However, their focus was on the unit's performance; Newell stated, "But the first thing was the performance and the experience, was the biggest and most fundamental constraint that was driving this." Newell recognized that the base pricing was somewhat lower than expected and "painful", but necessary to meet the expectation of gamers who would want the Deck.
In addition to handheld use, the Steam Deck can be connected to a Television or monitor through a docking station and be used like a desktop computer or home video game console. Steam Deck designer Scott Dalton said "there was always kind of this classic chicken and egg problem with the Steam Machine", as it required the adoption of Linux by both players and game developers to reach a critical interest in the machines to draw manufacturers in making them. The lack of Linux game availability during the lifetime of Steam Machines led Valve to invest development into Proton, a Linux compatibility layer to allow Windows–based games to be run on Linux without modification. One idea from this prototype was to include the Steam Link, a device capable of streaming game content from a computer running Steam to a different monitor, here routing that output to the small LCD on the controller. Further, their experience with trying to convince other manufacturers to produce Steam Machines led Valve to realize that it was better to develop all their hardware internally. Dalton said, "More and more it just became kind of clear, the more of this we are doing internally, the more we can kind of make a complete package." Rumors that Valve was working on a portable gaming unit had emerged in May 2021, based on updates made within the Steam code pointing towards a new "SteamPal" device, and comments made by Gabe Newell related to Valve developing games for consoles. However, their focus was on the unit's performance; Newell stated, "But the first thing was the performance and the experience, was the biggest and most fundamental constraint that was driving this." Newell recognized that the base pricing was somewhat lower than expected and "painful", but necessary to meet the expectation of gamers who would want the Deck. Newell continued that he believed this was a new product category of personal computer hardware that Valve and other computer manufacturers would continue to participate in if the Steam Deck proved successful, and thus it was necessary to keep the unit's price point reasonable to demonstrate viability. The openness of the system was also a key feature according to Newell, as that is a defining "superpower" of the personal computer space over typical console systems. Newell did not want to have any limitations on what the end user could do with the hardware, such as installing alternate non-Steam software on it.
As of December 2022, Valve was pursuing improvements on the current Steam Deck design, including an audio mixer, per-game "power profiles", and some other performance improvements, as well as evaluating a second generation Steam Deck.
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