Gotta admit, I never saw that coming. I thought SteamOS was dead after the failure of Steam Machines and Valve was only continuing with their Linux efforts because it's still a useful hedge against Microsoft locking everyone in the App Store. I totally did not expect them to copy the Switch use-case with it.
I'm anxious to see how this turns out. Valve's history with hardware is not so great, so it could go nowhere like Steam Machines, Steam Link, and the Steam Controller did. On the other hand, it could end up all but killing off PC gaming if it is super successful. If it lands somewhere in the middle it will at least be yet another boon for Linux gaming brought to you by Valve as more developers will port or ensure compatibility with Proton.
I love Valve but it seems like they create these hardware projects to occasionally remind platform owners like microsoft/playstation/nintendo that they can't completely abuse their users and software devs (Win10 store lock-in, etc) and retain all of them. Valve just wants to protect steam and credible hardware platform competition is how they do it. I don't think they have any real plans to produce and support hardware long term.
A reminder that if Microsoft does continue along that path, Valve is happy to come along and gobble up significant portions of their market share. It's a win-win for Valve: either MS keeps their platform out of a walled garden, allowing Steam to continue it's current path, or Valve eats their lunch while making Linux in general a more mainstream option.
> I don't think they have any real plans to produce and support hardware long term.
With Valve's track record, I absolutely believe they have limited plans for production in the long term. But their long-term hardware support is impeccable. I have several discontinued pieces of hardware from Valve (the Steam Link and Steam Controller), both of which are still used and work as well as they day I bought them - better even, thanks to continued software updates.
Seems like the Google Fiber strategy - start deploying key products/services to influence the big players in the market to finally innovate or at least play nice for consumers.
SF is actually getting really fast internet now. All the new developments we looked at had gigabit internet at ~$80/month with multiple competing providers. It's getting to older apartments now as well.
At these speeds, the WiFi adapters are more of a bottleneck than the ISP. I can only get close to full speed on ethernet.
Just in SF, though, right? Immediately south in Daly City the options were either paying through the nose for Comcast's mediocre cable or being stuck with DSL, and that was in 2019.
This is a result of the low density of SV. In my Oakland apartment I have 1Gbs symmetric internet. In fact we have the choice of 3 ISPs offering gigabit internet (only one of them is symmetrical though).
Honest question (I may have misunderstood): Do you mean to imply that those are good prices? For reference, I'm paying about $40 for 1000 mbps (I'm not in the US). Can go to 10gbps for about double that price (IIRC), but I think the bottleneck becomes server bandwidth so it wouldn't speed me up for most services.
$80 USD for 1000mbps in Tennessee, USA. Unfortunately I have the best internet of all my friend groups and will be moving across town to a newer home soon where the best I can get is 50mbps for $50 USD.
It is completely random what internet speeds you can get. The only constant is the monopoly of Comcast & AT&T.
A duopoly can be a distinction without a difference if there's territory-dividing collusion, or even just game-theoretically "optimal" moves by the players towards a sub-optimal state for the customers.
So what use is that 5gbps? Do you run multiple machines? Do you use 10gb NICs? Or is this just simply what your ISP offers? I’m curious what people beyond 1gbps are using their extra speed for.
I'd personally use it for remote backups. I guess this is with Free (illiad). They also offer 10G-EPON (8Gbps) with their "Freebox Delta" router with at least one SFP+ port.
Yes it's real! In rural cities in the USA many people only have 1-2mbps speeds still!
My family in rural areas are waiting and hoping for 5G internet to save them, but I live in a rather hilly region and many are worried their homes won't get good 5G service!
Is that in a metropolitan area? Wow that's worse than what we have Australia, and internationally we are the laughing stock of internet connections! Here, you can get double than 10MB/s even in some remote areas now.
Really curious about DIGI. fed up with Orange and I want to try DIGI, 1gbs down + 2 unlimited data mobile lines for <50 EUR is really good value IMHO.
Is it stable? How fast was the install¿? I've had everything from 48hs with ONO to 2 weeks delay with Orange
Their connection is good.
They lease the last mile to Telefónica (Neba). They exchange traffic in Espanix.
Fun thing is sometimes Google says you're in Romania :-D
20€/month for 150Mbps download, 10Mbps upload in France.
Of course, for that price I have to regularly deal with the shitty service of Numericable (payment service down, money extorsion for which I have to send snail mail to recover... and I still haven't).
Absolutely in most countries you get either a much faster connection for the same price, or a connection of the same speed for less than that. And in this comparison I'm including a few developing countries where I've been recently (SE Asia).
End of the day Valve will never work seriously on hardware at a level will allow them to compete.
Hardware is extremely difficult and extremely expensive.
High effort and almost always low to no reward unless you manage to create a breakout device.
Valve already has the business that most people build the hardware for in the first place. The reason Microsoft makes Xbox is to get a cut of game sales and sell a subscription. Valve already gets a cut of almost all PC sales so really trying to build hardware looks bad on almost every conceivable company chart within Valve.
