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Valve had to "very aggressive" in terms of pricing the Steam Deck, according to president and co-founder Gabe Newell.
Speaking to IGN, Newell described the balancing act the developers had to achieve when pricing the Steam Deck due to “price-performance [being] critical factors in the mobile space.” He continued, saying “we’ve had to be very aggressive, in terms of pricing on the deck [..] I want to pick this up and say oh, it all works, it’s fast, [the] price point was secondary, and painful. But that was pretty clearly a critical aspect to it.”
The device comes in three different options: the 64GB option for $399, the 256GB option for $529, and the 512GB option for $649. According to Newell himself “the only difference between those is the amount of storage, and the speed of the storage” with the 256GB option containing a NVMe SSD which could rival the likes of the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
Newell also stated his expectations for the device noting that: "Our view is, if we're doing this right, we're going to be selling these in millions of units, and it's clearly going to be establishing a product category that ourselves and other PC manufacturers are going to be able to participate in."
If you’re considering getting one of the Steam Decks yourself, here is a rundown of what you’ll be getting: the handheld console uses a custom AMD Zen 2 APU to run it, with a quad-core Zen 2 CPU, and 16GB of Ram - which Valve says can comfortably "run the latest AAA games." It also has a battery life of two to eight hours depending on how demanding your gameplay session is and features a USB-C dock to connect it to external displays with up to 4K or 8K output.
Those who manage to get their hands on the console will also get a protective carry case for it, with the largest model also featuring an anti-glare etched glass screen. You can find details on how to secure your console on the Steam website and find out how the pre-orders are going to work which will be live today at 10am PT/1pm ET/6pm BST.
For ideas on what you could be playing on the Steam Deck, take a look at our best PC games list.
