The Steam Deck brings unavoidable comparisons to the Nintendo Switch, and people have done in-depth, side-by-side breakdowns of their relative performance, weight, screen, and more. But while the Switch can be made colorful through a variety of different-colored JoyCons, the Steam Deck will just be black at launch. That may change, however, as Valve continues to discuss the possibility of releasing different colorways for its handheld.
According to an interview with PC Gamer, Valve apparently deliberated for a long time about how to color the Steam Deck. While its matte-black shell might seem a bit common, it was not easy to decide on it. But the developer is interested in theory in exploring multiple different color options for the handheld, especially if it launches to commercial success.
“[There was a lot of] genuinely fun exploration around that stuff,” product designer Greg Coomer said. “Even discussions like, ‘well, can we have lots of colors?’ We had all those discussions. We are continuing to have those now.”
The single-color decision had more to do with supply-chain challenges than any aesthetic desire, according to Coomer. “It’s essentially like a logistics thing,” Coomer stated. “Having a lot of SKUs in the market is just a lot more complicated. There isn’t really a better reason than that for right now.”
The Steam Deck will be released later this year, and it is essentially a mini-PC in handheld form. It’ll come in three different storage configurations, and it runs SteamOS, a modified version of Linux. You can find out much more about Steam Deck in our roundup here.
