This article includes sales estimates for different handhelds from market research firm IDC.
They place total handheld PC sales of the Steam Deck, RoG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and MSI Claw at almost 6 million units for the past 3 years. It’s estimated that the Steam Deck makes up between 3.7 to 4 million of those sales, more than all the other major handheld PC manufacturers combined.
Not enough people seem to get that the Steam Deck isn’t just a console that runs PC games, it’s also a console that runs mods. The first games I played on mine didn’t stretch its graphical capabilities, they were just games like Stardew and Minecraft that I could have played on the Switch, but only on the Steam Deck could I play them my way.
The only catch there is that installing mods can be tricky depending on the game and method. Steam workshop mods and games with integrated mod support (BG3, DRG, etc) are super easy to install mods for, but the mod installation process for many other games can vary on difficulty.
Hopefully this will all change with with the rise of more official Linux mod loaders like the new Nexus mods app.
The Steam Deck arguably created the handheld PC gaming market.
Sure, there were handhelds before, but almost no one gave a shit about them. Gamedevs certainly didn’t.
It wasn’t enough just having the hardware exist, it’s also the massive amount of effort Valve put in to ensure compatibility with a ridiculous number of titles.
The renewed emphasis on controller support in games alone has significant ramifications for the wider community. A lot of players with physical disabilities use input devices that map to controller actions.
“renewed emphasis on controller support”
Eh… I’ve been gaming with a controller on my PC for a very very long time without any issues…
Well if you don’t have any issues, no one else must either…
I still can’t stop salivating what an incredible device it is. I have two!
It’s a full unrestricted linux computer you can dock seamlessly with any usb c hub. Its crazy what you can do with it and the community is so huge already that most of the things you want to do are already done for you.
Made a fan of Valve for life out of me. Bought like 300 games I don’t play already tho so that’s a draw back lol
A year and a half ago, I was looking for a handheld gaming device. I narrowed my search down to the SteamDeck and the Switch. In the end, I picked the Switch as I’ve had much more fun and entertainment with the Nintnedo environment vs the PC gaming world. I really, really want to love the SteamDeck and its abilities but it’s just not happening for me yet. Can someone sell me?
You can play those Switch games plus a ton of other games on the Deck. Apart from technical capability there are 0 restrictions on what you can do with your Deck. You can play Steam games, GOG games, Epic games, Nintendo games, PlayStation games, Commodore 64 games, Arcade games, etc.
I have a couple of uses for my steamdeck. The vast majority of the time it sits in my living room. I use it while I’m watching TV with my wife. The ability to pick it up, resume whatever I’m playing right where I left off is great.
The other use is when I’m traveling. It’s smaller than a laptop, desktop mode is a fully functional Linux operating system, and it connects to any hdmi port with a small dock. That means I can use it to game, and connect it to the TV in the hotel room and watch whatever I want.
I still think Valve need to release the SD2 soon before these manufacturers eat their dinner. I know steam will still make money when these manufacturers succeed, but still, a SD2 is a must.
Their big thing is that the new steam deck 2 has to be a significant performance increase over the existing steam deck, and that’s not really an option yet
Their approach leaves me with conflicting feelings.
On one hand, I dislike how the Steam Deck is among the weaker offerings for performance. On the other hand, I appreciate that it’s not a commodified device like phones, which keep increasing in price with only miniscule incremental improvements year over year.
It wouldn’t be as conflicting if they had better competitors following the yearly-improvement business model, as that would give more of a choice for those who prefer buying a new device each year. But, at least right now, the competing devices are pretty shit. None of them have dual track pads and 4 back buttons in addition to the standard inputs, and they’re all running Windows 11 with a bloatware bandage to cover up the fact that the OS is far from controller-friendly.
Honestly the Steam Deck could never become more powerful and I would be perfectly fine with it. Hardware reliability, ecosystem maturity and quality of life features are what actually matters. The deck already can run several lifetimes of indy games and that is just going to grow.
Chasing performance to improve Steam Deck sales I think is a subpar play, though that being said more powerful hardware is always welcome.
In my opinion the pc gaming market (excluding indies) has an irrational obsession on focusing only on making performance heavy games with extremely taxing system requirements, the Steam Deck blowing up in popularity with its subpar hardware is honestly one of the best things that could happen to the pc gaming industry.
I think as long as PC handheld are winning Valve is more interested in have them ship steam or even better - steamos.
The upgrades from other devices felt very marginal tho it feels like we’re close to where new steamdeck would make sense power wise.
I mean it makes total sense since I’m almost positive that Valve is probably not making any profits from the decks they sell, and their money is from Steam. So, having it on more “mainstream” devices is better for them. Steam deck OLED is actually more powerful than the legion go S from what I’ve seen online so far
Having arch based os become mainstream would be huge for linuc gaming. Steamdeck already is and it just showing how much better linux is for gaming when approached with proper resources.
I was just reading the Verge’s review of legion go s and Bazzite was giving like 10-40% performance improvement over windows - that’s just crazy.
