Steam Deck is a newly announced handheld device produced by Valve, and I love it. This device is something that I’ve really wanted in my life. 

There have been other hand-held options, like Nintendo Switch, PSP, or PSVita, but those platforms were either outdated, not being widely supported, or too expensive to start getting into. Additionally, the subscription fees made them less appealing to buy. 

With Steam Deck, you can play any of the video games that are available on Steam. And best of all, there is no subscription fee, so you can play any online game for as long as you want. This is what makes Steam Deck a very good device on the market because of the flexibility that it offers.

Valve is a video game company that created hits, such as the Half Life series, Portal 1 and 2, and the Team Fortress series. Other than games, Valve has also created an online shop for video games, where it always has new or upcoming games. Another advantage of the Steam store is that it always has deals that can go up to 90%.

Valve also has a history of creating gaming devices, such as Steam Machine, a PC/Console hybrid that would connect to your television. It also had a custom controller made by Valve, but it is not being produced anymore, due to poor sales. 

But that did not stop Valve, who wanted to tap into the virtual reality industry and has made their own VR headset called Steam VR. Although not all of these products have been popular, especially Steam Machine, Valve’s new announcement of Steam Deck was a huge hit.

Valve first announced Steam Deck on July 15, 2021. There are three versions of the device available. One of them is priced at $399.00, and has 64GB of memory. The second version is priced at $529.00, and has a memory of 256GB, with a better memory reader. And the last version is priced at $649.00, and it has 512GB of memory, with the same memory reader as the second version. Keep in mind that the memory on each device can be expanded with the use of micro SD cards.

There are additional things that come with each version, but all of them come with a carrying case. The more expensive versions come with more customizations, such as exclusive community bundles. On July 16, pre-orders for Steam Deck were open and it sold like hot cakes. In only 30 seconds, all of the versions of the device were sold out.

The natural thing to do is to compare Steam Deck to the Nintendo Switch, which is fine, but there is more to it than that. Steam Deck is not the same thing as Nintendo Switch, because they both accomplish different things. Nintendo is made for more high-quality games that are made with Nintendo’s trademark characters, such as Mario and Link. 

Steam Deck, on the other hand, is a computer, and it can do anything that a computer can do. Furthermore, the Steam library of games is a much bigger collection of video games than Nintendo has, but the quality of those games may not be of the same level. 

Don’t take me wrong, Steam has great games, but not all of those games are good. Most of them were made in one week and were put on the Steam marketplace to make a quick buck. So there is an oversaturation of games on Steam, while Nintendo keeps their library closed and only uploads games that they deem worthy of being bought.

Let’s talk a bit about hardware. Recently Nintendo has announced the Nintendo Switch OLED. This was expected to be an upgrade of the older version of Nintendo Switch, but it is not. Nintendo Switch OLED has the same hardware as an older Nintendo Switch, but it has a bigger screen, which has disappointed fans who expected it to have better hardware. 

Steam Deck is exactly what Nintendo fans would have wanted the OLED version to be. Steam Deck is undoubtedly much more powerful than Nintendo Switch, as it is able to run and load games much faster and better. And as many articles have discussed, Steam Deck’s pricing has been set at a very aggressive level, because Valve does not plan to make any money from selling Steam Deck. Most of the companies do not expect to make a profit from their consoles, and they lose that money because of hardware costs. 

Now let’s get to the most important part, the games themselves. Mainly we should focus on their pricing. If you want to play a lot of Nintendo games, you need to be ready to spend a lot of money to do so, because most of their games cost over $50. It does not matter how old the game is, even if it is a twenty-year-old game, because Nintendo is still going to set its price at $59.99. 

And the same thing goes for the newer releases, such as Super Mario Odyssey, or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild. If you compare the older games and one of the previously mentioned games, it does not feel like the pricing is adjusted correctly. 

Steam, on the other hand, has a huge variety of games, but the pricing is done much better here. If the game is as little as two years old, it will most likely go on sale. And this applies to all of the games that are on Steam, which allows for a lot of variety and the ability to buy games much more freely. 

And although it is not legal, you can emulate most of the retro games for free on Steam Deck that Nintendo Switch is selling for over $40. I must repeat: emulating is not supported or endorsed by companies, so it is technically illegal.

All in all, both consoles have positives and negatives to them, but Steam Deck is a much better handheld console compared to Nintendo Switch. It has more variety and freedom, as well as more power. Steam Deck outperforms Nintendo Switch in every department, which is why it is your best option for purchase.

If you can find one.