The Steam Deck only now dropping off Valve's Top 10 chart after a year and a half shows the staying power of the wee handheld gaming PC
There's still lots of love for the portable gaming PC, though.
It had to happen at some point but Valve's much-loved Steam Deck has been falling down its weekly revenue charts for a little while now. For the past two weeks, though, it's dropped outside of the top ten, suggesting that competition from ASUS, Ayaneo, OneXPlayer, and Aokzoe has taken a sizeable slice of the handheld PC market.
As reported by GamingOnLinux, sales of the Steam Deck have slowed to the point where it's no longer in Valve's top ten for weekly revenue. That in itself isn't particularly surprising as the majority of people who really want one will have already bought it and the rise of the Air 1S, OneXFly, and ROG Ally will also have contributed to the decrease in shipments.
What is astonishing, though, is just how long the Steam Deck has dominated the charts. Valve lists its weekly top sellers in terms of revenue generated and since the portable PC first launched in February 2022, it's spent 82 weeks in the top ten.
That's almost one year and seven months. The Steam Deck topped the chart for a total of 38 weeks in total, nearly nine months of revenue supremacy.
With results like that, Valve must be quite pleased with itself and the decision to make the Steam Deck must feel especially validated after the disappointment of Steam Machines and the Steam Controller.
Revenue isn't the same as profit, of course, and what we don't know is just how much money Valve has made from all those Deck sales.
I suspect the profit margins aren't huge, certainly nothing like those seen in a graphics card, for example. But regardless of the margin, the Steam Deck has clearly been a runaway success and that means we will almost certainly see a Steam Deck 2 at some point in the future.
Valve has made it clear that this isn't going to happen any time soon but there's been enough hints around the Internet that some kind of a refreshed Steam Deck may appear this year or perhaps very early in 2024. It's probably not going to be any faster nor sport many extra features and is most likely just going to be cheaper for Valve to manufacture, but here's hoping for a nicer screen.