Valve intends 'to continue making devices' in the same handheld category as the Steam Deck

Valve intends 'to continue making devices' in the same hand-held category as the Steam Deck

Game Gear next to Steam Deck next to Switch

(Double credit: Future)

The Steamer Deck isn't going to constitute the last hand-held play PC that Valve creates. Deck designer, Greg Coomer, claims it intends "to continue making devices in this line of products" and that, while it hopes people follow courtship, it's not banking on other manufacturers joining in with their own versions.

Though that is something Gabe Newell himself has stated equally one of the intentions for the Steamer Dump, "to cost establishing a merchandise class that ourselves and other PC manufacturers are expiration to be competent to participate in." That's a family that he thinks is "going to have semipermanent benefits for the States."

Coomer reiterates this during our recent chat with him at Valve HQ.

"We are rosy that this category becomes an actual category where there are multiple choices within it," he says. "We intend to continue fashioning devices in this cartesian product line.

"But we also think it makes sense for other people to fill this place. So, if we're right about that, then there will be more choices within the category, where other manufacturers are participating, making handheld PC gambling units themselves, and calling them something other."

So, these fractional-party devices won't wholly comprise called Steam Decks, just now like they weren't necessarily all titled Steam clean Machines hindmost in the day...

"Yeah, I underestimate it's similar," says Coomer. "Except that we're not banking on that for the existence of the class, and we'Ra resolution the problems ourselves. And we intend to continue doing that."

With the Steam Machines, Valve was completely reliant on its PC manufacturing partners making and selling the systems it was promoting as a new kind of not-Windows gaming PC, one that was meant to use its initiative looping of SteamOS. Unfortunately, SteamOS took longer than expected to ship, and like Alienware ended up merchant vessels their versions of the Steamer Machine with Windows instead.

This time around Valve is encouraging other manufacturers to beat involved, simply is leading the way itself, developing both its own software and computer hardware manus-in-hand to ensure the superior experience attainable.

IT certainly feels like Valve has learned a hatful of lessons from its Steamer Machines.

"But there are lots of other ways that you could skin this," suggests Coomer, "with different features taking priority, different calculations on the cost vs. note value benefits."

Atomic number 2's talking about taking different approaches to the handheld gaming PC than the all-in-one approach Valve has taken with the Steam Bedeck. This isn't the only way designers can go, after all, where other manufacturers jump into the burgeoning class could have completely other ideas around what makes the paragon portable PC.

"Somebody might want to, for instance, make a version of this highly adjusted for long battery life and streaming games from another PC. Which is a bad interesting product. And, you know, information technology's just one version that we'ray not planning to do right away, that mortal other might require to… Lower price, high battery, very different architecturally, technically."

This just highlights the different places that handheld gaming PCs can go, but the Steam Grace itself is a one-size-fits-all approach, offering both local gaming for when you'ray 30,000 foot up in the air, and streaming performance that will surrender marathon play times. Here's hoping it truly delivers on completely the promises we've been ready-made so far.

Dave has been gambling since the years of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his foremost gaming Microcomputer at the warm age of 16, and finally finished bug-fix the Cyrix-settled system around a year later. When atomic number 2 dropped it out of the windowpane. He first started writing for Regular PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World umpteen decades ago, then moved onto Microcomputer Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he's back, piece of writing active the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, play laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.