Valve Shows Off A Supersized Steam Deck Game Console And It's Way Bigger Than You Imagine

by Mark Tyson — Thursday, September 15, 2022, 11:16 AM EDT

The Tokyo Game Show (TGS) kicked off today, and Valve is using it to promote its PC gaming handheld. One of the most eye-catching stands at the TGS thus featured a massive rendition of the Steam Deck—a version that we guesstimate to be about 10ft tall and 25ft wide.

Valve’s extremely popular device only went up for pre-order in markets like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan last month, so the PR blitz is probably about at its height right now. As well as this giant version of the Steam Deck, the exhibition area booked by Valve was flanked by two walls of Steam Decks, stuffed full of probably 100 or more of the handhelds. We don’t know if this array of devices was just for display, for sale, for mass-testing sessions, or even for some multiplayer gaming fun and tournaments Valve has planned for the show.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, we are going to shift our TGS gaze from the massive Steam Deck replica to the silly little Steam Deck character – the Steam Pal. Cutesy characters like the Steam Pal are a staple of the marketing mix for gaming brands in Japan. In the image below you can see the Steam Pal used as a key ring attached to a Steam Deck case.

Elsewhere on the Steam Deck Japan Twitter pages, the source of all these photos, you can see how the super-sized Steam Deck was put together ahead of the show. The TGS is good timing for Valve as it ramps up East Asia promotional activity, having solved the supply and shipments problem a few months ago. Though it launched several months ago, the Steam Deck’s position as the natural choice of handheld PC gaming hasn’t been successfully challenged thanks to a combination of Valve’s software might, the exclusive custom AMD Aerith APU, and pricing. Perhaps the first serious contender for its throne will be the inevitable Steam Deck 2.