Could the 2020s become the decade when mainstream PC gaming turns handheld?

Techspot's Goran Damnjanovic thinks this might be the case while congratulating the Steam Deck on its accomplishments 11 months in. In his article he explores the bricks that laid the foundation to the Steam Deck's success like Steam Machines, Proton, AMD's initial developments with APUs, and even Sony's PSP and Vita. I was especially delighted to see Sony's handhelds mentioned as I said in my previous opinion piece the Steam Deck reminds me a lot of my experience with the PSP and Vita.

In my opinion, Valve released Steam Deck at the perfect moment. The company was also ready to provide superb support for it and the plethora of possibilities found inside the Deck's tiny chassis, matched with Valve's supporting stance towards modding also contributed to the Deck's success.

Between the mature hardware, the rising interest in handheld gaming PCs (with articles covering the GPD Win 3 and Ayaneo handhelds), and Nintendo's aging Switch hardware... all of these lend credibility to Goran's opinion. He goes on to highlight Valve's tireless work pushing out updates and improving the experience on the Deck which has lead the initial ~300 compatible games to balloon to over 7,000.

This is due to large part Valve's choice to keep the Deck ecosystem open allowing for anyone to help contribute to the advancement of Linux gaming and bringing more functionality to the Steam Deck.

It's a well writen article so I recommend you check it out. Goran also touches on future AAA games and DirectX storage games and how he's not particularly worried for the Deck's future. As we get closer to the Steam Deck's first birthday I imagine we'll see a lot more celebratory coverage as this is a meaningful advancement in handheld gaming we can all rally around.