#Valve launched an official Steam Deck booklet, and it is so darn neat

Valve’s Steam Deck hasn’t modified the world since its 2022 launch, however it did set a brand new precedent and opened up a brand new PC gaming area of interest. It’s an enthralling system, and Valve celebrates this truth in its official Steam Deck booklet.

Valve’s official Steam Deck booklet goes into element on the design course of and the important thing choices made when growing the hand-held. It seems to have been written earlier than the discharge of the upgraded OLED mannequin, seemingly as a part of the Asian area launch push, which implies it’s a tad out-of-date in some respects. On the identical time, nevertheless, Valve’s imaginative and prescient for the Steam Deck’s future is virtually similar.

Try the official Steam Deck booklet, however consider it’s a tad out-of-date by now

The whole Steam Deck booklet is, firstly, a advertising and marketing system designed primarily to nudge the reader into buying the system. In case you already personal a Deck (or two, because it have been), nevertheless, it’s a enjoyable little bit of bonus perception into what Valve was attempting to do with the system to start with.

“[The Steam Deck] is supposed to be upgraded and modified,” says the booklet. “Its system software program is open and accessible to customers. And the video games that run on it are modifiable, and can be found from many various storefronts. All of those attributes are intentional selections, and are themselves a supply of innovation and worth for Steam customers.”

You don’t must look very onerous to determine that is the case, both. Deck customers have been making extraordinarily helpful and fascinating plugins for the system from day one, and we’ve featured a lot of them proper right here at Destructoid. Among the mods out there for the Deck are considerably questionable, granted, however that’s simply the way it goes while you let the neighborhood go wild. It’s for the higher, sincere.

“To us, PC gaming is about openness and buyer alternative, so Steam supplies as some ways so that you can customise and personalize your individual expertise as attainable,” explains the booklet. That is simply one of many many tidbits of knowledge out there in it, driving residence your entire gist of the system: a complete democratization of gaming as a complete.

That is admittedly too excessive of an idea to be realized with only one new system in the marketplace, however it’s an admirable strategy. The place else would it not come from aside from from Valve itself, proper?

The booklet is outdated, because it appears to reference older specs and titles. It claims that the Steam Deck sports activities the one strongest handheld-tier APU in the marketplace, for instance, however this hasn’t been the case for some time now. Additional, it cites Apex Legends as one of many video games playable on the system, and this, too, is unfortunately now not the case.

Even with these caveats in thoughts, the booklet jogs my memory of these outdated hi-fi promo supplies you’d typically get within the newspapers: it’s an optimistic and insightful look behind the scenes that deserves curiosity, even whether it is only a fancy advert. Must you nonetheless have an interest within the Steam Deck now that the Change 2 is on the horizon? I don’t know, however I’m nonetheless having a great deal of enjoyable with it, and that counts for one thing!