Valve’s Steam Deck merges Switch convenience with PC gaming

Valve today has unveiled the Steam Deck, its portable PC gaming machine.

Like the Nintendo Switch, it has support for a dock that will connect the device to a TV. You have to buy the dock separately. You can play games from your Steam library on the machine.

The price will start at $400 with 64 GB of internal storage. A $530 model has 256GB on an SSD. The $650 model has 512GB of SDD internal storage and anti-glare etched glass. Each system has a microSD slot for additional storage. You can find tech specs for the device here. It has 16GB of RAM and a custom APU Zen 2 + RDNA 2 processor. Its software runs on SteamOS 3.0, which is based on Linux.

Systems will start shipping this December in North America and Europe. Valve has worked with hardware before, notably with the Steam Machine PCs and the Valve Index VR platform.

Along with the usual controller buttons, two analog sticks, shoulder pads, and four face buttons, the Steam Deck also has two touch-sensitive pads that players can use to replicate mouse movements, which can be important for many PC games. It also probably explains the odd location of the analog sticks, as the touchpads are located where they usually are found on a controller. There are also two additional grip triggers on the back of the machine. The display is a 7-inch touchscreen. Steam Deck also includes gyro controls.

The placement of the analog sticks is interesting. Usually, these are above or below the direction pad and the face buttons. Here, the analog sticks are next to them, close to the display.