The Steam Summer Sale is here, and it brings discounts on hardware as well as software.
Today’s the day, PC gamers. The day we all both dread and delight—the start of another legendary Steam Summer Sale. There are tons of killer discounts on PC games, of course, and we’ll tell you about some hand-picked deals on some darn-good games in a moment. First up, though, let’s talk about these Steam Deck price cuts.
The discount you get depends on the tier of Steam Deck you buy. As the image above describes, the base model comes with 64GB of eMMC storage and normally runs $400; with the 10% discount, you’re looking at $360. The next step up improves both storage speed and capacity with a 256GB NVMe SSD, and it also improves the discount: some $80 down to $450. Finally, the top-tier SKU includes a glass screen, a fancier carrying case, and a 512GB SSD; that model gets a 20% discount putting it at $520, or lower than the usual price of the 256GB version.
Even if you desperately desire a handheld gaming PC, you might be given pause in your Steam Deck purchase by the existence of similar systems with superior hardware, like the ASUS ROG Ally, One-Netbook OneXFly, an AYANEO machine, or perhaps a GPD Win device. All of these systems have their advantages, but they all have one big disadvantage next to the Steam Deck, and that’s their use of commodity hardware and a Windows OS.
By comparison, the Steam Deck runs a bespoke operating system on semi-custom hardware. It offers a superior user experience to any Windows handheld, and it also has better battery life than most of the aforementioned machines thanks to its excellent efficiency. Are we saying that the Steam Deck is better than these other systems? Not universally, no. It does still make a completely valid choice in the face of these other options, though—especially with a 20% discount on the sticker price.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about some game discounts. We didn’t spend a lot of time trawling the store; the big story is about the Deck, really. Still, there are some price cuts that can’t be ignored, and the first one on our list is Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade.
