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Valve reveals the gaming hours on Steam Deck during 2024 and they are staggering - Steam Deck has become one of the main gaming platforms and is starting to be treated as such (en.softonic.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 days ago (4 children)

To put this in perspective:

Valve has revealed that Steam Deck players accumulated 330 million hours of gameplay during 2024, representing a remarkable 64% increase compared to the previous year.

That's the equivalent of every Switch owner playing two hours in the entire year. Nintendo doesn't share their usage numbers in aggregate, but they do provide a "year in review" thing per user and most of the ones I see online are in the three digit range. Even assuming a bunch of people aren't using these at all, we're looking one to two orders of magnitude larger than the Steam Deck, which checks out with what we know about the total numbers sold for each device.

Which is to say, the Deck is probably as popular as, say, a Sega Game Gear or a Sega Saturn but nowhere near any of the modern consoles yet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

Invalid perspective, I'm afraid.

Every Switch owner

That's over 8 years of Switch owners. Use the same growth curve on the SteamDeck forecasting out 7 years from now to make your assessment more accurate.

Some further perspectives:

Many Switch owners have more than one due to the release cycle and special versions
If you segment the Switch into the number of consoles sold during the first year, this gap would be nowhere near as large.

@[email protected] is spot on. This data is about potential and growth, not the past.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I think the difference here is that the market for the the Switch is known but the market that Valve created for Handheld PC Gaming isn't and it's proving be far larger than expected. It's completely possible that the market for PC Gaming handhelds is just as big as for the Switch.

There is also lot of unexplored territory for Valve with the Steam Deck including games written specifically for Linux, docks that would let you use more powerful hardware when you want to play on a big screen, and crazily enough docks for using the Deck as an actual computer. (There's already docks that turn your smartphone into a laptop, no reason that can't be done with a Deck).

Nintendo created something kind of new with the Switch but it only works with the Nintendo ecosystem. Valve took their idea and is making it work in the PC ecosystem which is ultimately much larger.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You know what, I'll take a Sega saturn equivalent. We're at least still talking about the Saturn today.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Hey, I had a Sega Saturn. Loved my Sega Saturn. Like it more than my Steam Deck, if I'm being honest, but I do like my Deck and I do have one.

I'm just saying, when we're talking numbers in the millions it's easy to lose perspective.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Its the year of the ~~linux desktop~~ steam deck!