The big picture: Despite a new price that flirts with the $1,000 mark, the Steam Deck has risen to the top of Steam's sales charts as availability remains intermittent. As the RAM crisis erodes the price advantage of Valve's handheld over Windows-based competitors, Intel has announced its latest answer to AMD's dominant portable PC gaming processors.
Although the Steam Deck's new price makes the pioneering handheld gaming PC far less appealing, it still managed to sell out less than 24 hours after the hike. Shortly afterward, Intel unveiled its Arc G3 series APUs, which bring its new Panther Lake architecture into the portable gaming arena.
Supply constraints amid RAM shortages are the most likely reason behind the spotty availability of the $789 512GB model and $949 1TB variant of Valve's OLED Steam Deck. Still, the cheaper model currently leads the sales revenue ranking on the company's online storefront.
However, observers have noted that the price hike makes the Steam Deck a worse deal than the Asus ROG Xbox Ally. The Windows 11 handheld's $599 base model achieves similar performance, while the $999 ROG Xbox Ally X costs only $50 more than the top-end Steam Deck and features superior specs. Both Asus models also enable higher resolutions and refresh rates, leaving Valve's OLED screen being its last remaining advantage.
For shoppers willing to wait, Intel recently unveiled its two upcoming Arc G3 processors. The company aims to leapfrog AMD's Z2 series with 14-core CPUs based on its 18A process node and new Xe3-based Arc B390 iGPU.
The G3 and G3 Extreme will also continue leveraging Intel's XeSS Super Resolution upscaler, which already delivers superior image quality compared to FSR 3 on AMD-based handhelds. However, AMD announced that its more competitive FSR 4 tech will support RDNA3 hardware starting next month, which might include the ROG Xbox Ally X and similar devices.
Intel also confirmed that G3-powered handhelds will receive precompiled shaders. Like the precompiled shaders available on the Steam Deck and the Advanced Shader Delivery tech for the ROG Xbox Ally (also now rolling out to standard Windows 11 PCs), the feature saves players from needing to compile shaders during gameplay.
Devices featuring the G3 and G3 Extreme will begin shipping over the coming months, starting in June, including MSI's Claw 8 EX AI+ and a new OneXPlayer device. Acer's Predator Atlas 8, coming in October, will feature a 120 Hz 1,920 x 1,200 IPS panel with variable refresh rate support, up to 24GB of LPDDR5x RAM, and Thunderbolt 4 support.