Valve today officially announced the existence and launch window for the long-rumored Steam Deck.

Coming this December, the Steam Deck is a portable gaming PC rocking a custom AMD APU (Zen2, RDNA2).

Introducing Steam Deck: powerful, portable PC gaming starting at $399. Designed by Valve, powered by Steam. Shipping December 2021.

Learn more athttps://t.co/ZOTx3KUCVKand reserve yours tomorrow.#SteamDeckpic.twitter.com/jcgbaKfT9c

— Steam (@Steam)July 15, 2021

It looks fantastic – if only because it bears a striking resemblance tothe greatest handheld gaming console ever, the Nintendo Switch.

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In all fairness, it appears to be quite a bit fancier than a Switch. It has four triggers and four ‘grip buttons’, two touch pads, two thumb sticks, and a full suite of buttons.

Specifications are pretty thin right now, but we were able to grab a few details from theSteam Deck website.

Features

The Steam Deck will also get an official dock (sold separately):

Quick take:Hallelujah, oh happy day, and give it to me now! I game on every platform I can possibly afford and, at the end of the day, almost nothing beats the convenience of the Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately, the bulk of the games I actually own are on Steam. It’s nice to playZeldaon the bus orSmash Brosin bed, but having my entire Steam game library available to me on what appears to be a high-quality gaming device that apes the Switch is a big deal.

All we need now is Microsoft and Steam to come to terms on bringing Xbox Game Pass to the device, and we could very well be about to enter a second Golden Age for gaming handhelds.

I can’t wait to get my hands on a Steam Deck this holiday season. You can reserve onehere.

Story byTristan Greene

Tristan is a futurist covering human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, physics, and space stuff. Pronouns:(show all)Tristan is a futurist covering human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, physics, and space stuff. Pronouns: He/him

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