Share
Pre-orders are not available in India for the time being.
Dimapur, July 16 (EMN): Valve has officially joined the portable console gaming market with the introduction of its new handheld gaming device, Steam Deck. The device is expected to arrive in December in the US, Canada, the European Union and the UK, however, we still do not know when it will come to the Indian market as well.
Valve's announcement comes a week after the new Nintendo Switch OLED launch, and it seems like Steam Deck could be Valve's answer to the Nintendo Switch.
Introducing Steam Deck: powerful, portable PC gaming starting at $399. Designed by Valve, powered by Steam. Shipping December 2021.
— Steam (@Steam) July 15, 2021
Learn more at https://t.co/ZOTx3KUCVK and reserve yours tomorrow. #SteamDeck pic.twitter.com/jcgbaKfT9c
The Valve Steam Deck is going for an all AMD chipset solution to handle everyday tasks and gaming performance. It is powered by a custom chipset: a quad-core 2.4 to 3.5GHz Zen 2 CPU paired with a 1.0 to 1.6GHz GPU with eight AMD RDNA 2 compute units.
In terms of performance, the Steam Deck could be considered a formidable portable gaming device. It has the hardware to run demanding games in 720p resolution. In IGN's Steam Deck first-look video, the device can be seen running AAA titles like Death Stranding, Doom Eternal, Control and Jedi: Fallen Order smoothly. Valve has also confirmed that the Steam Deck will have ray tracing and variable rate shading support, which is good news to any gaming enthusiast.
The Steam Deck comes with a seven-inch 1,280 x 800 16:10 aspect ratio touchscreen and a 60Hz refresh rate. It has an in-built gyroscope for motion control, stereo speakers, dual microphones and haptic feedback. It also has a USB-C port, a 3.5mm headphone jack and Bluetooth audio support.
Steam Deck has a plethora of options for controls including dual thumbsticks, a D-pad, two 32.5mm square trackpads, an ABXY system, four main face buttons and L1/L2/L4/L5/R1/R2/R4/R5 triggers.
The Steam Deck comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and three different storage variants: 64GB eMMC, 256GB NVMe SSD and 512 NVMe SSD.
Valve claims that the Steam Deck's 40-watt-hour battery will give you about two to eight hours of usage on a single charge.
The Steam Deck runs a new version of SteamOS as its default operating system. The Linux-based operating system uses Proton to enable the device to play Windows-based games. Valve is promising new updates to the OS to enable the device to play Windows-based games natively without the need for developer ports.
Users can even install their preferred OS on the device as it is essentially a portable PC. You can purchase a dock separately to use the device on other external displays. Valve claims that users can play games on an external display at up to 8K at 60Hz or 4K at 120Hz.
The Steam Deck comes in three storage variants: a 64GB eMMC variant at $399, a 256GB NVMe SSD variant at $529 and a 512GB NVMe SSD variant at $649.
At the time of writing, Valve has not confirmed if India will ever get to see the device, however, it could be sold unofficially in India like the Nintendo Switch. As of now, there is no option for Indian customers who want to pre-order the device on the Steam platform.
Watch this space for more news about Valve's Steam Deck and more.