Valve Announces the Steam Deck, a $400 Handheld Gaming PC
After rumors in May, Valve has now officially announced the Steam Deck, a handheld gaming PC arriving later this year. IGN has an exclusive hands-on with the Steam Deck as part of this month’s IGN First, as well as an FAQ with Valve about the device, but here’s the essential info.
The Steam Deck has a form factor similar to that of a slightly larger Nintendo Switch but with the capabilities of a full gaming PC. It runs a modified version of Valve’s SteamOS, complete with a new console-like interface for easy navigation of both the Steam store and your Steam library, but it also provides access to an unrestricted computer desktop where any third-party applications can be installed (including non-Steam games or launchers).
In terms of hardware, the Steam Deck has a 7-inch, 1280×800 resolution, 60hz LCD screen, a custom AMD APU featuring a 4-core, 8-thread CPU paired with 8 RDNA 2 compute units for the GPU, and 16 GBs of LPDDR5 RAM. Practically speaking, that makes it a substantial amount stronger than the Switch, allowing it to run modern games impressively well – as a point of reference, I was able to play Jedi Fallen Order on an in-development Steam Deck at “High” graphical settings with little-to-no issue. It can even suspend running games like a console, and Valve says the intent is really to give players access to their entire Steam library on the go.
To better enable this, the controller setup on either side of the screen has all the buttons, triggers, and full-sized joysticks you’d expect from a modern gamepad and more. The sticks are actually capacitive, meaning they can detect when your thumb is resting on them, and below each one is a small trackpad that can be used for mouse inputs. There are also four back buttons on the rear of the Steam Deck that can be mapped however you see fit, and the display is a multi-input touchscreen.
