Have a million units of the Steam Deck? In the absence of official numbers from Valve, it is what has been announced in the Academy 2022, the largest event around the KDE project that is being held this year in the Spanish city of Barcelona. But before continuing with the information about the Steam Deck, we are going to expose what KDE is.
KDE is a free software project encompassing a Linux desktop environment and application ecosystem. The desktop, officially called KDE Plasma, is widely known in Linux circles and stands out for its Windows-like layout (although this depends on the distribution) and its almost endless customization possibilities. As for applications, it has powerful tools such as the Kdenlive video editor and the Krita drawing application, which have managed to carve out a niche not only outside the KDE spectrum, but also beyond Linux.
Now yes, and returning to the subject, it is no secret that Valve is apparently pleased with the commercial performance of the Steam Deck, something that was made clear not long ago in its intentions to launch future generations of the device and in the opening of repair centers. Moreover, the company itself, known above all for the digital video game platform Steam, has openly acknowledged that it has learned from the mistakes of the past in clear allusion to the failure that Steam Machines were at the time.
It’s a bit difficult to establish what the release date of Valve’s console/mini-PC is, as the successive crises of recent years caused the planned shipments for December 2021 to be delayed to March 2022. Either taking ten or seven months, the numbers are not bad at all seeing that basically it is a mini-PC with a pre-installed standard GNU/Linux system, so its profile, facing the world of gamingcan be considered as underground.
Yes indeed, selling a million units in seven or ten months very possibly would have known little for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft (Xbox) if they released next-generation consoles under normal market conditions and supplies. This is evident if we see that the Nintendo Switch sold 2.7 million units in its first month after going on the market. The Steam Deck is often compared to Nintendo’s hybrid console, but the resemblance between them begins and ends with the design and layout of the device.
The Steam Deck is a 64-bit x86 mini-PC disguised as a hybrid console. As operating system it preinstalls SteamOS 3, which is a derivative of the popular Arch Linux distribution to which immutability properties have been added to offer a more stable ground for developers and minimize the chances of breakage by users. However, it is clearly aimed at running Windows video games through Proton, a compatibility layer based on Wine, which has sparked debate and some susceptibilities within the Linux community.
As we have already said, whether or not it is true that a million units of the Steam Deck have been shipped, the truth is that Valve seems to be satisfied with its commercial performance. If you want to know all the technical keys of this product, we invite you to see our special about it, in which we detail the most relevant components and the basic aspects of their operation when running Windows video games.
