Will Steam Deck suffer from Valve's short attention span? | Opinion
Rob Fahey
Contributing Editor
Friday 11th March 2022
Valve
Valve, when it puts its mind to it, makes some of the best gaming hardware in the world. It is also one of the most successful platform holders in the world, if you consider Steam to be a platform -- which it is, at least to some extent.
The launch, or quasi-launch, of the Steam Deck should therefore be a major milestone for gaming -- a handheld PC gaming platform that's by all accounts head and shoulders above every previous effort at creating such a device, backed up by the considerable muscle of the company that's effectively dominated the distribution of PC games for the past two decades.
In many important ways, indeed, the Steam Deck is a milestone -- albeit one that's only trickling out very slowly into the hands of consumers, though Valve can hardly take the blame for the world's ongoing problems with semiconductor manufacturing and supply chains. It's a remarkable proof of concept, showing that PC gaming in what is effectively a "beefy Switch" form factor can work very well given sufficient focus and attention to the quality of the hardware, both from a technical and from a design standpoint.
It's also eye-opening just how good the Proton system for playing Windows games on Valve's custom Linux OS is; imperfect, certainly, but still achieving a level of compatibility unimaginable only a few years ago.
I'm tempering my anticipation with a little reality about how likely a Steam Deck v2 is, given Valve's track record in hardware
I'll say it up front: I want one. In terms of the target market for this kind of device, I'm firmly in the crosshairs -- something of a lapsed PC gamer who'd dearly love a device that lets me re-engage with the platform (and/or wallow in
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