Yet they keep doing it every 5 years ago due to presumably due to their weird management.
They're not building traditional hardware. This is off the shelf components assembled in a particular manner, most likely by a 3rd party.
IMO, this is a great move. They're building a cheap device that plays AAA games in a cool Switch-like form factor. I think targeting teenagers and young adults.
I think the industry is changing how they do business, a mainstream Linux/AMD device is leading the way.
> They're not building traditional hardware. This is off the shelf components assembled in a particular manner
I can tell you from personal experience this isn't easy at all and is just as difficult as any other hardware project, even if you're not literally building new processors or hardware firmwares it's still a huge mission getting something like that to market let alone making it profitable.
I work on a company that has shipped laptops where we designed all the casing with off the shelf processor/storage/etc, so have worked on what you're describing here.
Laptops are completely commoditized, of course you would struggle with profitability there. For a company the size of Valve, building these devices probably carries very little risk. The biggest risk is the software, which they were going to tackle anyway.
This is way back about a decade ago, when Valve was very Windows-centric and barely even had macOS ports of Steam running. Windows 8 was announced with an entirely new application type, APIs, and distribution model intended to support tablets. Existing applications were shoved in the Desktop penalty box, while new applications had to be fullscreen or side-by-side, like a tablet. Furthermore, Windows on ARM was announced, with the Desktop penalty box further restricted to only Windows apps (though you could jailbreak it). If you wanted your app to work as a tablet app, you had to rewrite it for XAML and distribute it through the Microsoft Store, with similar technical restrictions to that of Apple's.
The very clear message from Microsoft was that the future of Windows was in fullscreen tablet apps and that the desktop - as well as third-party app stores - was going away. Valve would proceed to launch a Linux version of Steam a few months before Windows 8 RTM'd, their own Linux distro a year later, and consolized PC hardware another year after that. Basically, the whole company made a very clear pivot away from game development (which they still haven't fully gone back to) to ensure Steam had a lifeboat if Windows 9 were to drop the Desktop or enforce app lockouts on it.
Of course, what actually happened is that Windows 8 became the laughing stock of the entire PC industry. Microsoft was trying, like, five developer transitions at once and nobody was interested. (Not even Apple can do that, and they actually did try. Ask me about Rhapsody sometime.) So the end result is that app developers never wrote anything to the new native XAML APIs, users just used the Desktop app, and nobody had any interest in Windows on ARM tablets. That's why you don't remember the Windows Store lock-in; in Windows 10, Microsoft got rid of it.
After Apple bought NextStep to serve as the basis of their next gen OS, Rhapsody was a developer preview that was a reskinned NextStep running on Mac Hardware.
Existing Macintosh software could be run under emulation, and the original plan was that everything going forward would need to be rewritten using the NextStep APIs. (All those NS frameworks still used on iPhones and Macs today)
Eventually Apple decided they would have to create an additional set of APIs (Carbon) based on the existing Macintosh APIs that would allow software vendors an easier path forward.
Developers could adopt Carbon with much less effort and eventually transition to the NextStep APIs as part of a future large scale rewrite.
Carbon never transitioned to 64 bit, so those NextStep APIs did eventually become the default for native software.
In very, very short terms, Rhapsody is Apple's Windows 8.
In order to explain why that comparison makes sense at all, I first need to go over some basics.
After shipping the original Macintosh in 1984, Apple's investors got really mad about how the computer wasn't selling, and more or less forced Steve Jobs out of the company. Jobs decided he was going to build another computer company called NeXT, which was going to out-engineer Apple and make the next big thing. It didn't actually work out that way, but conveniently for Steve, Apple had been mismanaged into the ground and drowning in technical debt. So Apple basically bought NeXT because OPENSTEP (previously NeXTSTEP; at this point Steve was trying to turn it into a cross-platform API) was a functional operating system and all of Apple's attempts at System 8 (including asking IBM to finish Copland, which is another boondoggle called Taligent) weren't.
So, right when Apple announced the NeXT buyout, they also announced that the next version of the Macintosh's OS would be built on top of OPENSTEP, with all existing Macintosh software running in a fullscreen "Blue Box" VM. The "Yellow Box" would hold new software written to the OPENSTEP APIs, and these apps were properly memory-protected. (Context: At this point in time all System 7 apps ran in kernel mode with separate segmented heaps. It's exactly as bad as it sounds.) This new OS was code-named "Rhapsody", and it even came in an Intel port that would install and run just fine on most PCs (albeit without the Blue Box).
Apple's plan was basically to continue the NeXT business as-is, with some quick rebrands (including rebranding the Windows NT port of OPENSTEP as "Red Box") and hastily-written compatibility bridges so that Macintosh users wouldn't be completely left out in the cold. Users were anticipating the new OS, but developers were utterly furious that they were being told to basically abandon all of their software and rewrite it to this entirely different and far more complicated API. They called the Blue Box the "penalty box", because they felt punished for staying loyal to the Mac.
