It’s safe to say that nowadays we are spoiled for choice when it comes to portable gaming. From Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally In addition to Lenovo’s Legion Go line, there’s no shortage of powerful laptop PCs vying for a spot in your backpacks. However, for those looking for an experience without compromises on form factor, AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme doesn’t have much competition at the moment.
But is raw performance the be-all and end-all in the laptop space? And if so, one might wonder why the Steam Deck with a three-year-old APU has managed and continues to top the global handheld sales charts. There’s a reason why Deck remains the best option for portable gamers today despite there being more powerful rivals on the market, and much of it has to do with Valve’s head start and established dominance in the segment. Here’s why a powerful chip shouldn’t be enough to sell you a handheld.
Legion Go 2 is impressive, but the Steam Deck has become the industry standard
A classic case of first-mover advantage
The steam cover was released in 2022, and the OLED Steam Cover It will be released in late 2023. By any measure, it is not defeating the latest Windows entrants to the market in the hardware race. However, most of its unspoken advantages have very little to do with its obviously aging custom APU. Thanks to its first-mover advantage, the Steam Deck finds itself in an enviable position that Valve has established in the portable industry over the past four years. Just as consoles set performance goals for developers, Deck has established itself as the de facto reference platform for all portable PC games.
Therefore, there is a strong commercial incentive for developers to prioritize Valve’s platform. with a It is estimated that 6 million units were sold. Worldwide by early 2025, Deck represents a market that no other handheld even comes close to. At this scale of market penetration, it almost becomes a reputational risk for developers. No have your titles perfectly optimized for Deck and SteamOS.
Valve won the ecosystem war long before Legion Go 2 arrived
And it made sure you weren’t left wishing for a more powerful chip.
In games, raw performance only matters if you are constantly reminded that you don’t have enough. Anyone who has spent any time playing on the Steam Deck knows that performance, especially the lack thereof, has rarely been a topic of discussion.
Now, there’s a whole ecosystem of optimization layers that make this possible on the Steam Deck, working behind the scenes. Through an exemplary integration of SteamOS, Proton and the Verified Coverage ProgramValve has made sure that the games work and provide the desired experience from the moment the device comes out of the box. Unfortunately, the same could never be said for Windows-based handhelds, despite recent attempts to fix the general problems that arose as a result of a desktop operating system being asked to excel in a handheld-based form factor.
This has a rather interesting psychological side effect on the user, as it makes the aging APU under the hood feel much more capable than the specs alone would suggest. SteamOS made sure the underlying operating system improved the user experience of games, Proton made sure games ran exceptionally well, and Deck Verified forced developers to optimize major releases on the platform. The result, as expected, was a complete handheld that comprehensively covered all aspects for the use case the Deck was designed for, with no room for complaints.
Valve also made sure the Steam Deck remained the king of value.
Despite supply shortages and the broader DRAM crisis
There is another reason behind why the Steam Deck is the market’s favorite handheld, and even three years after its launch, it continues to sell out in almost all markets whenever it becomes available again within hours. It’s the simple fact that Valve made sure that buyers never felt like they were paying a disproportionate amount of money for the experience they received.
The economics behind a purchase in a specific segment, for a specific product, are much more relevant now than before. While a Ryzen Z2 Extreme-powered Legion Go 2 achieves higher frame rates, the Steam Deck manages to deliver a remarkably similar experience, for a convincingly lower price. If you’ve been following my comments on laptop PCs, you’ll already know that I maintain that once the price of a laptop surpasses the $1,000 mark, it starts to compete with budget gaming laptops, and that’s where it becomes a tough sell.
Valve managed to sidestep that dilemma by making sure consumers saw the Steam Deck as the most capable gaming device under the $600 mark (and after recent price increases, $800). In doing so, the company ensured that Deck occupied a price range with very little direct competition. For most buyers, economics alone makes the purchasing decision before benchmarks have a chance to influence.
The portable gaming market cannot be won with silicon alone
The Lenovo Legion Go 2 is exceptionally powerful and the Z2 Extreme SoC will undoubtedly be a favorite of many enthusiasts. The Steam Deck, however, proved that performance alone does not guarantee commercial success, especially considering the fact that powerful hardware often comes with exclusionary prices. However, the most valuable lesson that Valve perhaps taught the market was the fact that a high-performance chip is not a prerequisite for an enjoyable gaming experience, and perhaps that’s what made the difference for the Steam Deck.
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Valve
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7.4-inch 1280×800 RGB OLED with HDR support
Valve’s new Steam Deck features some key updates, including an OLED display, HDR support, better battery life, faster downloads, and even a higher refresh rate. If you liked Steam Deck, there’s even more to love with Steam Deck OLED.
