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 all nonetheless created the market for handheld gaming PCs. It change into once a giant number to start! Nonetheless three years later, The Verge has data exhibiting the draw in which it has dominated the nascent market. While Valve told us in November 2023 that it had sold “more than one tens of millions” of the AMD-powered handheld, we’ve never had an proper survey at how huge it is or how Dwelling windows competitors stack up… until now. It appears to be just like the Steam Deck, so a ways, has been bigger than all its competitors blended.

Market learn agency IDC uses supply chains to estimate factual how many handheld gaming programs personal shipped around the enviornment, and creates spending forecasts. After I requested IDC market learn analyst Lewis Ward if he’d be willing to isolate SteamOS and Dwelling windows gaming handhelds from that data, he stated yes.

So here are the estimated blended shipments of the Steam Deck, and the Dwelling windows-basically based Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Budge, and MSI Claw from 2022 thru 2024, and an estimate for 2025:

Add it up, and that’s factual below 6 million shipments in three years. One reach to gaze that: it’s tiny and it’s no longer truly rising. IDC’s forecasting below 2 million shipments in 2025, rather then any fundamental growth.

One other is that it’s simply early days for the class: Meta’s Ray-Bans handiest sold 2 million pairs between October 2023 and February 2025, nonetheless its maker is taking that as a signal it would possibly possibly possibly presumably quickly promote 10 million every 365 days.

“I mediate it’s unbelievable,” AMD gaming marketing boss Frank Azor tells me, discussing IDC’s numbers for handheld gaming PCs. “This didn’t exist three years within the past; we went from nothing, zero, to incremental class introduction within the tens of millions of models.”

Nonetheless out of those 6 million shipments, the lion’s part personal been the Steam Deck itself, in maintaining with IDC’s estimates. The entire 2022 shipments are the Steam Deck, and Ward tells me upwards of fifty % of the 2023 shipments and forty eight % of the 2024 shipments are the Deck as neatly. Doing the mathematics, Valve has now shipped upwards of Three.7 million Steam Decks and has moderately presumably crossed 4 million by now.

(Conceal: IDC’s numbers make no longer currently encompass Chinese handhelds from corporations admire GPD, Ayaneo and OneXPlayer, though it appears to be like imaginable they’re tiny players in step with their public backer numbers on Indiegogo.)

With as few as 2 million Dwelling windows handhelds transport in two years, it’s no longer a huge surprise that AMD and Intel aren’t spending huge on more custom chips admire the actual particular individual that’s calm working perfectly neatly for the Steam Deck — particularly if the rumors are factual that early Dwelling windows handheld investors returned their purchases at surprisingly high charges. (Anecdotally, I’ve seen a total bunch start-field stock of the Asus ROG Ally after I’ve regarded at Most fantastic Hang on-line and in-particular person.)

Nonetheless I am hoping AMD will make investments in making that Steam Deck lightning strike every other time. Because when every other low-energy gaming chip is at the initiating place geared in opposition to laptops rather then handhelds, we salvage disappointments admire the fresh Lenovo Legion Budge S, which couldn’t stand as a lot as the three-365 days-conventional Steam Deck’s one-365 days-conventional OLED revision in my overview, or the normal MSI Claw. Or, we salvage shimmering true handhelds admire the ROG Ally X that offset energy hungry chips with a bigass battery, nonetheless price $800 or more.

Now not that chips are the handiest motive the Steam Deck has reach this a ways, no longer by a long shot! It’s the mix of Valve’s enjoy-up-and-play SteamOS — which allows you to easily press a button to with out issues sleep and resume — and its Proton compatibility layer and precompiled shaders that, extremely, frequently invent Dwelling windows video games bound on Linux better than they bound on Dwelling windows. Then there’s its infinitely customizable and joyful controls that invent a long time of older video games playable.

It’s also the price — mediate console, no longer gaming laptop laptop — and the draw in which extremely easy Valve makes it to in quick tweak efficiency in commerce for more battery existence, and the draw in which many further stuff which it is possible you’ll possibly presumably make with a Steam Deck whereas you happen to are attempting. (Myth Games Store and Ubisoft and even Blizzard video games are playable whereas you happen to soar thru a pair hoops; it will with out issues stream your PlayStation with the Chiaki app that it is possible you’ll salvage within the Linux desktop app browser, letting the handheld double as a PlayStation Portal.)

No other transport handheld has reach shut, and whereas a mixture of the Asus ROG Ally X and the SteamOS no longer-moderately-a-fork Bazzite can feel admire essentially the most efficient of every worlds, you’ll pay twice the price of an entry stage Steam Deck to salvage it.

I mistakenly thought a truly remarkable handheld at CES 2025 change into once the Lenovo Legion Budge S, because Valve’s Steam Deck designers had given it their blessing to change into the first authorized 1/Three-occasion SteamOS handheld, nonetheless I change into once nasty. Here’s how I ended my Legion Budge S overview: “Within the occasion you’re anticipating a $499 Legion Budge S with SteamOS, here’s my advice: factual steal a $530 Steam Deck OLED as an alternative.”

While it’s factual that fresh triple-A PC video games now require more energy than the Steam Deck can very with out problems give you, Valve has constantly stated that this can wait until it will present a “leap” in efficiency with out sacrificing battery existence earlier than it introduces a Steam Deck 2, and that it won’t be the exhaust of this 365 days’s AMD Z2 chips.

Between that promise, the a huge desire of unbelievable fresh video games that make goal Steam Deck, the high costs of fresh Nvidia GPUs, and the premise that fresh Microsoft and Sony handhelds are possible a pair of years away, I don’t mediate there are all that many causes to help to steal as of late’s Steam Deck — until the Nintendo Switch 2 by some means supplants the Steam Deck because the handheld that sport developers steal to heart of attention on with video games.