had extended battery life.
  • It comes equipped with a 40 WHR battery that can give you anywhere from 2hrs to 8hrs of battery life, depending upon the usage.
  • One of the most exciting features Steam Deck will come with is the ability to connect to an external display. The Steam Deck will support up to 4K 120 Hz or 8k 60 Hz via its audio output:

Imagine carrying a literal gaming PC in your pocket that you will be able to plug in any external display anywhere.

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How Much Does The Steam Deck Cost?

The best part about the Steam Deck is its competitive pricing:

The base variant starts at $399 with 64 GB of eMMC storage and a carrying case to hold the device.

Other models are priced at $529 and $649 for 256 GB and 512 GB of NVMe Storage respectively. The top-tier $649 model also comes with special anti-glare glass, a virtual keyboard theme, a custom case, and a steam profile bundle.

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A New Era Of Handheld Gaming

With the success of Nintendo Switch, and now with Valve’s announcement of the Steam Deck, we might see a new era of handheld gaming devices emerge:

And with what we know so far, it sounds like a pretty good deal. And this sentiment is shared by the overall gaming community. After valve announced that you could reserve a Steam Deck with just a small deposit of $5, steam servers were immediately swamped with fans trying to book their device.

There were so many people trying to reserve their devices that the reservation page went down. According to Valve, the first batch of Steam Decks will be shipped to customers in December. But they later added that due to overwhelming response, they will have to push delivery into 2022.

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