It was right place, right time, lightning in a bottle kind of thing.
Over time Valve built the tools to make the Deck as good as it is, but it took years of background development on things you wouldn’t think about. Stuff like having experimented with SteamOS on Steam Boxes prior to using it for the deck. Having built the Steam controller as an acceptable interface. The only thing they didn’t have prior experience with was the AMD APU structure, but ultimately because of the open source nature of the drivers, they were able to get into it very quickly.
It was right place, right time, lightning in a bottle kind of thing.
Over time Valve built the tools to make the Deck as good as it is, but it took years of background development on things you wouldn’t think about. Stuff like having experimented with SteamOS on Steam Boxes prior to using it for the deck. Having built the Steam controller as an acceptable interface. The only thing they didn’t have prior experience with was the AMD APU structure, but ultimately because of the open source nature of the drivers, they were able to get into it very quickly.