Pre-ordering the Steam Deck

I’m super excited about the Steam Deck, Valves new hand-held gaming PC that runs AAA games on Linux.

Pre-ordering were crashing the reservation system, and I had issues for 40 minutes trying to get it to accept my credit card. But eventually I got an email confirmation; however, I missed the 2021 shipping window.

The specs seem pretty good for running current and previous-generation games. but there will eventually be newer games that will push it a bit. Even newer current-generation games might.

I wonder if publishers end up considering its support like they do for consoles, or if Valve revises the specs in a shorter window than consoles.

But maybe Valve doesn’t even need to worry about the specs for future games. Game streaming could be the future of this form factor. Xbox Cloud seems like a possibility on the Steam Deck since you can install Windows, and you will probably be able to stream games to it from your local PC like you can from other Steam clients.

Maybe Valve will even launch an Xbox Cloud competitor, which could prolong the hardware’s life.