#VALVE STEAM DECK GAMES PRO#
#VALVE STEAM DECK GAMES SOFTWARE#
#VALVE STEAM DECK GAMES PC#

If 2022 is the year of the Steam Deck, then 2023 will be the year we see Valve's decade of dabbling with hardware evolve into its biggest priority.Valve is introducing a rating system that will let players know which of Steam’s 50,000 games are compatible with the Steam Deck, the handheld gaming PC due to launch by the end of the year. The Steam Deck could easily become that: the go-to PC if you want to spend $500 or care about portability, and the first in a product line that could bring millions more players to Steam.

There's never been a single device or brand synonymous with PC gaming.

#VALVE STEAM DECK GAMES SOFTWARE#

And the SteamOS software that held back Steam Machines in 2014 may have matured enough to now be Valve's ace in the hole.Įven if the Steam Deck doesn't shake the foundations of PC gaming enough to pull most PC gamers away from their desktops, a modest success could still be transformative for Valve. But none of those devices really had a proven audience eager and waiting for them-or a pitch as strong as playing all your PC games on the go, without the sacrifices of all those previous handheld PCs. Valve's play for the living room with Steam Machines was an infamous flop the Steam Controller never caught on its VR headsets remain too expensive to approach Oculus's popularity. Looking back, Valve's previous hardware experiments mostly failed. Maybe I'm overestimating the Steam Deck's chances. The Switch cannot play big budget games released in 2022 without massive sacrifices. The Switch has primed millions of players to appreciate console-quality games made portable, but many of those games like Apex Legends and Ark: Survival Evolved now run at such low resolutions or low framerates that they're barely playable. Steam's gargantuan library includes PC games from 30 years ago and Sony's God of War side-by-side. Outside of Nintendo exclusives, there's barely a distinction between 'console games' and 'PC games' anymore-most games today are released on as many platforms as possible. Still, the timing is good for the Steam Deck. I'd be silly to suggest the Steam Deck will suddenly outsell the Switch-raw power has never been enough to beat a Nintendo handheld.

#VALVE STEAM DECK GAMES PRO#

But if component shortages stretch on, it may well become a more attractive first or only PC.Īnd at least in terms of power, it's the Switch Pro many people were hoping to see last year when Nintendo disappointingly just slapped a bigger OLED screen onto the Switch. The Steam Deck's biggest audience will still likely be PC gamers who use it as a secondary device, as a more convenient way to plow through their backlogs of Steam Sale games away from their desks. Pre-ordering the Steam Deck could mean a long wait, but Valve's Greg Coomer told me in August that 'It's our job to produce units as fast as we can in the highest quantity we can, so a lot of us are working on how we can make more Steam Decks. A $529 Steam Deck looks pretty good next to an $8 someone's trying to flip on Ebay. But the continued shortages could also end up being an opportunity. 2021 was a bad year for PC gaming hardware. In one sense Valve is selling the Steam Deck at a difficult time-global hardware shortages already forced Valve to push the launch back by a few months, while graphics cards and some other components remain in critically short supply. The Switch was an ideal companion for a gaming PC, but now the Steam Deck can fill that role. Some games just felt right on the Switch's screen, played propped up in bed or on the go.

Many PC gamers knew they could get a game cheaper on Steam, but opted to buy and play it on the Switch instead for the portability. When Nintendo released the Switch, it managed to draw people away from the places they were already playing games. And convenience shouldn't be underestimated. That convenience is the key thing handheld gaming PCs have been missing until this point.

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