On July 15, Valve unveiled its own handheld Steam Deck. For obvious reasons, the device was immediately compared to the Nintendo Switch, and someone even began to bury the Japanese company. Here’s why gamers should be happy for Gabe Newell’s studio and not chew on Big N.
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What is Steam Deck?
Without going into details, the Steam Deck is a hybrid console designed to run games from Valve’s digital store library without dancing with tambourines and drivers. The device is designed for 2-8 hours of operation and is equipped with a 7-inch touchscreen display that supports a resolution of 1280×800, brightness of 400 nits and a refresh rate of 60 Hz.
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Yes, the entire library of Steam games right on your Nintendo Sw … that is, on your Steam Deck.
Source: Valve
For an as yet unannounced price, you can get a docking station to almost completely replace a standard PC in stationary mode. The Steam Deck itself supports connection to accessories via Bluetooth 5.0, USB-C, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Everything else, including a monitor, keyboard and mouse, can be connected via a docking station with DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0, Ethernet, USB 3.1 and two USB 2.0 connectors.
Of course, there is no need to wait for the performance of a top-end PC or a new-generation console from Steam Deck, but you should not write off the novelty completely. The relatively small package houses AMD’s Zen 2 and RDNA 2 APUs at 2.4-3.5 GHz and 1-1.6 GHz, respectively, with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. In terms of power, the device boasts 1.6 teraflops, that is, on par with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
As Valve representatives put it, the Steam Deck is more of a miniature computer with a built-in controller. If desired, the user can completely remove the preinstalled software, install the usual Windows and, in spite of the manufacturer, start playing through the Epic Games Store. Just do not complain later about empty cases in CS: GO and toxic teammates in Dota 2.
New generation price tags
Despite the impressive technical capabilities of the Steam Deck, gamers immediately had several questions for Valve. For example, the company decided to release three models, which differ from each other only in the amount of built-in memory and price. The base model will cost $ 399 and will be equipped with 64GB eMMC storage.
The Steam Deck is almost ready to go wherever you go and grab all the games from Valve’s digital store with you. By the way, the cover is included in the basic kit.
Source: Valve
We can only hope that the Steam Deck will proudly stand alongside the quite successful Valve Index. To do this, developers should seriously invest in a marketing campaign and get to the global release as soon as possible – so far, the console can be pre-ordered only in the USA, Canada, the EU and the UK. Otherwise, the device can very quickly go to the graveyard of other “iron” experiments of Valve.
