Steam Deck- Would it be considered a success?

We all know that the Steam Deck was released over a year ago back in February 2022 with prices ranging from $399 to $649 depending on what model you purchased. The Steam Deck was obviously designed to be rival to the likes of the Nintendo Switch in relation to handheld game systems. Despite, not being quite as powerful as desktop computers there are many people who would go on record and argue that the overall quality of Steam Deck is better than the Nintendo Switch. One of the major downsides of Valve’s Steam Deck is that the battery life is shorter than Nintendo Switch despite what version of the handheld console you purchase. It also be noted that the Switch console was around $300 on average following its initial release back in 2017 while basic model of the Steam Deck is almost $100 more in cost. During its first year the Nintendo Switch has managed to reach over 13 million units in sales while the Steam Deck hit roughly around three million. In this case it seems like consumers are more interested in what they can afford opposed to quality when it comes down to gaming. However, it should be noted that Nintendo has been creating consoles since the 80’s and have multi-million dollar video game franchises that make consumers want to purchase their game systems. For the most part Valve’s Steam Deck is a handheld game system that allows people to stream third party video games. Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard and Sony’s purchase of Bungie limits the amount of high profile third party games that Steam Deck users would be able to stream is something that would most likely have a detrimental effect on the sales of Value’s handheld game system. The Google Stadia was setup back in late-2019 to be a platform that mainly streamed third-party video games but ended being discontinued due to multi-million dollar purchases that Sony and Microsoft were making in relation to video game companies. There are many people who are currently anticipating the release of a Steam Deck 2 but its something that might not happen anytime soon.