Valve should definitely send a couple hundred thousand units to Japan to see how the Deck does. It seems like a device that could do well there with proper support/feedback etc. Maybe partner with some popular gaming companies to help with marketing.
I imagine it would be impossible to compete with Nintendo tho at this point they seem to dominant. And next year they are releasing a new open world Pokemon and Zelda game too. They are gonna crush it with the end Switch life cycle sales.
You can't compete with Nintendo but in Japan this would seem like a nice entry point to PC gaming there. Assuming a couple of things.
When the Steam Deck is sold there it's MSRP will most likely be somewhere of $100-300USD above what the US MSRP is. So it would come to no surprise if the 500GB version is somewhere close to $900-$1kUSD MSRP in Japan and the MSRP for the bass model to be close to $500 (maybe even $550)
Something about PC gaming In Japan is that it's expensive, so being able to have an entry point at just $500USD is very nice, so not only is it a gaming PC but you can also use it for general use. Computer wise in Japan I guess it's only "real" revival would be Chrome OS laptops and even the most popular one is around $350USD there and is locked to Chrome OS and can't play Steam games (yes Steam is coming to Chrome OS but I don't think those lower/mid tier ones will be able to play Doom Eternal or Witcher 3).
I guess it's popularity there all comes down to how much people know about it. Because if it's like Chrome OS and all the person needs is just web browser stuff then they should have no issue using the Steam deck for school stuff. You saw the stuff that they showed in Linus video that's the PC stuff that this can do and may be one of the things that a lot of people don't talk about, even when some people like Daniel Ahmed and others talked about the Steam Deck the mainly focused on the "handheld console" part of it and not the actual PC part of it. In addition to the $500 all you would need to pay is an extra $300 to get a monitor and mouse and keyboard (even if you got a desktop you would still need to buy these anyway)
I tend to look at some Japanese PC gaming stuff that I know a lot of others don't always tend to pay attention to but this is something that I'm looking to see how it plays out and if some of the stores that are going to be selling it are going to have a special demo thing.
As of right now Japan is the only place that sells the Valve Index in physical stores and the thing is that they do have a demo both for it. The way they would have it set it is that you would sign up for a time to demo it out and then go and try it. I'm not sure what the current situation on that is right now but some store are still sold out of index stuff.
And that's a rock fact.
Also I'm not sure if I mentioned this already but I got my P5 vinyl and I didn't seem to get the velvet room song... I contacted Fan Gamer and hopefully they have some good news for me and don't tell me something like.... Oh we forgot about you seeing how even back in April they did say that as long as you pre-ordered by Dec 31 2020 that you would get the vinyl for that song
Watching LTT's video about the Steam Deck it's very clear the 649 USD model is the one to go with.
Which one is that? Or just a typo?