To celebrate the monumental launch of the company’s first gaming console, Valve boss Gabe Newell has been surprising customers and fans by personally delivering their Steam Decks.
We all know that Gabe “Gaben” Newell is something of a legend in the industry and specifically the PC gaming sphere. Not only is he behind some of the most popular and acclaimed titles (Half-Life, Portal, Counter-Strike, Dota 2, eg.,) in entertainment history, but he has also turned PC’s number one digital game store into an unrivaled business venture.
Now, Valve is here to make history again by releasing the first high-end handheld gaming device, and Gaben is here for it. Capable of running the latest titles with reasonable graphical presets and great performance, early reviews have called Steam Deck a great feat of engineering and design while maintaining that it has a lot of room to improve.
That’s apparently the main reason the CEO has been going house to house and hand-delivering Steam Decks, asking folks to try out their new device and share their feedback directly with him.
In the video above, Newell talks about why this is a significant instance in Valve’s history.
For us, this is an important moment where Deck stops being a theoretical product. I just want to see what people are actually playing on Steam Deck. So, we’re finally getting around to what we do best, which is interacting with our customers and improving the experience. This is, kind of, symbolically an opportunity for us to go and do that,” He says.
The 64GB eMMC version of Steam Deck has gone on sale for $399, while two other versions with 256GB and 512GB NVMe SSD storage will also be available for $529 and $649, respectively.