While the Steam Deck is now two years old, and has since had the Steam Deck OLED refresh for a few months now, it seems there's just no stopping it. Even in the wake of seeing multiple other handheld gaming devices, what other media like to ask "Is this the next Steam Deck killer?" (like the upcoming Orange Pi Neo), it's clear that the Steam Deck continues to find a place in the home.
I've been tracking Steam Deck sales overall, and through 2024 the Steam Deck has so far spent every single week in the Global Top 10 for revenue on Steam. It's been bouncing around a bit, as the position generally depends on what games have been releasing that week, but clearly a lot of people keep buying it.
Steam Deck sales position each week for 2024:
- March 5, 2024 - March 12, 2024: 3rd
- February 27, 2024 - March 5, 2024: 3rd
- February 20, 2024 - February 27, 2024: 6th
- February 13, 2024 - February 20, 2024: 5th
- February 6, 2024 - February 13, 2024: 8th
- January 30, 2024 - February 6, 2024: 6th
- January 23, 2024 - January 30, 2024: 5th
- January 16, 2024 - January 23, 2024: 2nd
- January 9, 2024 - January 16, 2024: 2nd
- January 2, 2024 - January 9, 2024: 1st
Valve update their list every Tuesday.
Now of course, Valve's own list is based on revenue, not units sold. And compared with most games, it clearly costs a lot more. But we're also talking about games in the list that sell often tens to hundreds of thousands of units and more. So, it's a clear indicator it's selling plenty.
Valve don't give out the actual number of units sold, and it's easy to see why, because it would no doubt spawn many clickbait articles about how it's not doing well when stacked up against the big three (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft). You know it would happen. For a device that comparatively is quite a niche, it's doing great.
The Steam Deck also just recently crossed over the 14,000 mark for games rated either Playable or Verified, and while it's not a perfect measure because there are issues with games wrongly tagged, it's still overall a good indicator of what the Steam Deck is capable of (and shows just how good the Proton compatibility layer is). We're also getting Proton 9.0 soon which should bump up game compatibility even further.
For a bit of a longer look, here's the global ranking of the Steam Deck over the last 35 weeks:
Clearly the Steam Deck OLED from November 2023, and the cheaper prices of the original units, has really helped more gamers jump over the fence to give the Steam Deck a try.
A keen point to remember is that the Steam Deck is only officially available in the US, CA, UK, and EU on Steam (and Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong via KOMODO). So these stats only include those regions when talking globally, and only those direct from Valve (not KOMODO) as far as we know.
For me, the Steam Deck has been a constant companion allowing me to dive into so many games that have been left gathering dust. And if anything, it's only pushed me to keep buying more games on Steam and largely ignore other stores. Well played Valve.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
pleasereadthemanual Mar 12
QuoteA keen point to remember is that the Steam Deck is only officially available in the US, CA, UK, and EU on Steam (and Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong via KOMODO). So these stats only include those regions when talking globally, and only those direct from Valve (not KOMODO) as far as we know.Obligatory "it's still not available in Australia" comment. Maybe a Steam Deck 2?
It's good to see it doing well. It's certainly making a dent in market share, and doing it in the right way. I love how much of a difference it has made to the desktop overall, even down to work on Wayland protocols.
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI love how much of a difference it has made to the desktop overall, even down to work on Wayland protocols.I think that the knock-on effects of the Steam Deck have turned out to be the Linux equivalent to Microsoft throwing money at claiming Windows 95 was a viable platform for gaming (in spite of its never-fixed bugs with redbook audio and all that
) - except done right by actually investing in addressing the issues. 
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualObligatory "it's still not available in Australia" comment. Maybe a Steam Deck 2?
You know how it is: they try to bring you a Deck and the delivery person gets bitten by a spider. Or a snake. Or a jellyfish. Or a drop bear.
For Deck 2 I hope they can aim for a worldwide launch and something like 5M units per year.
Eh maybe I overreacted a bit. But it feels so good that Steam Deck succeeds and it uses Linux!Hooray!Last edited by Solarwing on 12 March 2024 at 4:48 pm UTC
Quoting: CatKillerQuoting: pleasereadthemanualObligatory "it's still not available in Australia" comment. Maybe a Steam Deck 2?
You know how it is: they try to bring you a Deck and the delivery person gets bitten by a spider. Or a snake. Or a jellyfish. Or a drop bear.
For Deck 2 I hope they can aim for a worldwide launch and something like 5M units per year.
Way too optimistic, especially for a handheld console that costs up to 649 dollars. Sales will already be fairly limited due to the relatively high price, especially for the oled models.
Quoting: PrettymuchnothingWay too optimistic, especially for a handheld console that costs up to 649 dollars. Sales will already be fairly limited due to the relatively high price, especially for the oled models.
How so? They're doing at least 2M per year when they're only selling in a limited number of countries, and building up this category of device as acceptable to mainstream PC gamers. 5M per year seems like a perfectly fine aspirational goal for a second-gen device that's built up some momentum and is available for sale everywhere.
Quoting: CatKillerQuoting: PrettymuchnothingWay too optimistic, especially for a handheld console that costs up to 649 dollars. Sales will already be fairly limited due to the relatively high price, especially for the oled models.
How so? They're doing at least 2M per year when they're only selling in a limited number of countries, and building up this category of device as acceptable to mainstream PC gamers. 5M per year seems like a perfectly fine aspirational goal for a second-gen device that's built up some momentum and is available for sale everywhere.
Because the apetite for it isn't there they sold 3-4 million units alltogether since 2022. Expecting a next gen version to sell more than the series s is honestly a bit too optimistic imo. I doubt valve really wants to heavily market it too. They have barely done that for the steam deck.
And people will only pay so much for a console that costs up to 649 but only does 800p gaming at best with not so great battery life on aaa games (no 2 hours really isn't good).
Average console gamers already want the next switch to do 1080p in handheld and 4k docked if you look on youtube and twitter, with 60fps.
They wouldn't be too happy with fsr rendering the game at 480p and 30-40fps low settings in new aaa game titles, when wanting a next gen system. And would want more than 2 hours of battery life on newer aaa games.
Honestly if they make a second verison I hope really hope they fix the shader cache stuff. I literally gave my steam deck away due to that issue. Way too annoying with no straightforward way to deal with it. I dunno if the average user wants to deal with that.
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