Being a copycat doesn't make it a competitor.

That storage for the 399 model is a joke

Now that's how you do a "Pro" handheld device and perfectly timed as well after Nintendo's anti consumer move last week of jacking up the price 50 dollars for only 10 dollars extra of production cost. I'll definitely purchase this to play my steam library on.

Does it use standard PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs? If so, would it be cheaper to buy the $399 model and buy your own SSD. $130 for a 512GB SSD seems high and its a ludicrous $250 for the 1TB version. You can get a 2TB NVMe SSD for around $160

Yeah, you pretty much need the mid-range model with the SSD if you want to use this for anything more than playing last gen games and indies. They didn't even opt for high speed SD support for the expandable storage on any of these models, they went with UHS-I which is limited to 104 MB/s, they could have gone with UHS-II (312 MB/s), UHS-III (624 MB/s) or SD Express (985 MB/s with PCIe x1). That is something that Nintendo needs to do better with Switch 2, they need to support much faster SD cards than UHS-I, so that people can expand the storage on their Switch 2 and not be limited to last gen speeds, that will hold back game development for Switch 2 if all games need to be able to run off of a UHS-I SD card. 

It won't have Nintendo games.

It will have Xbox games.

It will have some PlayStation games.

It will have Steam/PC games.

So intriguing.

I don't think this is good idea, the CPU, GPU and a 64GB eMMC are underpowered specs for future AAA/AA games, you'll be forced to play indie games or even cloud gaming.

So, they will eventually update Steam Deck internal specs in the future anyway, i don't need to rush get one, this is only first step.

Now that I think about it, this is the first handheld that I am aware of that should be more powerful than a base ps4. Now obviously the ps4 is old but hopefully, this means that the Switch 2 will also be more powerful than a base ps4 as that will be releasing even later.

If you count emulators, it will also have Nintendo games

Bear in mind that the screen is only 800p, so I think the CPU and the GPU might be good enough to play 9th gen games games at low settings at 720p or 800p, and if not, there is always AMD's Super Resolution, which will allow you to run at an even lower and less demanding resolution like 540p and then upscale to match the 800p screen. Docked is where it will struggle, 9th gen games running at such low resolution won't look great on a big 4K tv, even with AMD Super Resolution. 

As for the storage, the base model probably will struggle on 9th gen games, in terms of both size and speed, so I would definitely recommend getting the mid-range model with the 256 GB NVMe SSD if you want to use this to play 9th gen games.