Steam Deck Interview: Valve Says Slimmer Steam Deck Has Drawbacks, Offers Dock
The Steam Deck is just over seven months old now, and Valve’s device has evolved considerably since our review criticized its compatibility issues and other problems. A host of updates have addressed everything from the fan curve to the system’s refresh rate, and Valve has been successful in getting more and more units into the hands of fans. In that respect, the Steam Deck has been very much a success.
Still, fans have plenty of questions about the device, including the status of the missing dock – briefly spotted at the recent Tokyo Game Show – and Valve’s plans for the next iteration of the Steam Deck. To get some insight on these topics and more, we caught up with Steam Deck UX designer Lawrence Yang and business development executive Erik Peterson at Tokyo Game Show, where we peppered them with questions about battery life, official support for dual-booting Windows, the possibility of a slimmer Steam Deck, and more.
Check out our full interview below!
IGN: It’s been about seven months since the Steam Deck was originally released. I’m curious, what do you know now that you didn’t know back in February?
Erik Peterson: I would say that one of the things that we’ve learned is just the way that people use it. We had some ideas about how we thought people might enjoy playing with it. At least in my mind, I was thinking, “It’s portable. People are going to be playing it, of course, on an airplane or on a train or a bus or whatever.” But, at least when we were playing it at home when we first started getting our test units, just having the ability to play something on your couch, or around the house, or whatever… getting away from your PC that you’ve been spending all day on during the pandemic and being able to just enjoy it in your own way.
In my case, I play it when my wife’s maybe watching TV and I’m hanging out on the couch with her and playing a game. Or maybe I put it down for a second, make some dinner, come back, grab it. I think we’re hearing similar stories from users all over the world.
Lawrence Yang: I’m a dad, I have two young kids, and it used to be that I’d have to guiltily hide in my office and play games in the dark. But now I can actually play a game and I hear my son crying, I can run over and change his diaper and then finish, and then play my game again while they’re watching Sesame Street or whatever. It’s been great. I can still have gaming in my life as a parent.
Erik Peterson: Another thing that I’ve noticed personally, and I’ve heard other people online talk about it, is just exploring your Steam library in a different way: types of games you play; when you play them. For me, personally, it’s kind of enabled me to go back and explore games that I’d intended to play or wanted to play for a long time, or in a different style that I might not want to play on my desktop PC, and to really dive into these and feel like I’m giving them a fresh try.
IGN: There’s been a lot of discussion about the delays for the Steam Deck Docking Station, and people have been eagerly anticipating it. Valve has said that it’s been a problem with parts and that kind of thing. I’m just wondering, what kind of challenges have you run into in developing the dock?
Lawrence Yang: A lot of the same supply chain issues that we ran into with the [Steam Deck]. The Deck is actually in a much better spot now; we’re able to produce them at a much faster clip. The dock is being manufactured at a different place, it has different components, and it has its own supply issues and constraints that we’ve had to deal with. We’re overcoming them, and so we are going to hopefully announce something soon. So watch out for that.
There’s a lot of stuff that we wanted to do to make sure that it works with as many peripherals as possible. What’s great is any work that we do for the [Steam Deck dock] works on every dock – so every USB dock is benefiting from all of the work that we do on SteamOS.
IGN: We’re here in Japan right now, and I’m curious, what has been the response from Japanese gamers to the Steam Deck?
Erik Peterson: It’s been incredibly positive. One of the first things that we’ve been hearing in talking to people getting in their hands for the first time is just how surprised by how light it is. I think a lot of people maybe had a preconceived notion of it being this big, heavy, hard-to-handle thing, and they’ve really responded positively in terms of how light it is, how comfortable it is, and the types of games that you play on it. We’ve been watching people boot up various games on the device, and you can see them being surprised that they can play Elden Ring and other high-spec, AAA games on it. That’s been a really pleasant surprise and it’s resulted in good feedback.
Lawrence Yang: Ever since we opened the booth, three things always pop up. One is, “It’s a lot lighter and more comfortable than I expected it would be.” Another is, “I can play a whole lot of games on…
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