The Steam Deck is on a sale for the first time, as part of the Steam Spring Sale. Each configuration is 10% off. That means the 64GB version is $359.10, the 128GB option is $476.10, while the top-end 512GB Steam Deck with a matte display has dropped to $584.10.
The sale, which also extends to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong through Komodo, will end with the Spring Sale on March 23 at 10 a.m. PT. Steam's sale is celebrating one year of the handheld PC, which launched on Feb. 25, 2022 in the U.S.
In a blog post, the company is also using the (slightly belated) birthday to announce a new feature: startup movies. While Steam acknowledges that people had figured out how to get their own startup videos running for a bit now, it's now a built-in feature. Valve will have 20 pre-made movies in the Steam Points Shop, or you can set your own under Settings > Customization. These movies can also work in Big Picture mode on desktop.
Valve also has a promotional video celebrating one year of the Steam Deck, going through the Steam Deck Docking station, verified program and more. But perhaps the most interesting nugget there is Valve head Gabe Newell stating that "It makes it exciting for us that we've succeeded with what we've done, but we're even more excited with where we're gonna be able to go in the future." Nothing like celebrating your first product by teasing the next one!
That's not a huge surprise, though. Valve has been open that there will be a successor to the Steam Deck, but in a recent interview, Valve designer Lawrence Yang and engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais said it would take a few years to get there.
One year in, Valve's custom Zen 2 "Van Gogh," APU with 4 cores, 8 threads, and 8 RDNA 2 compute units isn't the strongest chip by any stretch of the imagination, though at 720p and low settings, you can squeeze enough performance to run most games (and many at the native 1280 x 800 resolution). Valve has been making fairly constant updates to the Steam Deck, adding new features and making the platform more stable, so this 10% off deal may prove to be enticing for some gamers on the fence. At least you don't need to be on the waitlist anymore!
