I’ve been trying to think about what Valve should do next with the Steam Deck after the OLED, and I think the next logical action is before Steam Deck 2 comes out, get the first Steam Deck on store shelves.
I think getting this in the hands of average consumers will go a long way. Steam OS is at the point now where the average consumer can use this as a console and never need to go into the desktop if they don’t want to.
So I think it would make the most sense for Valve to put only the 256 GB and OLED 512 GB models in stores. Having two choices with clear differences in screens and analog sticks etc. makes it easy for consumers to tell the difference, plus the 256 gb is only $50 more than the Switch OLED, and the OLED 512 gb is around the Xbox Series X and PS5 in price making an easy price comparison.
Next thing I would do is put download cards on store shelves, like what you can find for Nintendo or Xbox etc. essentially gift cards for specific games. This would allow for “physical game” media ish, but it would also let people easily see what kind of games are on the Deck and make things easy for Christmas presents or buying games with cash.
Now things that are not likely at all but I still want to suggest it.
Steam Deck 2 should have physical games. In my outline the download cards for the first Steam Deck would basically be a stepping stone for this.
A few reasons, one, it would make for a much more average consumer focused system, it would allow for longevity on games after some day in the far distant future Steam shuts down, and three it would make physical games on PC more viable, which would apply one and two to PC gaming as a whole.
Cartridges like what Nintendo has makes the most sense in this case, and Valve alongside the Steam Deck 2 can introduce a Steam Deck 2 game cartridge reader that you can plug into your PC that connects to your Steam client and lets you play these physical Steam Deck 2 games on your PC.
The industry is moving away from physical games, I know, and it may be a small portion of the user base that actually buys them, and far less who use the reader on their PC. But physical media is something I don’t want to die, call me old hat, but when I buy a physical Switch game, I know as long as I have a Switch and I have the cartridge, I’ll be able to play that game. My Steam games I always have in the back of my mind that some day, Steam will shut down and those games will be lost, it may take 500 years for that to happen, but I digress.
Physical media aside, I definitely think getting the Deck on store shelves widespread should be Valve’s next focus
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Valve knows exactly what they’re doing and they’ve intentionally avoided retail, for a reason. Retail is a bloody nightmare. You have split inventory, you have to share margin with the retailer, you’re beholden to whatever dumbass things the retailer decides to do. Also, Valve doesn’t have the weight of an Apple, Samsung, etc. Major corporations like that have products retailers can’t afford to not have on their shelves, so the power balance is in favor of the manufacturer. For Valve, the retailers would have the power, and Valve would have to assent to things like sales and such on the Deck when the retailer wanted, which they would then be forced to match, whether it was convenient or made sense to them. Direct sales hasn’t hurt their ability to move stock one bit, and it’s an infinitely better position for any company to be in, if they can make it work. Valve isn’t moving unless they have to.
Physical media is just laughable. No one actually wants this for PC, even if they think they do. Any physical media is far more susceptible to time than Steam is. PCs aren’t time capsules like consoles are. What are you going to even put it on? A CD? I damn sure don’t want any precious space that could be used for a bigger battery taken up by a useless drive and who’s going to play a game with an external CD drive dangling from the USB-C port any time you want to play the game. A microSD? If the whole reason is having the game for years into the future where some apocalyptic event has taken down Steam, that microSD is going to be long dead before then, trust me. Some sort of custom cartridge? That’s just a great way to lock your purchase into one device forever. One of the best things about PC games is they’re device agnostic. You can play it on a desktop, a Steam Deck, an Ally, a laptop, in the cloud with a service like GeForce Now. Take your pick. Why in the world would you want to throw all that away?