Sure, it’s 2.6 million Decks sold (the most recent numbers). It’s a lot but the deck isn’t successful because of the number of sales. It’s Valve finding a foothold in the console market by making hardware that didn’t have hardware issues. The deck is only successful because Valve is already successful enough to take the first loss on a console to prove its hardware. The Steam Deck 2 is likely gearing up to be the thing that brings new players into the Valve ecosystem to really make them money. In a roundabout way, Valve is only successful because CoD and games like CoD are already being sold on Steam so they could amass this profit. So while the Steam Deck doesn’t directly need CoD, Valve needs CoD. Hardware isn’t something console manufacturers profit off of by much anyways.
The deck is only successful because Valve is already successful enough to take the first loss on a console
This may be true(and I wouldn’t doubt it being the case, at least on the $399 model) but it’s pure speculation on your part.
There are a dozen consoles like the Steam deck that didn’t have the impact that Steam had. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_handheld_game_consoles It’s not pure speculation. It’s certainly backed by history. Playstation is the other company that tried this and was big enough to release 2 iterations of a failed handheld that was very good on all accounts.
I was only talking about your claim that they’re selling at a loss, nothing about success or not.
We don’t know their BOM so its speculation that they’re taking a loss. (Unless I misunderstood your claim)
I think suggesting that Valve need any given game (CoD) or even genre (“games like CoD”) to remain successful is silly at best. Of course Steam, the Steam Deck, and as a result Valve are only successful or even exist at all because of video game studios and publishers. But Call of Duty specifically? Nah man, it’s a blip on the radar for Steam.
I’m not specifically talking about CoD or CoD-like games. I am talking about Non-Valve-Games. This is what Microsoft is arguing at its core when it says Valve was successful without CoD. There is a strict argument to be made that no, no they weren’t successful without CoD or third-party games. They likely couldn’t have broke into the console marketplace and arguably maybe they didn’t even break into the console space, PC gaming broke into the console space. Either way, you look at it though, games provided by Sony, Microsoft, and other AAA games made Steam successful. Steam would not have been successful if they didn’t sell CoD games and games of that status.
