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Valve has a new handheld and I’m blown away by the price.The Steam Deck will launch this December, starting at $400.That price gets you the 64GB model and a Nintendo Switch-like handheld running modern AMD hardware.This includes the following list of specifications for the Steam platform running SteamOS 3.0 based on Arch Linux:
The key specs of the Steam Deck are a quad-core 3.5GHz Zen 2 processor, which should be very efficient, and an incredible 8 RDNA2 compute units.By comparison, the Xbox Series S has 20 RDNA2 CUs clocked at just 1.565GHz.Based on these specs alone, Steam Deck will likely work just as well as an Xbox One or PlayStation 4.
But how come this machine is only $400.Even if you upgrade to faster NVME SSD storage for $529 (256GB) and $649 (512GB), the Steam Deck is still very affordable compared to similar devices.
The Aya Neo is a similar device that costs about $900, but it only has a Vega 6 graphics card.That’s fine, but Vega 6 is several generations behind RDNA 2.And the $1,140 GPD Win 3 uses Intel Irix Xe graphics, which is impressive compared to the old integrated core GPU, but it’s not the same as the RDNA 2.
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So, what’s going on here?Did Valve discover some secret to lowering prices?While I’m sure the company’s engineers did find some key ways to save cash, the reality is they’ll almost certainly lose money on this hardware.Valve CEO Gabe Newell also confirmed this in an interview with IGN.
“I wanted to pick up [Steam Deck] and say, ‘Oh, everything’s working. Everything’s fast. And then the price point is secondary and painful,’” Newell said.“But [price] is obviously a key aspect of it. But first and foremost is performance and experience, [that] is the biggest and most fundamental limitation that drives that.
So Newell confirmed that the company doesn’t want to make any compromises on performance, and based on the specs, I’d expect reality to reflect that.That means Valve has to manufacture components elsewhere, and that’s likely to be a cost.It’s just that it doesn’t seem to pass the cost on to the consumer, and that’s where the pain lies.
To me, this shows that Valve is serious about this nascent PC gaming handheld market.It believes it can occupy this space in both hardware and software.And it’s priced so aggressively that it beats its direct rival—even making the aging Nintendo Switch look worse by comparison.
But even as another company comes in to undercut Valve, it still positions its software as the heart of the handheld market.That’s the crux of what Valve does with the Steam platform.
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Post time: May-24-2022
