Three years later, the Steam Deck has dominated handheld PC gaming

This day is the 1/three anniversary of Valve’s Steam Deck, the handheld gaming PC that every person however created the marketplace for handheld gaming PCs. It was a large number to open! But three years later, The Verge has data showing the map it has dominated the nascent market. While Valve urged us in November 2023 that it had sold “more than one millions” of the AMD-powered handheld, we’ve never had a simply examine how massive it is or how Home windows competitors stack up… till now. It appears the Steam Deck, up to now, has been bigger than all its competitors blended.

Market be taught agency IDC makes tell of present chains to estimate simply how many handheld gaming techniques absorb shipped all over the realm, and creates spending forecasts. After I requested IDC market be taught analyst Lewis Ward if he’d be sharp to isolate SteamOS and Home windows gaming handhelds from that data, he mentioned yes.

So listed here are the estimated blended shipments of the Steam Deck, and the Home windows-essentially based mostly Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Breeze, and MSI Claw from 2022 through 2024, and an estimate for 2025:

Add it up, and that’s simply below 6 million shipments in three years. One manner to hunt that: it’s small and it’s now not if truth be told rising. IDC’s forecasting below 2 million shipments in 2025, reasonably than any predominant expansion.

Another is that it’s simply early days for the category: Meta’s Ray-Bans handiest sold 2 million pairs between October 2023 and February 2025, however its maker is taking that as a signal it would perhaps well rapidly sell 10 million every year.

“I judge it’s fabulous,” AMD gaming marketing boss Frank Azor tells me, discussing IDC’s numbers for handheld gaming PCs. “This didn’t exist three years ago; we went from nothing, zero, to incremental category advent in the millions of issues.”

But out of those 6 million shipments, the lion’s piece were the Steam Deck itself, per IDC’s estimates. All the 2022 shipments are the Steam Deck, and Ward tells me upwards of 50 percent of the 2023 shipments and forty eight percent of the 2024 shipments are the Deck as properly. Doing the math, Valve has now shipped upwards of three.7 million Steam Decks and has reasonably presumably crossed Four million by now.

(Point out: IDC’s numbers plan now not currently consist of Chinese handhelds from companies recognize GPD, Ayaneo and OneXPlayer, though it appears that you would possibly well consider they are small avid gamers per their public backer numbers on Indiegogo.)

With as few as 2 million Home windows handhelds transport in two years, it’s now not a massive surprise that AMD and Intel aren’t spending massive on more custom chips recognize the one who’s soundless working perfectly properly for the Steam Deck — particularly if the rumors are correct that early Home windows handheld consumers returned their purchases at surprisingly high charges. (Anecdotally, I’ve considered a lot of start-box inventory of the Asus ROG Ally when I’ve checked out Easiest Settle online and in-person.)

But I’m hoping AMD will spend money on making that Steam Deck lightning strike again. Because when one but every other low-energy gaming chip is in the starting establish aimed at laptops reasonably than handhelds, we fetch disappointments recognize the modern Lenovo Legion Breeze S, which couldn’t come up to the three-year-historical Steam Deck’s one-year-historical OLED revision in my overview, or the normal MSI Claw. Or, we fetch gorgeous simply handhelds recognize the ROG Ally X that offset energy hungry chips with a bigass battery, however cost $800 or more.

No longer that chips are the handiest reason the Steam Deck has intention this a long way, now not by a prolonged shot! It’s the combination of Valve’s take-up-and-play SteamOS — which skill that you can simply press a button to without downside sleep and resume — and its Proton compatibility layer and precompiled shaders that, extremely, in total fetch Home windows video games scramble on Linux better than they scramble on Home windows. Then there’s its infinitely customizable and chuffed controls that fetch decades of older video games playable.

It’s additionally the worth — judge console, now not gaming laptop — and the map extremely easy Valve makes it to temporarily tweak performance in replace for more battery life, and the map many extra issues you would possibly well plan with a Steam Deck at the same time as you happen to attempt. (Chronicle Games Retailer and Ubisoft and even Blizzard video games are playable at the same time as you happen to soar through a pair hoops; it might per chance probably without downside breeze your PlayStation with the Chiaki app you would possibly well net in the Linux desktop app browser, letting the handheld double as a PlayStation Portal.)

No other transport handheld has intention cease, and while a mix of the Asus ROG Ally X and the SteamOS now not-reasonably-a-fork Bazzite can if truth be told feel recognize the finest of every worlds, you’ll pay twice the worth of an entry stage Steam Deck to fetch it.

I mistakenly belief the largest handheld at CES 2025 was the Lenovo Legion Breeze S, because Valve’s Steam Deck designers had given it their blessing to became the first licensed 1/three-birthday celebration SteamOS handheld, however I was tainted. Here’s how I stopped my Legion Breeze S overview: “When you’re waiting for a $499 Legion Breeze S with SteamOS, here’s my advice: simply decide up a $530 Steam Deck OLED as a change.”

While it’s correct that modern triple-A PC video games now require more energy than the Steam Deck can with ease give you, Valve has constantly mentioned that this could well wait except it might per chance probably present a “jump” in performance without sacrificing battery life previous to it introduces a Steam Deck 2, and that it received’t be the utilization of this year’s AMD Z2 chips.

Between that promise, the diversified noble modern video games that plan goal Steam Deck, the high costs of contemporary Nvidia GPUs, and the root that modern Microsoft and Sony handhelds are seemingly about a years away, I don’t judge there are all that many reasons to encourage to decide up as we disclose’s Steam Deck — unless the Nintendo Swap 2 somehow supplants the Steam Deck because the handheld that recreation builders decide to goal with video games.