Valve says it has sold ‘multiple millions’ of Steam Decks

[John Elden Ring]

Valve says it has sold “multiple millions” of Steam Decks

The handheld gaming PC has proven to be a big hit for Valve.

www.theverge.com

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Valve has sold “multiple millions” of its Steam Deck handheld gaming PCs, Valve designers Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais tell The Verge. Given that it just announced a new revision with an OLED screen, the company is probably set to sell a lot more.

 

[Kokoloko]

Hmmmm, Im guessing they havent hit 10+ million otherwise they would of said?
Not sure

 

[JAHGamer]

Hmmmm, Im guessing they havent hit 10+ million otherwise they would of said?
Not sure

probably 2m-4m, 4m is the high end. It's not bad for a niche handheld

 

[Petekilla]

Hmmmm, Im guessing they havent hit 10+ million otherwise they would of said?
Not sure

They definitely haven’t hit 10M. Probably 3 or 4M. Lol

 

[Yurinka]

Sounds like 2-3M sold

 

[ethomaz]

I wonder if it barely crossed 2 million in 1.5 years.

 

[KiryuRealty]

Remember folks, in the PR world 2 million is still MULTIPLE millions.

Handheld PCs are a niche market, this thing is not a huge success and as more people buy handheld PCs, more people realize handheld PCs are full of limitations and compromises that make them little more than status symbol gimmicks.

 

[flaccidsnake]

Remember folks, in the PR world 2 million is still MULTIPLE millions.

Handheld PCs are a niche market, this thing is not a huge success and as more people buy handheld PCs, more people realize handheld PCs are full of limitations and compromises that make them little more than status symbol gimmicks.

system wars arguments are useless against steam deck (& others) because developers are going to keep making games for it regardless. this isn't vita vs 3ds where low vita sales mean my vita's life is cut short with a poor game library. steam deck already has an unbeatable game library and will continue to play new games for many years to come. sales success helps because it keeps valve improving the system, and it nudges devs to do the bare minimum on anticheat, controller support, etc. but it's not necessary for steam deck to be the god handheld.

 

[Petekilla]

Remember folks, in the PR world 2 million is still MULTIPLE millions.

Handheld PCs are a niche market, this thing is not a huge success and as more people buy handheld PCs, more people realize handheld PCs are full of limitations and compromises that make them little more than status symbol gimmicks.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. Lol

 

[KiryuRealty]

I wonder if it barely crossed 2 million in 1.5 years.

This is a momentous occasion, @Yurinka is actually correct! Valve said they'd sold 2 million in September or October.

 

[KiryuRealty]

You don’t know what you’re talking about. Lol

Prove me wrong, then.

 

[Jim Ryan]

Sounds like 2-3M sold

Exactly

 

[Umar]

Not bad i guess

 

[ethomaz]

This is a momentous occasion, @Yurinka is actually correct! Valve said they'd sold 2 million in September or October.

Exactly.
That is why I said barely crossed 2 million.
It is probably very close to 2 million they posted a month ago.

It sold 2 million is over a year… it won’t sell another million in a month.

That makes some 3-4 million claims here very unlikely… and very I mean almost impossible unless it had a huge, monstrous, never seem before fire sales in the last weeks

 

[ethomaz]

I’m curious how the competitors are doing.
I read Asus Ally crossed 500k units in less time than Steam Deck but that was very vague.

And there is the Lenovo Go that launched last month.

 

[flaccidsnake]

I bet there's an HP Omen handheld announcement in 2024.

 

[Yurinka]

I bet there's an HP Omen handheld announcement in 2024.

I wonder why phone and tablet brands like Xiaomi, Samsung or Apple still didn't make their own PC handheld where you could play both mobile and PC games.

I assume Apple is waiting to have a bigger catalog of high end games, but considering that there are flawless Android emulators on PC, I think the Android brands could benefit from having their own Steamdeck.

Maybe they are used to massive numbers from mobile gaming and they think that to get a portion of the portable console and PC market would be too small for them.

 

[flaccidsnake]

I wonder why phone and tablet brands like Xiaomi, Samsung or Apple still didn't make their own PC handheld where you could play both mobile and PC games.

I assume Apple is waiting to have a bigger catalog of high end games, but considering that there are flawless Android emulators on PC, I think the Android brands could benefit from having their own Steamdeck.

Maybe they are used to massive numbers from mobile gaming and they think that to get a portion of the portable console and PC market would be too small for them.

All aspects of the smartphone industry failed to make real gaming happen:
- Apple and Google don't prioritize AAA gaming at the OS level
- No hardware vendor cracked a good gamepad peripheral/attachment
- Most indie and AAA developers skip mobile OSes
- Mobile publishers want low budget viral successes rather than risky prestige games
- Nobody stepped up to make a good gaming distribution platform on mobile (and Apple is a big problem here)

It could still happen, but now Valve has stepped in with a compelling alternative. So there's a race between solving the problems on mobile vs x86 SoCs maturing to the point where PC handhelds are pocketable and cheap. The second one is more exciting and maybe more likely.

 

[Nomen_Nescio]

Remember folks, in the PR world 2 million is still MULTIPLE millions.

Handheld PCs are a niche market, this thing is not a huge success and as more people buy handheld PCs, more people realize handheld PCs are full of limitations and compromises that make them little more than status symbol gimmicks.

If the SD is this, then so is Sony's PS Portal, which is even more niche and way more useless, even though I would not be surprised at all if it sells out more than the SD, since it is tied to the most popular console in the generation, that is looking to outsell even PS4. You basically put the SD in the same category as "new" smartphones that come out yearly.

 

[Yurinka]

All aspects of the smartphone industry failed to make real gaming happen:
- Apple and Google don't prioritize AAA gaming at the OS level
- No hardware vendor cracked a good gamepad peripheral/attachment
- Most indie and AAA developers skip mobile OSes
- Mobile publishers want low budget viral successes rather than risky prestige games
- Nobody stepped up to make a good gaming distribution platform on mobile (and Apple is a big problem here)

It could still happen, but now Valve has stepped in with a compelling alternative. So there's a race between solving the problems on mobile vs x86 SoCs maturing to the point where PC handhelds are pocketable and cheap. The second one is more exciting and maybe more likely.

Well:

• There's already native OS support for console gamepads
• Popular game engines used by indies (Unity, Godot, Game Maker, etc) already support mobile and porting requires basically no effort or cost
• There's a bigger amount of developers working for mobile than for console
• There are already thousands of mobile games with gamepad support
• Phones and tablets are becoming more powerful than let's say Switch
• To Apple or Google it would be easy to make a visible filter/dedicated sub store to put only the games with gamepad support
• They could make this store available in PC, which would include Stemdeck or any other portable PC device (inside an official Android emulator for PC, I think Google already was working on something like that)
• They could include there GP cloud gaming client, Remote Play client, Steamdeck's app etc for extra catalog if desired

Basically there's only the device missing, everything else is basically ready. It would have many games since day one, and even capturing a tiny portion of the mobile gaming market it would be a bigger market than any PC handheld and consoles like Xbox.

Which would make it way more appealing for devs because they wouldn't even need to adapt it to touchscreen controls.