The Steam Deck had some wild prototypes

As Valve's Steam Deck slowly finds its way into the hands of PC gamers in the next couple of weeks, those of us eager for a behind-the-scenes look at how the handheld gaming PC evolved can take a peek at what could have been. Valve released photographs that show off some early designs of the Steam Deck, and it seems like the Nintendo Switch inspired some of those prototypes. 

You can see iterations of Steam Deck leading up to the version Valve eventually settled on. Some models similar to the Nintendo Switch and its removable joy-con controllers are among them, roughly halfway down the photo.

“There were things like articulated handles that had hinges on either side,” Greg Coomer, designer at Valve, told PC Gamer last summer. “A lot of different explorations of the physical form that you hold, and what shape it should take control placements moved around during the development process, the size of the screen varied as we tried different playable prototypes.”

There are even some models with alternate color schemes. Even though the Steam Deck currently only comes in black, Valve didn't dismiss the idea of later selling it in multiple colors. One thing that remains consistent through each version seems to be the size of the screen and the Steam Deck itself. Though Valve settled on a design without removable Joycon-like trackpads, you can still see the evolution of the trackpads and controller layout in later models.

Jay Shaw, another Steam Deck designer, said that Valve “had working units that had differently shaped trackpads and different amounts of 'play'” to feel out the right controls. “It went beyond just quick, easy prototypes, into working units that had a lot of variation,” he said.

Considering the time spent in development, it makes sense that Valve R&D had so many different control schemes prototyped before deciding on the final version. There's one thing I still really need to know: which one of these was the one affectionately known as 'The Ugly Baby.'