Valve has shared some images and details surrounding the packaging and developer kits for the upcoming PC in your hands, the Steam Deck.
The team has apparently completed its design validation for the handheld, which “is the final prototype build before production, and it includes improvements from the EV2 build. After this build, there will be additional minor changes in the final product.”
Now shipping pre-orders in February next year, the handheld-that-could will ship in a rather crisp looking brown box, with its inside plastered with places you can play the handheld (as shown in the pictures below) like “on the subway”, or “in a test chamber”.
According to the Steam community page, Steam Deck pre-orders are available for reservation at as little as £4 for each model. This applies to the 64GB, 256GB, and the 512GB versions of the handheld.
Valve recently confirmed that it is not working on any exclusive Steam Deck games, responding to an FAQ by saying that: “No, that doesn’t make much sense to us. It’s a PC and it should just play games like a PC.”
That said, Valve does have plans to release the front end operating system SteamOS publicly, saying “we’ll release it for other hardware soon.”
It also appears as though making the Steam Deck a success is at the top of Valve’s priority list, so much so that Half-Life has made its way down the list. A dataminer has reportedly seen information that says the company is pivoting to the handheld.
In other news, co-founder of Respawn Entertainment Vince Zampella is the new head of the Battlefield franchise at EA, as the studio attempts to turn the series into a “connected universe”.
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