The Steam Deck is not a flop

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

According to SteamDB, Valve's Steam Deck handheld gaming PC has been the #2 top grossing product on Steam for five weeks in a row.

I am vindicated because it means it is not a flop.

There was always a chance that people would change their minds after they put down a $5 deposit for the Linux handheld. I assumed many would after reading critical reviews like mine. I have seen a few people return their five bucks, but almost every other sign suggests that it is selling well.

We don't have official sales numbers for the Steam Deck, but here is some context that might put things in perspective.

Elden Ring is one of the most popular games in the world and the same week as the steam deck launched. The Steam Deck was second only to the Elden Ring in revenue over the past five weeks. The Elden Ring sold better than the Steam Deck.

These are top grossing numbers, not unit sales numbers, so you can weigh them the same. It takes 7 copies of Elden Ring to match the amount of revenue a single $400 Steam Deck brings in; 11 copies if we are talking a $650 512GB model. It's possible that Elden Ring saw the bulk of its sales before the launch, and then again after the launch. I don't think the game has really trailed off given the incredible word-of-mouth that has been following it since its February 24th debut.

Almost half of the 12 million copies of the game that had been sold as of March 16th were on PC. The top grossing numbers for Elden Ring on Steam probably represent a lot of copies.

The Deck is going to be hard to call a flop if it is selling even a small amount of Elden Ring.

#SteamTopSellers for week ending 10 April 2022:



#1 - LEGO® Star Wars™: The Skywalker Saga

#2 - Steam Deck

#3 - ELDEN RING

#4 - LEGO® Star Wars™: The Skywalker Saga

#5 - LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Deluxe Edition Preorderhttps://t.co/EdZPLogpMb

— SteamDB (@SteamDB) April 10, 2022

In February, Lawrence Yang said that the company would produce hundreds of thousands of units in its second month.

Are we there yet? Since the launch of the Steam Deck, Valve has mostly gone back to its traditional quiet mode.

It sounds like the Steam Deck's sales won't be slowing down anytime soon if the data can be trusted. The first-come, first-served reservations are currently backed up, so anyone who puts down $5 now won't be counted as a buyer for many months.

The r/SteamDeck community has figured out that Valve is still working through the first fifteen minutes of pre-orders from the very first day you could reserve one. The US only made it past one hour with the 64GB model, but some lines have been moving faster.

Valve's steam deck has been the #2 grossing product on steam for five weeks because of a single day of reservations, and almost everyone who ordered after that made their decision after taking it.

I pre-ordered because the Valve store was having issues. Unless Valve is playing things fast and loose and counting units as already sold, it might be weeks before my 64GB unit is counted toward the total.

994,000 Steam accounts have put down a $5 deposit, according to Playtracker.net.

There is another reason to think that the Steam Deck isn't a flop. I know I do, and my friends and colleagues who were lucky enough to get preorders tell me the same.

It was a mess, but Valve and developers have been cleaning it up week after week since launch, and it is getting better all the time. I'm mostly playing Elden Ring and Vampire Survivors right now, but I haven't had a crash in a while, and games that didn't work before are opening up. I played a lot of Duck Game.

I haven't tried New World yet, but I hear it might be working.