Steam Deck is Valve's first handheld console and it's releasing in December

Update 2:05 p.k. ET: Added Gabe Newell comments.

In a surprise movement, it's been revealed that Valve is working on a handheld device that'll let you play Steam games on the go. It'due south chosen the Steam Deck and it's prepare to ship this December.

Out of nowhere, Valve just revealed the new handheld gaming PC early on this morning. The Steam Deck will come in three sizes — 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB — and volition price $399, $529, and $649, respectively. In order to reserve i, you have to take a Steam account that has made a purchase prior to June 2022. This is in an endeavour to reduce purchases from unauthorized sellers and scalpers. Currently, you can but reserve if y'all're in the U.S., Canada, the EU, or the U.K., although it'll be available in more than regions in the futurity.

— Steam (@Steam) July 15, 2022

The handheld has a chip of a wacky layout, with 2 thumbsticks towards the top, and four paddles on the dorsum underneath the standard bumpers and triggers for more than customizable constrols, but the website says it was built for longer gaming sessions. It has a 7-inch touchscreen, trackpads, and gyro controls.

The processor is a custom APU congenital with AMD, and the website claims it should be more than than enough to handle "the latest AAA games." The iii storage sizes mentioned higher up refer to a 64GB eMMC, 256GB NVMe SSD, and 512GB NVMe SSD, which are all congenital for fast loading times and features similar quick resume. It's also expandable with a microSD card, where you tin can store games locally. It besides claims to have a battery life of 7-8 hours, which is nigh on par with its directly competitor, the Nintendo Switch.

It's unclear at this point if y'all'll need to store games locally to play them or if you lot tin can stream games over the deject. It does support Steam Deject Saves, so you tin movement from your Steam Deck to your PC and dorsum. EIther way, Valve promises that yous should be able to play all Steam games without the need for porting thank you to a compatibility layer chosen Proton, which is congenital into the SteamOS and runs on Linux.

In that location'due south also a dock so you tin can connect it to external displays or a USB-C hub, but it'll be sold separately. You can too attach your peripherals like controllers and fight sticks. If you want to claw it up to a PC monitor, you can.

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell told IGN that finding the correct balance between performance and price was a "critical" aspect of the production process.

"I desire to option this up and say, 'Oh, it all works, it's all fast'," Newell said. "And so price point was secondary, and painful. Just that was pretty clearly a critical attribute to information technology."

"If we're doing this right, we're going to be selling these in millions of units and it's going to be establishing a product category that ourselves and other PC manufacturers are going to exist able to participate in, and that'south going to accept longterm benefits for us," he continued.

We'll have to see if all of this ends up being a direct competitor to the Nintendo Switch and Xbox Game Laissez passer, or if it'll go the way of the Steam Machine.

Merely the all-time

Check out Windows Central's Best of MWC 2022 picks!

Another Mobile World Congress is in the books, and this year it brought plenty of exciting announcements from Lenovo and Huawei. Here's a look at what caught our attention, earning Windows Central's Best of MWC 2022 awards.

Nether attack

Stolen NVIDIA data is being used to bypass Windows security

Some of the information leaked past ransomware grouping Lapsus is beingness used by cyber attackers to bypass Windows security measures. Ii code-signing certificates were leaked, which are now being used to make malicious files appear genuine.