Steam Deck just the beginning for handheld gaming PC category, says Valve

(Paradigm credit: Valve)

Volition Steam Deck be a i off? While that question is difficult to answer earlier units take even reached early buyers' hands, information technology seems that Valve has ambitions to make more handheld gaming PCs in the future, even if other companies don't rush to join them.

"We are hopeful that this category becomes an actual category where in that location are multiple choices within it," Steam Deck designer Greg Coomer told our sis site PC Gamer. "We intend to go on making devices in this production line."

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You may want to take this pledge with a compression of salt, given the company's patchy history of supporting hardware, merely the appetite is at that place for now at least. And the company is hopeful that they won't be the but ones building handheld PCs optimized for gaming.

"Nosotros likewise recall information technology makes sense for other people to make full this space," Coomer continued. "So, if we're correct near that, then at that place will exist more than choices within the category, where other manufacturers are participating, making handheld PC gaming units themselves, and calling them something else."

It's not surprising that Valve would want this, given it would take the force per unit area off the company while driving more people to the Steam store forepart. But it's less obvious what other hardware developers would go out of it.

The ambitious $399 starting toll for Steam Deck is something that Valve president Gabe Newell previously described as "painful" but "critical". Valve tin beget to take a striking on hardware, considering the assumption is that buyers will then spend more coin on the Steam storefront, where Valve takes a xxx% cut on every auction. For the likes of Razer, Alienware and other PC hardware makers, money would accept to be made on the hardware lonely which would be a tall order with Steam Deck then competitively priced.

Still, if any hardware makers do accept up the claiming, at that place are plenty of things they could do to differentiate themselves. Reducing the size would be something with some entreatment, given the electric current model dwarfs the Nintendo Switch and every other handheld e'er made as the tweet below demonstrates, but that's just scratching the surface.

For size comparisons here's a GBA, Vita, Switch, Steam Deck, and a Game Gear! pic.twitter.com/3uPYTJ0NmNAugust 6, 2021

Come across more than

"Somebody might want to, for example, make a version of this highly tuned for long battery life and streaming games from another PC," Coomer continued, describing this equally "a pretty interesting" possibility. "And, you know, information technology's just one version that we're not planning to do right away, that somebody else might want to… Lower cost, higher bombardment, very different architecturally, technically."

While information technology'southward still possible to reserve a Steam Deck from Valve directly, the initial allocations take long been snapped up, and buyers will have to wait until "subsequently Q2 2022" for their units to make it.

More: Valve Steam Deck looks awesome, but I'one thousand waiting until Razer makes one

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, roofing phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are establish all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing upwards the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably find him tackling his ever-growing games backlog. Or, more likely, playing Spelunky for the millionth time.