Valve also makes games, like Portal and Half-Life, and has made other gaming hardware in the past, to mixed effect. The Steam Deck is made by Valve, the company behind the hugely successful Steam online game store/platform. It's always going to be a compromise compared to full-size gaming laptops or desktops, at least with the current state of available technology. There are still a few expensive pocket-sized specialty Windows devices you can buy and try to play games on. A couple of years ago, a few big PC-makers showed off handheld PC gaming prototypes (that were mostly never seen again). Years before that I tried gaming on early Windows-based UMPC handhelds. It's been tried before, and the high-tech highway is littered with the wrecks of previous attempts. Taking the openness, flexibility and scale of PC gaming and putting it into handheld form has long been a holy grail for a devoted subset of WASD gamers.
Steam for mac review portable#
The two biggest things to watch out for are battery life and storage capacity, but that's always been true of portable gaming devices. I was especially impressed with how well some keyboard-and-mouse games translated to the built-in touchpads, after some hands-on tweaking. Quick note: If you missed out on this first wave, Valve is now taking reservations, with a $5 deposit, for delivery "after Q2 2022."Īfter spending some time getting used to its quirks and figuring out which games and genres worked best on its small screen, I had a great time using the Steam Deck.
But if you're expecting a gaming experience with the same casual pick-up-and-play ease of a Nintendo Switch, this isn't the device you're looking for.
The TL DR version is, if you're the type of PC gamer who jumped online to preorder the Steam Deck during its short first-wave delivery window, you'll be mostly impressed… and occasionally frustrated.