A surprise attack from one of the legends of the gaming world, as the import-only Valve Steam Deck is priced for Australia.
Taking PC games to go has been made easier over the years with smaller and more powerful laptops, but in the past year, the properly portable gaming PC has improved things further.
While you can still grab a great gaming laptop and go for your life, the 7 to 8 inch screens of the portable gaming PCs combined with solid innards and great controls can mean anyone can take their Windows gaming library to go… provided they spend up.
There are certainly options in Australia, typically running from the Asus ROG Ally and recently updated Ally X, as well as other options from Lenovo, MSI, and Ayaneo, but there’s one Aussies have largely missed out: the original, the Steam Deck.
Created by the makers of Half-Life and Portal, as well as the Steam gaming platform marketplace and library, the Steam Deck is seen as the portable gaming PC that largely set off the market a few years ago. A PC flanked by controls and designed to connect with the Steam library and store, it’s a dedicated gaming portable Australians have been forced to import if they wanted to play.
But not for long, it seems, as Valve used the PAX video game expo in Melbourne to announce that Aussies will soon see the Steam Deck locally.
It won’t be available in stores, but rather via Steam itself, with Valve noting that it will ship to Australians from orders on Steam, though two versions will be made available over three storage sizes.
The original 256GB Steam Deck will see a 7 inch 1280×800 HD touchscreen LCD flanked by controls and featuring an AMD Zen 2 chip with graphics support, 16GB RAM, and the SteamOS platform, making it focused just on Steam, as opposed to supporting other game platforms.
Then there will be the OLED version, which will come in both 512GB and 1TB options. It will update the screen to a slightly larger 7.4 inch 1280×800 HD OLED, and keep the same chip and memory combination, while increasing the battery slightly, too.
The pricing could be the most compelling part, with the 256GB Steam Deck starting at $649 in Australia, a good half of what the original ROG Ally costs locally, though that does run Windows and comes with twice the storage.
Meanwhile, the 512GB OLED Steam Deck will cost $899 locally and the 1TB option for $1049, giving competitors a good run for their money.
November is when Australians can expect to find the Steam Deck shipping, though, so who knows what will turn up in between now and then. It’s entirely possible that we’re about to see portable gaming PC prices really heat up.
