the fact that it sold a lot means it’s a market that it’s probably worth the investment (can’t imagine it’s that much)
Something I’ve heard is that deck users tend to buy more games and more new releases than your average non-deck user (which makes sense considering most of us are financially well off enough to buy a second PC for portable play). So even though the total number of deck users isn’t huge compared to steam as a whole, there’s a much more significant percentage of launch purchases that are being played on deck.
Some indie game reported that 10% of their launch sales went to people playing on Steam Deck, which is a sizable market chunk, and a much higher percentage of players than the the steam hardware survey would suggest to expect.
Makes sense! And it does track with my own observations of new indie games being more likely to at least court the Deck platform. Do you have an article with those numbers? I’d like to share it with a small developer that might be interested in this knowledge.
My interpretation of that is that the Deck users were more likely than non-Deck users to pay full price for the game at launch. Considering that deck users only make up 0.6% of players based on Valve’s hardware survey, it would seem like Deck owners buy far more games than the average user.
It’s also possible that the hardware survey is underreporting decks though, significantly more decks have been sold than 0.6% would represent, and I know I get far more valve hardware survey requests on my desktop vs Deck, even though nearly all my playtime is on Deck.
Something I’ve heard is that deck users tend to buy more games and more new releases than your average non-deck user (which makes sense considering most of us are financially well off enough to buy a second PC for portable play). So even though the total number of deck users isn’t huge compared to steam as a whole, there’s a much more significant percentage of launch purchases that are being played on deck.
Some indie game reported that 10% of their launch sales went to people playing on Steam Deck, which is a sizable market chunk, and a much higher percentage of players than the the steam hardware survey would suggest to expect.
Makes sense! And it does track with my own observations of new indie games being more likely to at least court the Deck platform. Do you have an article with those numbers? I’d like to share it with a small developer that might be interested in this knowledge.
The game was “The Pale Beyond”
Here was them saying 10% of sales were on Deck.
Later on, after the game had been out awhile and had some sales, the percentage of deck players dropped to a still respectable 5%.
My interpretation of that is that the Deck users were more likely than non-Deck users to pay full price for the game at launch. Considering that deck users only make up 0.6% of players based on Valve’s hardware survey, it would seem like Deck owners buy far more games than the average user.
It’s also possible that the hardware survey is underreporting decks though, significantly more decks have been sold than 0.6% would represent, and I know I get far more valve hardware survey requests on my desktop vs Deck, even though nearly all my playtime is on Deck.
Thanks! I’ll have to find a way to “pitch” this but that’s interesting.