Okay, so there’s this YouTuber who somehow got hold of this old Steam Deck prototype—like, one of those weird early versions. I mean, we’re talking the “engineering sample 34,” whatever that really means. Anyway, this guy, Jon Bringus, dismantled it on his channel, which some folks might think is brave or maybe just reckless. Who knows. Someone named SadlyItsDadley thought Jon was THE guy for the job—said he was perfect to archive this gadget. I wonder, maybe they just needed someone willing to pull the thing apart on camera.
So Jon, our brave hero, starts ripping off the cover, and voila, there’s a piece of paper that says “POC2-34 Control 163.” Wow, what a thrilling name (sarcasm, yes), and yeah, it kind of confirms it’s like the 34th idea Valve cooked up. Not exactly the kind of info you’d frame on your wall, but hey, it’s history. Besides poking around inside, Jon booted up some games to show how far we’ve come. Or maybe just to entertain us?
The prototype looked super different, with these huge circular touchpads—not the neat rectangles you see now. The joysticks were tiny, and the palm rests, yep, different too. Inside, there was some AMD Ryzen 7 3700U vibe going on, 8GB of RAM, a cute 256GB SSD, an Intel Wi-Fi chip, and apparently, it could handle a discrete GPU. Could have made great coffee too for all I know, but Jon didn’t push that button.
He cloned the SSD ‘cause he didn’t want to mess up the original. Smart move, I guess. When he fired up the cloned drive, there was this early SteamOS version with three accounts already there. No previews for one account—named ‘34’ fittingly—like some secret club he wasn’t invited to. The SteamOS dated back to Sept 30, 2020. A good year and a half before the Steam Deck hit shelves. Just imagine the brain behind all this tech back then.
Then there’s Valve shaking up the handheld gaming world, like a revolution or something. Nintendo’s Switch was said to have set the stage back in 2017, but Steam Deck kind of blew everyone’s collective minds. Now every other company, from Asus to Lenovo, wants a piece of the action. They realized, whoa, people actually want to lug their PC games everywhere, and thus the battle of handhelds begins.
Oh, and if you’re into all this tech drama and want updates, go follow Tom’s Hardware on Google News. They’re saying they’ve got the goods—news, analysis, reviews—all that jazz. Apparently, it’s worth clicking that Follow button. Or not. Your call.
Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough. Or maybe not, but whatever.
