Valve Steam Deck Gaming Console Running SteamOS Announced; Pricing, Pre-Order Details

Gaming consoles have been one of the most purchased gadgets since the pandemic struck. While we're familiar with PS and Xbox gaming consoles, there are plenty of other brands offering similar gadgets. Valve is one such company, which has just launched the Valve Steam Deck, a compact gaming PC running SteamOS.

Valve Steam Deck Form Factor

The Valve Steam Deck is quite unique from your regular gaming consoles or your gaming PCs. With the SteamOS, gamers can tap into all their Steam games. This hand-held portable PC can be compared with the Nintendo Switch. "Steam Deck is a PC, and players will be able to install whatever they like, including other OSes," says the official launch post.

The design and build of the Valve Steam Deck include a 7-inch touchscreen display with 1280 x 800 pixels resolution. There are plenty of trackpads, thumbsticks, buttons, and triggers for input. One of the unique aspects is the placement of keys on the same plane as the analog keys. It also has a 6-axis gyroscope, which can be used to control your movements.

Vale Steam Deck Specs

Going under the hood, the Valve Steam Deck runs SteamOS 3.0 based on the new version of Arch Linux with KDE Plasma for the desktop mode. Valve says the Linux system will use its Proton compatibility layer to run games designed for Windows and users are free to replace it.

The hardware on the Valve Steam Deck gaming unit includes a custom-made AMED 4 to 15-watt APU that has a 4-core Zen 2 CPU and 8-core RDNA 2 graphics unit with 16GB RAM paired with up to 512GB NVMe SDD. Also, there's a 40Wh battery that allows gaming sessions to last up to eight hours and can be charged with a single Type-C port.

Valve Steam Deck India: Pre-Order Details

The new Steam Deck will begin shipping in selected countries like the US, the UK, Canada, and the EU in December. The Valve Steam Deck is available in three storage capacities of 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB, which cost USD 400 (around Rs. 29,800), USD 530 (roughly Rs. 39,500), and USD 650 (around Rs. 48,500), respectively. The Valve Steam Deck India pricing, pre-order, or shipping details are still under wraps.