Valve has revealed the Steam Deck, a portable gaming PC with surprisingly reasonable price points across its three models, and there’s no shortage of excitement about the potential of the device. And it seems Valve is just as excited as anyone else, and foresees great success for the handheld in terms of sales- if all goes well, at least.
Speaking in an interview with IGN, in addition to speaking about the Steam Deck’s pricing, Valve boss Gabe Newell commented on what Valve’s expectations from the handheld are, saying that if the company handles things properly, it expects to sell “millions of units” of the Steam Deck.
“Our view is, if we’re doing this right, we’re going to be selling these in millions of units, and it’s clearly going to be establishing a product category that ourselves and other PC manufacturers are going to be able to participate in,” Newell said (transcribed by PC Gamer). “And that’s going to have long-term benefits for us. So that’s sort of the frame in which we’re thinking about this.”
He went on to say that above all else, the litmus test Valve is using to measure the Steam Deck’s success is seeing if there is the kind of audience for such a device that they’re hoping there is.
“We don’t have some tie-in ratio—we don’t say, ‘Oh, and then we have to sell eight games for each one of these, otherwise it doesn’t make sense,'” Newell said. “Our calculus is more, ‘Is this the right product, and is it a great way to test out the assumption that there’s a huge amount of value, both to game players and game developers, to extending the PC ecosystem in this direction. That’s the real test, more than anything else.”
The Steam Deck is launching in select regions this December, and reservations have been opened up. You can check out the device’s full specs through here. Valve has confirmed that the handheld runs on a custom build of the SteamOS, and also features a Fast Suspend/Resume functionality.
