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Valve has revealed the Steam Deck, a handheld gaming PC with a seven inch screen shipping in December from £349.
The device features a 7″ touchscreen, two thumbsticks and a pair of trackpads, as well as four assignable grip buttons & gyro controls. The display is an “optically bonded LCD for enhanced readability” and can display at 1280 x 800 with a 60Hz refresh rate. Valve promise a battery life of around 7-8 hours of gameplay, depending on the game. You’ll even be able to throw the display onto a larger display, Valve say, via the console’s USB-C jack. There’ll also be a dock, sold separately, that can support DisplayPort 1.4 functionality.
The Steam Deck will come in three options, a 64GB version for £349, a 256Gb option for £459 and a 512GB version for £569. All three versions will use a speedy NVMe SSD internal storage, but will also support expansion via microSD. Valve also say you’ll be able to use the Steam Deck like a normal PC, saying you’ll be able to “browse the web, watch streaming video, do your normal productivity stuff, install some other game stores, whatever.”
Pre-orders for the new hardware are set to begin later today. To help prevent against scalpers, only those who have a Steam account with a purchase made before June 2021 will be able to order one. After that, reservations will be opened up to everyone on Sunday 18th July but will require a £5 deposit, deducted from the cost of the console when it ships in December 2021.
A portable Steam device has been rumoured for several weeks now, with Steam database-crawling website SteamDB spotting references to something then known as ‘SteamPal’ back in May. Valve’s co-founder Gabe Newell also set tongues wagging a couple of weeks prior, after he teased the company’s return to the console space during a chat at a New Zealand school.
You can check out the full technical specs of the new Steam Deck as well as pre-order information on the official website. You can also check out a brief overview video aimed at developers below.
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