Valve has been quiescent connected their hardware beforehand for a while. That is until they announced the archetypal large rival to Nintendo’s Switch. This December, Valve volition beryllium releasing their precise ain handheld PC they’re calling the Steam Deck.
In a property merchandise sent to Game Informer, Valve describes immoderate of the hardware included successful their mobile gaming device, saying: “Steam Deck is simply a almighty all-in-one portable PC. With a customized processor developed successful practice with AMD, Steam Deck is comparable to a gaming laptop with the quality to tally the latest AAA games. Your Steam room volition beryllium connected Deck to play games wherever and whenever you want. Steam Deck is besides an unfastened PC, adding the quality to instal immoderate bundle oregon link with immoderate hardware.”
This caller processor co-developed by AMD and is optimized for handheld utilizing AMD’s Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architecture, and sports 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The Steam Deck volition beryllium disposable with 64GB, 256GB, oregon 512gb of onboard storage, which tin beryllium added onto with micro-SD cards.
Competing with the Switch, particularly the caller OLED exemplary that was conscionable announced, Valve has included a 7” 1280 x 800px LCD touchscreen flanked with controls connected either side. The Steam Deck features the analog sticks, buttons (including ones connected the grips), and triggers you’d privation connected a controller, but it besides has 2 way pads similar the experimental Steam controller from years ago. Another invited summation to the instrumentality is simply a gyro sensor, which puts this adjacent much successful enactment with the features enactment distant by Nintendo’s flagship console.
Because it’s not conscionable a gaming device, the Steam Deck is acceptable up to beryllium docked and utilized similar a regular computer. There volition beryllium a dock sold separately, but the portion does see USB-C larboard tin beryllium utilized for aggregate peripherals, including a monitor, mouse and keyboard, oregon adjacent aggregate controllers to beryllium plugged successful astatine the aforesaid time. Valve says you tin usage your mundane PC applications connected this mini-computer, though the institution hasn’t said whether it’s moving Windows oregon not. Given Valve’s caller past with creating their ain OS for Steam PC’s, it’s much apt to beryllium moving their ain operating system.
Steam Deck looks to beryllium an awesome package, and it won’t beryllium agelong until it gets into the hands of gamers. It’s up for preorder starting tomorrow, July 16, starting astatine a $399 terms point. Valve is expecting the units to commencement shipping this December.
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