For additional context, handheld PCs in general were estimated to have 6 mil in total sales during that period, so the steam deck is 2/3s of the market.
Some additional quotes from the source material:
“I think it’s amazing,” AMD gaming marketing boss Frank Azor tells me, discussing IDC’s numbers for handheld gaming PCs. “This didn’t exist three years ago; we went from nothing, zero, to incremental category creation in the millions of units.”
But out of those 6 million shipments, the lion’s share have been the Steam Deck itself, according to IDC’s estimates. All of the 2022 shipments are the Steam Deck, and Ward tells me upwards of 50 percent of the 2023 shipments and 48 percent of the 2024 shipments are the Deck as well. Doing the math, Valve has now shipped upwards of 3.7 million Steam Decks and has quite possibly crossed 4 million by now.
With as few as 2 million Windows handhelds shipping in two years, it’s not a huge surprise that AMD and Intel aren’t spending big on more custom chips like the one that’s still working perfectly well for the Steam Deck — particularly if the rumors are true that early Windows handheld buyers returned their purchases at unusually high rates. (Anecdotally, I’ve seen lots of open-box stock of the Asus ROG Ally when I’ve looked at Best Buy online and in-person.)
It’s interesting what different companies consider success. Apple sold far more iPhone Minis in 3 years and yet the phone is considered to have no market.
I wonder if other companies entering the handheld space, like Lenovo and Asus for instance, will see numbers like this and bail like they did last time they tried Steam Machines?
I have a LCD and Oled Steam deck, love them and use them often. I’m not a fan of Nintendo, or other non open systems, being a linux-pc guy, so don’t own nor have any interest in acquiring them. I hope Valve can improve on their market-share, and more open linux friendly devices find their niche in the market-place.
Valve is probably doing the two most important things in gaming right now:
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Setting a low-end benchmark for devs to build/optimize games to (“how well does it run on steam deck”)
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making gaming on Linux more readily available.
Both are critically needed, but like your other commenter, I would like to see more competition.
Unfortunately the competition isn’t as forward thinking as Valve. They are too busy trying to corner their little markets to build a larger more robust one with room for everyone. Petty, greedy, and low-brow.
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I hope Valve can improve on their market-share
I wish someone would actually compete with Valve instead.
The Xbox handheld will make things worse. I wish there was another big competitor based on Linux.
If we’re assuming it’s at 4m sold steam decks then that is 2.65% of the sold Nintendo switches at 150.86m.
@Sunshine our family was responsible for 4 of those!
And we only have one nintendo switch in the house
Inversed for my family. Three Switches (we’re planning on selling one) and one Steam Deck.
Got my Steam Deck a month ago, got Citron working yesterday and might put my (unpatched) Switch into storage soon…
