Valve's Steam Deck Was "Painful" To Price

Valve's transition into portable gaming began yesterday with the announcement on the Steam Deck. Boasting PC-quality hardware, the compact gadget allows trusty PC players to play their favorite Steam games on the go.

But top-notch technology costs a fair bit, as replicated by Valve who found it hard to price the upcoming system.

Gabe Newell Found It Hard To Price The Steam Deck

Valve president and husky beard extraordinaire, Gabe Newell reportedly found it challenging to associate a modest cost for the forthcoming console.

He exclaimed that it was difficult to balance top performance with a price point that casual gamers could afford:

I want to pick this up and say, oh, it all works. It's all fast. It's all... and then price point was secondary and painful. But that was pretty clearly a critical aspect to it.

Having come to a reasonable RRP, Newell hopes the Steam Deck will heat up the sales charts:

Our view is, if we're doing this right, we're going to be selling these in millions of units, and it's clearly going to be establishing a product category that ourselves and other PC manufacturers are going to be able to participate in.

When developing the Steam Deck, Newell prioritized the player's preference while also hoping to revolutionize the PC-mobile space:

Our calculus is more, 'Is this the right product, and is it a great way to test out the assumption that there's a huge amount of value, both to game players and game developers, to extending the PC ecosystem in this direction. That's the real test, more than anything else.