Is Valve's Steam Deck the Switch Pro We've Been Waiting For?

Welcome to MojoPlays! Today, we’re looking at whether Valve’s newly announced Steam Deck is the Switch Pro Nintendo won’t give us. Have you reserved yours yet? Rumors about the Switch Pro reached a fever pitch in the first half of 2021; with no hardware refresh whatsoever since the upgraded battery in 2019, people had lofty expectations for a new device from Nintendo. Many believed a Switch capable of outputting 4K resolutions in docked mode was on the horizon. Then, in July 2021, Nintendo revealed the new, OLED Nintendo Switch. This Switch had a few great improvements – a superior screen and ethernet port chief among them – but none of its internal hardware was changed whatsoever. This disappointed no small number of people since the Switch has been struggling for years to run ports of third-party games; just look at the disastrous performance “The Witcher 3” had when it first hit the Nintendo eShop. But whether you truly believed a Switch Pro was coming or not, few can deny that a more powerful handheld device would be a great thing. Valve swept in to fill this void, announcing its brand-new Steam Deck shortly after the OLED Switch was revealed. Immediately, the excitement was so high that Steam itself actually crashed as people tried to desperately get in their pre-orders. But is the Steam Deck worth all this excitement? Well, you can’t blame people for being a little skeptical of Valve, which doesn’t have a particularly good track record where hardware is concerned. In the past few years, we’ve had the Steam Controller, the Steam Machine, the Steam Link, and the Valve Index VR headset. These devices have been unsuccessful for numerous reasons, whether it’s Valve just not putting the support behind them – as is the case with the ill-fated Steam Machine – or being extremely expensive, like the Valve Index. While anybody who’s used it can attest to its high quality, at around $1000, the Index is significantly more expensive than its main competitors the PSVR and Oculus Quest 2, which means it’s not going to be anybody’s first choice if they’re testing the waters of VR. The Steam Deck, however, looks set to be different. It’s a handheld PC and it definitely packs a punch. All three of the models boast a four-core AMD CPU that can run at up to 3.5 GHz; an AMD RDNA 2 GPU at 1.6 GHz; and 16GB of GDDR5 RAM. It also has a 60 Hz refresh rate and 800p resolution screen, and can be configured up to having a 512GB SSD. These are extremely impressive specs for a device of this size and this price, with the cheapest model coming in at $399. The only difference between models is the storage, which is both bigger and faster in the higher-end versions. The low-end model does have a big disadvantage in this regard, however, since it only has 64GB of eMMC memory, which won’t be as fast or as useful as a larger SSD. But this still puts the cheapest Steam Deck only $50 more expensive than the new, OLED Switch, a device that only has 4GB of onboard RAM, and also has only 64 GB of storage. Though, both the Switch and the Steam Deck have microSD slots that mean you can easily upgrade the storage. We’ve also seen some footage of the Steam Deck running extremely demanding games that the Switch can only dream of, like “Jedi Fallen Order” and even “Control”. Admittedly, we didn’t see those games running for very long, but from what we saw they were performing beautifully. Even more impressive, Valve has also revealed that every game shown off in its initial announcement was running on a microSD card. The Steam Deck also has an advantage where other PCs are concerned and even home consoles. Valve clearly wants to corner the market of people who are interested in PC gaming and all the PC exclusive games but maybe don’t want to go through the hassle of trying to spec and build a computer. If you want something that’s ready to go right away with an enormous game library and portability, the Steam Deck is a great option. It’s also going to launch with a dock that will let you plug in peripherals, an ethernet cable, and an external display, so you really can use it as a home PC. Valve has even said you’ll be able to install Microsoft Windows on it if you want, though out of the box it’s going to run SteamOS, which is built on Linux. But if you’re worried about the compatibility of games with Linux, Valve has you covered there, too, with the translation software Proton that will allow Windows applications to run on SteamOS without you having to mess around getting an installation of Windows. It’s not the only PC handheld out there, however; devices like the Aya Neo and GPD Win 3 have attracted attention in recent years. But none of these alternatives is perfect. The big issue with trying to build a PC in such a small form factor – as with trying to cram any powerful device into a smaller and smaller chassis – is cost. The Aya Neo hasn’t caught on because it retails at around $1000. The simple fact is that Valve is able to get the Steam Deck so cheap because they’re selling it at a loss. This is what Sony and Microsoft also do; just like them, Valve can sell the Steam Deck at a loss because it owns Steam. All three companies will make back the loss on hardware in software sales since they each own entire digital distribution platforms. But there are some things to be wary of. Again, Valve doesn’t have a great track record where hardware support is concerned, so it might be worth waiting to see some credible reviews as devices start to ship before becoming an early adopter. Just like people had reason to be skeptical of Google Stadia because of Google’s poor history of long-term support, the same caution should be directed at Valve, too. And it also has another pretty big issue: the battery life. Depending on the game, you can expect to get two to eight hours of battery life, though this does mean its battery only performs slightly worse than the Nintendo Switch and potentially better than the Switch Lite, so perhaps this isn’t a huge issue. One final thing that Valve is doing well is trying to address scalpers. Since the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X, many people are still struggling to get their hands on a console, and the impact of scalpers on supply has been a hot topic. You need to jump through quite a few hoops to actually reserve a Steam Deck, however, paying a small fee – which will come off the price of the Deck itself when it’s available – and having a verified Steam account. This means you need to use a Steam account that has made a purchase before June 2021, so that people can’t just make sock accounts and buy whatever the cheapest game is to reserve as many devices as possible for a huge profit. Though the Steam Deck also won’t be able to output 4K, it’s a powerful PC that looks set to take the industry - and its competition by storm in 2022.