It’s not a Steam Deck 2, but Valve announced that you can soon buy a new Steam Deck. The company is releasing a limited-edition white Steam Deck OLED just ahead of the holidays.
Valve revealed the new $679 handheld Monday night. Sure, it’s a bit pricey, but it only costs $30 more than the equivalent Steam Deck OLED 1TB model. Valve says it’ll have all the same specs as the top-tier 1TB version, with up to a 90Hz refresh rate, an HDR OLED display, and a 50 watt-hour battery. The only difference is that it comes in a new color. It even comes with its own white carrying case and white microfiber cloth.
The Steam Deck OLED: Limited Edition White will go on sale at 3 p.m. PT on November 18 in all regions where the Steam Deck currently ships. The only restrictions will be that you can only buy one per account and you need to have made a Steam purchase with your account before November. Valve will only be manufacturing limited quantities, so this buying period will be the only chance to get the Steam Deck OLED in white. If it sells out, it’s gone forever.
Valve told Eurogamer, however, that depending on feedback, this experiment might “inform future decisions about any potential new color variants down the line.”
This marks the second time that Valve has strayed beyond the Steam Deck’s original design. It’s good for what it is — large, but surprisingly practical with a decently sized screen — but the black color is bland. There are skins out there and even a couple cases you can use to change things up, but in the end, you’re just playing PC games with a clunky black box.
The white is just nice too. It has this gray tint that keeps things subtle, but also evokes a more nostalgic console design, like the recent PlayStation 5 Pro.
Valve also released a limited-edition translucent 1TB Steam Deck OLED last year (almost exactly a year ago, actually) that also sells for $679.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.