Valve released a digital “book” on Thursday Everything about Steam Deck, Steam and the company itself. Valve says it released this book before the launch of the Steam Deck In Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kongbut the book also coincides with the six-month anniversary of Valve sending out its first order emails allowing people to buy their Steam Decks.
The 52-page ebook is free and I highly recommend flipping through if you’re interested in Valve or Steam Deck. Not only will you get a few pages full of Steam Deck prototypes, but you’ll also be able to read about Valve’s ambitions for the Steam Deck in their own words.
Perhaps most notable is Valve’s joining of Steam Deck and SteamOS as a “multigenerational product line.” Valve called Steam Deck a “multi-generational category”. in the pastbut the company goes even further with what it prints in a book (and since it’s printed in a book, it’s definitely more official):
Anyway, this is a multi-generational product line. Valve will support Steam Deck and SteamOS in the near future. We’ll learn from the Steam community about new uses for our hardware that we haven’t thought of yet, and we’ll develop new versions of Steam Deck to be more open and capable than the first version.
After reading this, I’m hopefully looking forward to Steam Deck 3 the third entry in a certain video game series comes before it.
Valve also shared some interesting numbers about Steam, like Steam has over 130 million monthly active players and over 30,000 titles on the platform. And as of the book’s publication, Valve says there are more than 4,500 titles. A “Verified” or “Played” designation for a Steam deckmeaning that about 15 percent of all games on Steam are now at least “Playable”.
Since those first order emails went out in February, Valve has ramped up its shipping volume, and on Wednesday the company even said it had some Q4 reservations. It rose to Q3. If you make a reservation today, Valve’s website says you won’t be able to order your device until sometime in Q4. But at the rate things are getting better, hopefully it won’t be long before your order email hits your inbox – and while you’re waiting, Valve has a book you can read.
