Jakarta, Gizmology – The presence of Valve’s Steam Deck in 2022 is considered to be able to restore the trend of handheld consoles in the gaming community. Especially consoles that are capable of playing Windows-based games, which are more numerous. Names like Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion GO, and various other types of handheld consoles have also enlivened the market.
Only two years in, the public has already begun to assume the presence of the next generation of this console. Some leaks on the internet have even mentioned the year 2026 has been set by Valve to release a new generation of. It is estimated that in the 3rd or 4th quarter of the year.
Questioning the presence of a new generation console was not denied by Valve. At least by the console designers themselves. Quoted from Press Start in Australia, Lawrence Yang and Jay Shaw as Steam Deck Designers mentioned that.
“We are working on this latest generation. Steam Deck is the culmination of what we learned from building hardware on Steam Controller, Steam Machines, Valve Index and Steam Link so we took all that and said, OK, here’s Steam Deck as a package,” Yang said.
Yang also mentioned that in the same model, they also studied what they learned from the existing consoles, and then moved forward to prepare the next piece of hardware. “But that’s something we won’t talk about today,” Yang said.
Also read: SteamOS Update Coming to ROG Ally
New Steam Deck Officially Released in Australia
The advantage of Valve’s console is of course its compatibility with the collection of games from the Steam application. Users will easily connect with the accounts they have previously created. In addition, the specifications of the device are sufficient to play popular AAA games.
One of the reasons this device can run well is thanks to the system in the AMD Zen 2 chipset that has been specially customized so as to provide an optimal experience when used. “We did a lot of experiments and optimizations with AMD. By using chip costumes, we can make more specific changes as requested,” terang Yazan Aldehayyat, selaku Hardware Engineer.
Unfortunately, Steam Deck is not yet officially available worldwide. Only North America and Europe have distribution channels for the console. Later, Australia was finally chosen as the new sales region of Steam Deck.
Regarding the ‘delay’ in its presence in Australia, the representative from Valve argued that something needed to be prepared first, including adequate infrastructure there. Valve’s device will start at AUS$649 for the 256GB LCD model, and AUS$899 for the 512GB OLED. While the 1TB OLED version is sold at the most expensive price of AUS$1.049.
