Summary
- Steam Deck sales lag behind PS Vita by a three-to-one margin, with 3.7-4 million units sold.
- Steam Deck dominates PC handheld market with 4 million units sold, against 5.9 million total sales of competitors.
Steam Deck‘s worldwide sales have reached just about a third of the totals that the PlayStation Vita managed to draw in over the same timeframe roughly 10 years ago, according to a new professional consumer analysis. While those same figures point to the Steam Deck dominating the handheld gaming PC market, the combined efforts of all PC handheld devices only appear to reach about the halfway point of what PlayStation’s last handheld system managed a decade ago.
The original LED Steam Deck was launched just over three years ago, hitting North America and Europe on February 25, 2022, while newer OLED models were released in a worldwide launch in November 2023. Originally designed with the purpose of providing a handheld experience for Steam’s library of games, early impressions pointed to a bright future, as initial Steam Deck reservations sold out within a day of their announcement.
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But while the Steam Deck exceeded developer Valve’s expectations at launch with both the interest it generated from the gaming community and the possibilities it opened up for handheld gaming, the device has only reached a fraction of the sales figures that the PS Vita managed in roughly the same period of time since its release. Recent figures from research firm IDC, as requested by The Verge, estimate the total sales of Steam Deck’s various versions number somewhere between 3.7 million and 4 million units sold. Comparing that number to previously reported figures that the PS Vita sold roughly 12 million units worldwide by 2015, the third anniversary of its release outside of Japan, shows that even with the most positive estimates for the Steam Deck, the PS Vita is still ahead by a three-to-one margin.
Steam Deck vs. PS Vita Initial 3-Year Sales Estimates
- PlayStation Vita – 12 million units
- Steam Deck – 3.7-4 million units
That’s not to say that Steam Deck hasn’t done well in the gaming PC handheld market. Those same figures from IDC show that between 2022 and 2024, 5.972 million handheld gaming PC devices were sold, with an estimate of more than 1.9 million more expected throughout 2025. Those totals include Steam Deck competitors Lenovo Legion Go, Asus ROG Ally, and MSI Claw, so the roughly 4 million Steram Deck Units that make up the majority of that figure demonstrate Valve’s dominance over the current market.
Meanwhile, PlayStation fans have been speculating about the possibility of a follow-up to the PS Vita for years. In 2015, then Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida said the time was not right for a PS Vita successor, largely due to the rise in popularity of gaming on mobile phones, and there has yet to be another handheld Sony console since the Vita. However, Sony has expanded its scope with the release of the PlayStation VR line of peripherals beginning in 2016.
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