The Steam Deck is not a flop

theverge.com:

Valve’s Steam Deck handheld gaming PC has been the #2 top grossing product on Steam for five weeks in a row, according to SteamDB.

I am vindicated — because that means it’s not a flop.

Early estimates suggested over 110,000 people put down a $5 deposit for the unproven Linux handheld in the first 90 minutes after it went on sale last July, but there was always a chance they’d change their mind. I figured many would after reading critical reviews like mine! And while I have seen a handful of people in r/SteamDeck reclaim their five bucks… almost every other sign suggests to me that it’s selling well.

While we don’t have official sales numbers for the Steam Deck, here is some context that might put things in perspective:

The Steam Deck launched the same week as Elden Ring, currently one of the most popular games in the world. For four of the past five weeks, the Steam Deck was second only to Elden Ring in revenue according to SteamDB. But this past week, the Steam Deck sold better than Elden Ring.

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True, these are top grossing numbers, not unit sales numbers, so you can’t weigh them the same. At $60 each, it takes 7 copies of Elden Ring to match the amount of revenue a single $400 Steam Deck brings in; 11 copies if we’re talking a $650 512GB model. It’s also possible that Elden Ring saw the bulk of its sales pre-launch and during launch instead of in the weeks since — Elden Ring preorders did chart back in November and January as well. But I doubt the game’s truly trailed off given the incredible word-of-mouth that’s been following it since its February 24th debut.

Either way, we’re talking about a game that had already sold 12 million copies as of March 16th; where — at least in Europe — almost half of those