Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and more: all the news about the handheld PC gaming revolution

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By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

In July 2021, Valve revealed the Steam Deck, a Switch-like handheld device packed with features including a huge variety of control options, a 7-inch touchscreen, the ability to connect to external displays, and a quick suspend / resume feature. The device began shipping in February 2022, starting at $399.

With an unprecedented degree of support from Valve and the help of the gaming community, it progressed from being a “glorious mess” in our initial review to becoming one of The Verge’s favorite gadgets of 2022 and something other companies couldn’t really match. More than two years after the Steam Deck launched, the landscape is very different now that new competition has arrived in the form of Windows-powered handhelds like the Asus ROG Ally and Ayaneo’s assorted decks.

Now Valve’s new revision of the Steam Deck adds an OLED screen along with tons of other improvements that Sean Hollister says make it “everything the original should have been.”

We’ve been keeping a close eye on the Steam Deck, and you can read all of our coverage of it and upcoming rivals here.

Nov 9

Richard Lawler

The Steam Deck’s initial Windows support lacked audio output before addressing that in May of last year, but we’ve been waiting for an update on dual-boot ever since.

Now, Valve designer Lawrence Yang told IGNin an email that “Dual-boot support (and SteamOS general install) is very high on the list for folks working on SteamOS.” However, those OS folks have been working on the new OLED version. Now that it’s here, players should expect “meaningful updates” in the