Gabe Newell calls Steam Deck pricing painful

Yesterday the company Valve introduced the Steam Deck, a hybrid of a handheld console and a gaming computer.

In an interview IGN Valve co-founder and CEO Gabe Newell noted that the company is very aggressive about pricing, because finding the right balance between price and performance will be one of the most important factors in the mobile space.

I want to take the device and say, “Oh, everything works and works fast.” The price was secondary and painful. But that was a pretty obvious critical aspect. Productivity and experience were paramount. They were the biggest and most fundamental constraints that drove us.

Gabe Newell

Newell believes that if Valve gets it right, it will sell the Steam Deck in the millions. It will create a product category in which Valve and other PC makers can participate, he says, which will bring long-term benefits to the company.

At the same time, Newell emphasized that the success of the Steam Deck will not be measured by some internal metrics. Valve wants to know if this is the right product and test the assumption that there is tremendous value to both gamers and game developers in expanding the PC ecosystem in this direction.

Formerly Steam Deck praised founder and head Epic Games Tim Sweeney, who called the device a terrific move from Valve. Sweeney specifically noted the openness of the platform, since users can install any program, including other stores and even Windows.

Steam Deck reservations will open today, July 16 at 10:00 AM PDT in the US, Canada, EU and UK. However, Valve tried to ensure a fair checkout process, so the user had to make a purchase on Steam before June of this year to be able to make a reservation in the first 48 hours.

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