The Steam Deck announcement took the gaming industry by storm last week. Valve is basically trying to deliver a PC in handheld console format, and it's sparing no expenses in doing so. Gabe Newell said maintaining a relatively low price point (the Steam Deck starts at $399, provided you're happy with the default 64GB eMMC internal storage) was painful yet critical for the success of the hardware.
Furthermore, Valve is confident that the Steam Deck won't suffer from those pesky stick drift issues that plagued Nintendo (which received several class-action lawsuits because of it) with the Switch. Speaking to IGN, Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat said:
We've done a ton of testing on reliability, on all fronts really – and all inputs and different environmental factors and all that kind of stuff. I think we feel that this will perform really well. And I think people will be super happy with it. I think that it's going to be a great buy. I mean, obviously every part will fail at some point, but we think people will be very satisfied and happy with this.
Steam Deck designer John Ikeda added:
We purposely picked something that we knew the performance of, right? We didn't want to take a risk on that, right? As I'm sure our customers don't want us to take a risk on that either.
On the official Steam Deck website, the thumbsticks are described as 'best-in-class' and capable of providing 'a level of precision and comfort not found in other portable gaming devices'. They also come with built-in capacitive touch sensors.
The device also includes 2 x 32.5mm square trackpads with haptic feedback, 4 x assignable grip buttons on the back, and a 6-Axis IMU for gyroscopic controls. Of course, you can connect other input peripherals through Bluetooth and/or the USB-C port.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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