Valve has revealed that Steam Deck players accumulated 330 million hours of gameplay during 2024, representing a remarkable 64% increase compared to the previous year.
That’s the equivalent of every Switch owner playing two hours in the entire year. Nintendo doesn’t share their usage numbers in aggregate, but they do provide a “year in review” thing per user and most of the ones I see online are in the three digit range. Even assuming a bunch of people aren’t using these at all, we’re looking one to two orders of magnitude larger than the Steam Deck, which checks out with what we know about the total numbers sold for each device.
Which is to say, the Deck is probably as popular as, say, a Sega Game Gear or a Sega Saturn but nowhere near any of the modern consoles yet.
I think the difference here is that the market for the the Switch is known but the market that Valve created for Handheld PC Gaming isn’t and it’s proving be far larger than expected. It’s completely possible that the market for PC Gaming handhelds is just as big as for the Switch.
There is also lot of unexplored territory for Valve with the Steam Deck including games written specifically for Linux, docks that would let you use more powerful hardware when you want to play on a big screen, and crazily enough docks for using the Deck as an actual computer. (There’s already docks that turn your smartphone into a laptop, no reason that can’t be done with a Deck).
Nintendo created something kind of new with the Switch but it only works with the Nintendo ecosystem. Valve took their idea and is making it work in the PC ecosystem which is ultimately much larger.
To put this in perspective:
That’s the equivalent of every Switch owner playing two hours in the entire year. Nintendo doesn’t share their usage numbers in aggregate, but they do provide a “year in review” thing per user and most of the ones I see online are in the three digit range. Even assuming a bunch of people aren’t using these at all, we’re looking one to two orders of magnitude larger than the Steam Deck, which checks out with what we know about the total numbers sold for each device.
Which is to say, the Deck is probably as popular as, say, a Sega Game Gear or a Sega Saturn but nowhere near any of the modern consoles yet.
I think the difference here is that the market for the the Switch is known but the market that Valve created for Handheld PC Gaming isn’t and it’s proving be far larger than expected. It’s completely possible that the market for PC Gaming handhelds is just as big as for the Switch.
There is also lot of unexplored territory for Valve with the Steam Deck including games written specifically for Linux, docks that would let you use more powerful hardware when you want to play on a big screen, and crazily enough docks for using the Deck as an actual computer. (There’s already docks that turn your smartphone into a laptop, no reason that can’t be done with a Deck).
Nintendo created something kind of new with the Switch but it only works with the Nintendo ecosystem. Valve took their idea and is making it work in the PC ecosystem which is ultimately much larger.
You know what, I’ll take a Sega saturn equivalent. We’re at least still talking about the Saturn today.
Hey, I had a Sega Saturn. Loved my Sega Saturn. Like it more than my Steam Deck, if I’m being honest, but I do like my Deck and I do have one.
I’m just saying, when we’re talking numbers in the millions it’s easy to lose perspective.
Its the year of the
linux desktopsteam deck!