How big is the handheld PC gaming industry?

This article includes sales estimates for different handhelds from market research firm IDC.

They place total handheld PC sales of the Steam Deck, RoG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and MSI Claw at almost 6 million units for the past 3 years. It’s estimated that the Steam Deck makes up between 3.7 to 4 million of those sales, more than all the other major handheld PC manufacturers combined.

  • @[email protected]
    2•8 hours ago

    I mean it makes total sense since I’m almost positive that Valve is probably not making any profits from the decks they sell, and their money is from Steam. So, having it on more “mainstream” devices is better for them. Steam deck OLED is actually more powerful than the legion go S from what I’ve seen online so far

      • @[email protected]
        2•7 hours ago

        Absolutely. Linux is open and has less overhead and background garbage that runs at all times. Linux is also very modular and you can strip all the things you don’t and add only what you do need to it.

    • Norah (pup/it/she)English
      1•6 hours ago

      Steam deck OLED is actually more powerful than the legion go S from what I’ve seen online so far

      I strongly doubt that considering the head-to-head specs of the Z2 Go vs the Sephiroth APU. They’re both 4c/8t but the Z2 has significantly faster base clock and turbo on both the CPU & GPU, as well as more compute & shader units, and hardware raytracing.

      The Z1 Extreme in the original Legion Go also dominates over the Deck with even higher clocks, and an 8c/16t CPU. Plus with Bazzite you get a SteamOS-like experience.

      However you’re 100% right about the fact that Valve don’t necessarily care about the Deck making money. They made it to create a market segment that makes them more profits on Steam, and to encourage the push towards Linux gaming due to their long-term cold war with Microsoft. What I’d actually love to see them do is a Steam Deck Pro with the Z2 Extreme and a 1440p display. Maybe with a bottom USB-C port, a proper dock and a revamped Steam Controller.