Steam Deck
Yesterday, Valve announced the new handheld platform Steam Deck, somewhat surprisingly. This hardware should bring together all the advantages of PC gaming in a mobile console and come on the market as early as December 2021. Although Steam Deck costs up to 679 euros (the model with the best features), Valve is convinced of its sales success.Gabe Newell made this clear in an interview with IGN magazine. He also explained that the pricing for the handheld was anything but easy.
"The cost was secondary - and very painful. But it was clearly an important aspect of it. First came the performance and the experience , that was the greatest and most important condition that drove us. (...) Our opinion is that if we do it right, we will sell millions of copies and it will clearly establish a product category in which we and other PCs will -Manufacturers can participate. That will bring long-term benefits for us with it. That is roughly the framework in which we think about this matter. "
The announcement of Steam Deck caused quite a stir not only with the players, but in the entire industry. Among other things, Tim Sweeney from the development studio Epic Games spoke up and described it as a "great move" by Valve.
02:52
Steam Deck: Valve announces Nintendo Switch competitors an loadVideoPlayer ('84078', '& sAdSetCsategory = article_featured', 12, '16: 9 ', false, 1376038, false, 277668, 260, false, 0,' ',' ', false); Games If you are interested in buying a Steam Deck, you can place a pre-order now. There is a dedicated section on the official website for this purpose. The price of the handheld is - depending on the version - between 419 and 679 euros.
Source: IGN
Steam Deck is an AMD-powered handheld PC from Valve that runs KDE on Arch Linux
Image: ValveValve has taken the wraps off a portable PC it has called Steam Deck, which is set to begin shipping in the US, Canada, EU, and UK in December.
Ostensibly a handheld gaming device that is in the same realm as the Nintendo Switch, under the hood, the Steam Deck runs SteamOS 3.0, a new version based on Arch Linux, with KDE Plasma used for desktop mode.
While Valve has said the Linux system will use its Proton compatibility layer to run games designed for Windows, the company said users are free to replace it.
'Steam Deck is a PC, and players will be able to install whatever they like, including other OSes,' it said.
Hardware-wise, Valve said it worked with AMD on a custom 4 to 15-watt APU that has a 4-core Zen 2 CPU and 8-core RDNA 2 graphics unit, as well as 16GB of memory. The Deck contains a 7-inch 1280x800-resolution touchscreen, has a number of trackpads, thumbsticks, buttons, and triggers for input. The 40Wh battery is said to allow around two to eight hours of use, and is charged via a single USB-C port that is also used to connect monitors and docks.
The Deck has three storage options: A base level of 64GB eMMC using PCIe Gen 2, and 256GB NVMe SSD and 512GB 'high-speed' NVMe SDD that both use PCIe Gen 3. The storage level chosen determines the cost of the Deck, with unit retailing for $400, $530, and $650 respectively.
There is also a microSD card slot to allow users to store games and have more storage.
Valve said it would also have an official dock that would have one USB-A 3.1 port, two USB-A 2.0 ports, with one ethernet, DisplayPort 1.4, and HDMI ports apiece.
The Deck is far from Valve's first attempt to push Steam OS, with the Linux-based Steam Machines falling flat when they appeared in 2015.
'It's a Linux system, you know this!' says Valve
Image: ValveElsewhere in Linux