On July 15, Valve officially revealed its long-rumored handheld gaming PC, called the Steam Deck. It’s Valve’s answer to the emerging crop of handheld PCs
On July 15, its long-rumored handheld gaming PC, called the Steam Deck. It’s Valve’s answer to the emerging crop of handheld PCs like the GPD Win 3, as well as consoles like the, and the rising interest from gamers to have access to high-quality games on the go. While companies like Google and Microsoft were dipping their toes into the waters of, Valve was building this. A machine that comes with custom-designed hardware like a custom AMD GPU, high-quality buttons, three options for storage and more. There’s a lot to know about the Steam Deck and nearly as much that’s still a mystery. But the curtains have finally been lifted on Steam’s handheld gaming solution. If you’re interested in this machine and want to learn more about it, this guide will walk you through everything there is to know so far. There are still some unknowns, of course. And we’ll address that as it comes up in this post. But, right from the get-go there’s already a lot of detail. That will depend on which model you choose. There are three available models, all of which differ only by the amount of storage they have, and how fast that storage is. You do get a few extra goodies though if you purchase either of the two more expensive models. These however don’t have any impact on the machine’s performance. The Steam Deck starts at $399. This will get you the 64GB model. You can up that to $529 if you want the 256GB model, and if that still isn’t enough, then $649 will net you the 512GB model. The one thing that is worth noting is that the storage on the 64GB model is eMMc. Whereas the other two models have NVMe SSDs for the storage. So that’s where the speed comes from. That will translate to loading games faster. Officially it begins shipping December of 2021. So it’ll be out later this year. Valve has not given an exact date for release yet though. So while it begins shipping in December, it’s unclear exactly in December. Presumably, Valve will want to start shipping these out in time for them to be under the tree as gifts during the holiday. However, Valve also states that shipping will go in the order reservations were received. So keep in mind that your own order could arrive after December of this year. As it just depends on how fast you were to make the reservation. Yes, you will be able to pre-order the Steam Deck. Valve is only allowing those that reserve the hardware to pre-order though, for now at least. begin on July 16 at 10AM PST. While there may or may not be limited stock, you’ll still want to reserve the model you want as fast as you can. So you have a better chance at getting it shipped out as early as possible. Valve hasn’t officially announced when pre-orders go live. But it will notify anyone that reserves the unit when orders are available so you can make the purchase. No. Valve will only allow one Steam Deck reservation per person. So you will only be able to purchase one during the reservation period. You can however buy more than one eventually, once the Steam Deck is available for general purchase. Unfortunately, Valve has not confirmed when that is. So this is your only chance to get one for the time being. As general purchase isn’t going to be available until sometime in 2022. You likely won’t need a Steam account to purchase one when they’re available for general purchase. But for the reservations, a Steam account is going to be required. Valve is also making it a requirement that for the first 48 hours of the reservation period, the Steam account must be in good standing.
