Steam Deck Holds Two Top-Five Spots, Years After Launch

Two slots in the top five. Zero concurrent players. That’s not a game — that’s hardware. The Steam Deck, Valve’s portable PC gaming handheld, currently occupies positions four and five on Steam’s Top Sellers chart at $399 each. Not a new release. Not a flash sale. A device that first launched in 2022, still outselling nearly every software title on the platform.

Valve has made moves that should have slowed the momentum. The company hiked OLED model prices by more than 40%, citing rising memory and storage costs — the 512GB OLED now runs $789, the 1TB costs $949, according to the BBC. Cheaper LCD models are no longer sold directly by Valve. RAM prices have climbed across the industry, driven partly by data center demand from AI workloads.

None of it matters. The Deck keeps selling. User reviews sit at 93% positive on Steam.

Research from IDC, reported by PC Gamer, puts the dominance in perspective. Handheld gaming PC sales cratered from 2.87 million units in 2023 to 1.49 million in 2024 — a 50% category-wide collapse. Steam Deck still took 48% of all handheld PC sales in 2024, pushing lifetime estimates to roughly four million units. The Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and MSI Claw haven’t made a dent.

The edge is custom silicon. IDC data cited by The Verge noted that handhelds perform best with purpose-built chips like Valve’s AMD-based processors, not the generic APUs powering rival devices. Add SteamOS — an operating system actually built for a handheld — and the gap widens further.

Valve isn’t just running a game store anymore. It’s running one of the most successful hardware operations in PC gaming, with a four-year-old device, during a market contraction, after raising prices. The Steam Deck doesn’t need a successor. It needs real competition.

Sources

Steam Deck — Steam
Valve hikes Steam Deck prices by more than 40%, blaming rising costs — BBC News
New figures show Valve’s Steam Deck is still by far the biggest selling handheld gaming PC — PC Gamer

Discussion (5)

janne_k

Two top five spots!! That's incredible for a device from 2022!! I bought the OLED when it launched and honestly it's the best gaming purchase I've ever made. Play it every night in bed lol. The competition really needs to step up!!!

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DerekM

So they raised prices 40% AND killed the cheaper LCD model and people are still buying this? Gamers really will buy anything huh. No way I'd pay $949 for a handheld when a Switch is $300

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sleepyjeff

the $399 LCD is the one charting my dude, not the $949 OLED. and the article literally says it's outselling games on steam, not competing with the switch. did you read past the headline

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0xNULL

custom silicon + an os built for the form factor > slapping windows on a 7 inch screen and hoping for the best shocking that this approach works better. almost like valve employs people who understand the product they're building

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marcus_t

The 50% category-wide collapse from 2.87M to 1.49M units deserves more context. 2023 was the first real year handheld PCs went mainstream — the Ally, Legion Go, and Deck all rode the wave. 2024 was always going to be a correction. The more telling number is Valve taking 48% of a shrinking market. That's consolidation around a single product. I'd be curious how many of those 2024 Deck sales are repeat buyers upgrading to OLED though. That IDC data probably can't distinguish new vs replacement purchases.

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