Valve unveils handheld ‘Nintendo Switch-rival’ gaming PC ‘Steam Deck’: Price, availability and more – Times of India

Gaming on the Steam platform has taken a new meaning with the announcement of ‘Steam Deck’, a portable handheld gaming device that looks a lot like the Nintendo Switch.The Steam Deck is a portable device through which you can access all the games in your Steam library and play. You just need to power the gaming PC on, sign in with your Steam credentials and start playing. Steam Deck comes with a dock and can even connect to monitors and PCs.
Steam Deck will launch in December this year in the United States, Canada, European Union, and the United Kingdom, with more regions to be added later.

Steam Deck: 64GB, 128GB and 512GB versions and prices
The handheld device will be made available in three storage options: 64GB, 256GB and 512GB. The 64GB version of the gaming PC is priced at US $399, offers 64GB eMMC internal storage and comes with a carrying case. The 256GB version comes at US $529 and offers 256GB NVMe SSD internal storage (faster than eMMC) and bundles a carrying case and an exclusive Steam Community profile bundle.
The most premium buy would be the 512GB version that is priced at US $649. It offers 512GB NVMe SSD internal storage, claimed to be the fastest of the three, premium anti-glare etched glass, an exclusive carrying case, exclusive Steam Community profile bundle and an exclusive virtual keyboard theme.
Steam Deck: Technical specifications
Valve has partnered with AMD to create Steam Deck’s custom APU that’s optimised for handheld gaming. It is a Zen 2 + RDNA 2 architecture and Valve claims that it can run the latest AAA games. The device features a 7-inch capacitive LCD touchscreen, a trackpad and gyros. The touchscreen has a 1280 x 800 pixels resolution with a 16:10 aspect ratio and has a refresh rate of 60Hz, with 400 nits brightness. Valve says that the display uses an “optically bonded LCD for enhanced readability.”
The Steam Deck comes with 16 GB LPDDR5 RAM (5500 MT/s) and in three storage options: 64GB, 256GB and 512GB with microSD support. It runs SteamOS 3.0 (Arch-based).
Steam Deck supports almost everything you can do with a Steam account like Steam Chat, Notifications, Cloud Saves (“start playing on a PC and pick up right where you left off on Deck or vice versa”), Remote Play. the entire Steam Store experience and keeping up to date with your Steam Community.