Valve has reviewed the past year with regard to the success of the original Steam Deck, which is now known as Steam Deck LCD, and the Steam Deck OLED with its in-house gaming operating system SteamOS and is looking forward to more competition in the handheld sector -PCs in 2024. The US company based in Bellevue, Washington state certainly finds words of praise and recognition for competitors such as the Asus ROG Ally and the Ayaneo Air 1S, which PCGH has also tested extensively.
We're not the only ones who released new hardware last year. Products like Asus ROG Ally, OneXPlayer, OneXFly and Ayaneo Air 1S compete with the Steam Deck as powerful handheld devices.
The different providers guarantee interested players a very wide selection of configurations and price points and reward game developers for their investments in supporting smaller screen sizes and better gamepad input.
Competition stimulates business and we hope to see more new products added in 2024.
– Valve –
Valve itself is currently operating from a position of strength, because on the one hand the Steam Deck and especially the new Steam Deck OLED are currently by far the most sophisticated handheld PCs and on the other hand the competing products also rely on Valve's game distribution platform Steam.
2023 was a packed year for the Steam Deck. Players will find a huge selection of games on Steam for the Steam Deck, which is optimized for our Linux-based operating system SteamOS.
Because we designed the device and its operating system to be completely open, users can of course use other shops and platforms, run other operating systems and customize their user experience to their heart's content.
– Valve –
Just three months after surpassing the 9,000 supported games mark, ProtonDB and SteamDB list more than 13,800 verified or playable games for the gaming handheld. However, these titles not only run on the Steam Deck, but can also be run on all other gaming PCs with Linux. The only requirement is that a current Steam client with the Proton runtime environment is installed on the respective system.
Steam Deck OLED impresses in the test
The PCGH editorial team had already reported in detail about the new Steam Deck OLED and its numerous innovations compared to the original, which Valve is now marketing as Steam Deck LCD. The editorial team recently carried out a detailed test of the most sophisticated handheld PC on the market.
Steam Deck OLED in the test: Is the most sophisticated handheld PC now even better?
With the Steam Deck OLED, the first revision of the handheld PC, Valve addresses all of the criticisms of the original, no matter how small. PCGH does the test.
On the software side, the final version of SteamOS 3.6 with numerous innovations and optimizations is expected in early 2024. The desktop will also be switched to KDE Plasma 6 over the next year. Valve continues to push the pace and deliver product care that is unparalleled in this segment.
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Those: Valve via Steam Annual Review 2023