When Valve revealed the Steam Deck in 2022, it was absolutely enchanting and it seemed effortlessly able to play almost every game from the library. If the settings were set too low, even that sprawling world called Elden Ring could get life on its constricted display.
Now in 2025, the newest marvels of gaming-tagged titles like the critically hailed Indiana Jones and Dragon’s Dogma 2 cannot launch on this aged device of Valve.
This goes to the Ayaneo 3, the mega-handy device, which has become a power within handhelds in the wake of Valve’s achievements. Both those titles run very well on the Ayaneo 3, along with several still-secret high-profile AAA games, all at medium settings.
But then Steam Deck has it in a really clever way. The $399 handheld out-of-the-box is a whole world of mainstream desktop gaming, and now Ayaneo, with their sweet talk of impressive PC, comes at a very hefty price.
Early pre-orders on Indiegogo start at $799 for the weaker CPU. If users want an Ayaneo 3, with the powerful AMD Ryzen, AI 9 HX 370 CPU it would come at a pre-order price of $1,399.
Users might be wondering who would pay almost thrice the cost of the premium Steam OLED for a device that has a few more games. However, in the vast expanses of PC gaming, for the deep-pocketed crowd, NVIDIA once unveiled its latest flagship GPU.
It is not uncommon that those players spent $2,000, to improve their gaming experience using higher resolution and frame rates. Hence, it does not come as a surprise that the more powerful desktop gaming at any price is mentally leaking into the handheld market and turning into a blood sport.
The Ayaneo 3 will turn out to be a game changer as it comes with a better performance for the players.
