Okay, so imagine this: there’s this YouTuber, right? He’s got this super rare early model of the Steam Deck that, honestly, kinda looks like someone mashed it together in a basement lab. And you know what? He goes on and takes the whole thing apart on camera. It’s like watching surgery, except it’s on a gaming console. Anyway, there’s this person, formerly known as SadlyItsDadley on X (the artist formerly called Twitter, because why not complicate things?), who thinks, “Hey, Jon Bringus at Bringus Studios would probably love this gadget,” and lends it to him. Jon’s reaction? “Yup, I’m the guy for this.”
So, Jon starts unscrewing things, and guess what? He finds a paper marked “POC2-34 Control 163” inside. Like, who even writes numbers like that? Proof-of-concept, he figures—or someone sneezed while typing. Jon doesn’t just poke around. No, he’s playing games on the thing. It’s wild to think how Valve’s journey into the world of portable gaming has evolved since this raw idea walked out of their brainstorms.
Now the look of this baby, yeesh, is all over the place compared to today’s sleek-looking Steam Deck—big circular touchpads shouting from its old-school design, its joysticks looking mini next to what we see today. The palm rests? Definitely not winning any beauty contests. It’s packing a Ryzen 7 3700U with a mere 8GB RAM, no less! And sure, it claims to support discrete GPUs, but Jon didn’t get to check that.
So, Jon, being the cautious sort, copies the SSD to keep the original vibe intact. When he boots this up again, bam! There’s an early version of SteamOS flashing at him. Three accounts pre-installed—this includes a mysterious ’34’ account tied to its POC. No luck getting in there though. Also, this SteamOS concoction dates back to September 2020. Insane how it took over a year more for these devices to hit stores.
Let’s be real, Valve pretty much kick-started a portable gaming madness with the Steam Deck. Sure, Nintendo had their Switch thing going on since 2017—which, love it or hate it, set some serious trends—but the Steam Deck got PC hardware makers buzzing like bees. Everybody’s jumping into the fray now with their own gear—think Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, MSI Claw… You name it, they want a bite.
Oh, and if you’re all about the latest tech gossip, maybe give Tom’s Hardware a follow on Google News. They’ve got the scoop on all the good stuff—hardware, games, and sometimes random fun facts that are oddly satisfying.
