Valve president Gabe Newell stated that while the newly-announced Steam Deck's price point may be "painful," the price reflects a "very aggressive" long-term strategy.
Newell told IGN that price performance is "one of the critical factors in the mobile space," also pointing out that Valve's top priority in the development of the Steam Deck is performance. Newell insists that Valve wants to ensure players can pick up the device and have it work optimally, stating "the first thing was the performance and the experience, [that] was the biggest and most fundamental constraint that was driving this."
Newell's sentiments were echoed by other members of the design team. Designer John Ikeda discussed the attention put into the fit and finish quality of the device, stating that the Steam Deck had to be "premium in feel, premium in look." He elaborated, "[W]e weren't going to sacrifice those, so balancing that in this atmosphere of supply chain and manufacturing toughness, was something that we knew from the very beginning that we weren't going to sacrifice, so we needed to find a way."
But the people at Valve understand that price is very important to consumers. According to Valve hardware director Shreya Liu, "We knew that the price point was very important, so [...] from the beginning, we designed with that in mind, and we worked very, very hard to achieve the price point that we're at." The Steam Deck will come in three variations: a 64GB version priced at $399, a 256GB version priced at $526 and a 512GB version priced at $649. These prices are expensive by modern handheld gaming standards. However, reflecting Valve's aggressive, long-term strategy, the Steam Deck is emphasizing the user experience. The device will include an AMD Zen 2 processor and a GPU that has AMD RDNA 2 architecture - technology typically found in a solid gaming PC.
Newell explained that Valve's goal is to "establish a product category" with staying power. "Nobody has ever said, 'Oh, we have a giant success where clearly there's huge demand for this, but our margins are too thin.' Right? And a lot of people have overpriced things and killed the opportunity, and sort of convince people that it's an uninteresting category from the get-go."
He continued, "So we're definitely... our view is... we're doing this for the long haul. And there's a lot of opportunity. And so far, everything we're hearing from our partners, mainly because they're the ones that we've talked about it the most, is a lot of enthusiasm that this is something that they're really going to be happy to see the PC community pushing into this space."
The Steam Deck will ship in December 2021. Pre-orders for Valve's handheld device open on July 16 directly through the official Steam website.
Founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, Valve is the developer of the gaming distribution platform Steam. It also creates its own games, including the Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress , Left 4 Dead and Dota franchises.
Source: IGN
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