The 2021 Steam break its concurrent record on Sunday, November 28th, during the weekend of Black Friday.
While sales like these enrich Steam's present, the distribution platform also has a very interesting future thanks to the Steam Deck. The handheld console is set to allow s to take their PC games on the go using a device that's superficially quite similar to a Nintendo Switch. Interest in the new device is high, but unfortunately, intrigued gamers will have to wait to experience it. While the console was originally set to release at the end of this year, it has since been delayed, and is now set to release in February 2022. Valve revealed that the Steam Deck's delay was due to supply issues, placing the blame specifically on components not arriving at warehouses in time for the machines to be assembled.
This hardware delay has not hindered Steam as a digital marketplace, though. As revealed in a blog post on the Game Awards, which were hosted earlier this month.
Steam is a considerably prominent platform, and not just for selling games. In recent months, video game fans have begun paying more attention to Steam reviews on a title, taking them as a significant indicator of how the community at large feels about a title. A prominent example of the sort of sway Steam reviews hold could be seen when eFootball 2022 became the platform's worst-reviewed game ever due to a myriad of technical issues and unappealing character models. More recently, Battlefield 2042 appeared on Steam's worst-reviewed games list, due to a similar lack of polish and an abundance of glitches. Time will tell if any prominent Winter Sale purchases end up seeing similar negative attention.
Despite the ever-increasing efforts of the Epic Games Store, Steam remains the first storefront on most fans' minds when they think of PC gaming. Major sales like the 2021 Winter Sale are a time-honored tradition for the site, and fans are likely already flooding it to look for the best deals. Thanks to developments like the Steam Deck, the future of the platform is hard to predict, but at least sales like the Steam Winter Sale can be relied on.
Source: Steam