I call Rhapsody "Apple's Windows 8" because it basically tried the same thing Windows 8 did a decade later: foisting a technically superior but entirely incompatible API on developers who weren't interested in any of it. Some might disagree because, well... Apple never actually shipped what they announced. A year after assuming control of Apple, Jobs would come up on stage again and announce that Rhapsody was "cancelled". Instead they'd build an entirely new OS called Mac OS X, built exclusively for the Mac, with three new subsystems; "Cocoa" (OPENSTEP APIs), "Classic" (Mac Toolbox APIs), and now "Carbon"; the latter being specifically intended for quickly porting existing Macintosh software to OSX without rewriting your app. This made developers a lot happier and saved the entire transition.
In the meanwhile, because Mac OS 8 was terrible for running servers on, Apple would ship another """unrelated""" OS called "Mac OS X Server", which was literally just the cancelled retail release of Rhapsody with some extra server applications bundled in. It even called itself Rhapsody in uname.
If you're wondering what happened to the Intel version of Rhapsody, well... not counting the two developer releases before Rhapsody's faked death, Apple would maintain Intel ports of everything up until actually announcing a proper developer transition from PowerPC to Intel years later. Just as proof of how much Apple had learned their lesson of how not to handle a developer transition, Carbon would actually get ported to Intel, and there were Intel OSX apps that needed it. It was ultimately removed only in macOS Catalina.
The funny thing is that Carbon was based on the modified Toolbox APIs that were intended for Copland! There used to be a header with a big comment block telling the whole history. AFAIR, they had tried changing the System 7 APIs so they could run on a system with memory protection, then they gave up because Copland had failed (and I think part of it was a mandate to be able to use the System 7 API _without_ changes, which was impossible), then Mac OS X came along and the comment changed to "we're doing this after all, lol".
You don't remember the Windows Store lock-in because there wasn't one. (Except for the arm based Windows RT and even that because of no x86 emulation). It was mostly FUD by companies that already had app stores (EA/Valve) or were preparing one (Epic).
No, it absolutely did exist, but it only applied to the new tablet/store app environment and APIs exclusive to it (such as native/WinRT XAML). Win32 apps weren't locked out from running, but they also couldn't use these new APIs. If you wanted to rewrite your app for the tablet environment (perhaps because Win32 was entirely inadequate for developing apps even back in 2012), then you had to also distribute that app on the store, as AFAIK there was no easy way to sideload AppX packages. In fact, games that were packaged for the store couldn't support things like G-Sync, Vulkan, or overlays because the lockout technology also firewalled off external DLLs.
You might not have noticed this because nobody cared about the store and just used Windows 8 like Windows 7 with some annoying tablet UI duck-taped to it.
The lock-in they were talking about was that of the only way to get software to Windows would be from Store.
On the other hand all the half baked "modern" apis were Sinofskys revenge for not getting the CEO job.
I think it's reasonable to think Valve is more committed with this. Valve now faces more competitors in game distribution than ever and it's a good way to shore up their value proposition in a way that is not easily replicated by its PC-only competitors.
> This flexibility means you can do pretty much anything on the Steam Deck that you can do with a regular PC. Connect a mouse and keyboard? Yep. Alt-Tab out of your games to a browser or video? Sure. Load third-party programs or even other game stores like Origin, uPlay, or Epic Games Store? No problem. You could even wipe Steam OS entirely and install a fresh version of Windows if you want – but the default Steam OS is smooth and efficient at getting you into your games, so I imagine most people won’t want or need to go that far. The point is, you can if you’d like to.
I wonder if pure cloud service like GeForce Now can then be used, to benefit from portable hardware but have semblance of battery life, and avoid a likely jetengine cooling fan spin up...
Apples to oranges. Valve is concerned about hardware lock-in, not software lock-in.
I think users care more about being able to play their games on any hardware platform they own than about which software platform hosts their games. Also, it seems like Steam Deck is just running a customized Linux distro, so it isn't really a lock-in.
If Epic Games or Ubisoft decides to make their game stores work on Linux, I bet they would run on Steam Deck too. If that's the case, then how is it Valve's fault that other vendors/game stores aren't bothering to make their software platforms/games work on Linux? Valve put in the work, and they want to reap the fruits of it, without even trying to lock-in their device from using any other competitors' software (as far as I am aware). Competitors just gotta put in the work to make their platforms work on Linux.
> If Epic Games or Ubisoft decides to make their game stores work on Linux, I bet they would run on Steam Deck too.
They can, because the FAQ says it's just a PC running Arch linux and you can install Windows on it if you want, which means you can do whatever you want. Maybe it can run on the same OS (probably, if it's just Linux, but we'll see how customized it is), or at a minimum you could just install something else.
> And yet it looks like you cannot use the Steam Deck without logging into a Steam account. Looks like we are trading in one lock-in for another.
valve so far has been miles better than any other big DRM platform. i would almost bet valve will let you have root on these and do whatever you want with the hardware without any jailbreaks. It may not be supported, but I really cannot imagine them locking this down. That would be very much unlike valve.
iirc steam machines back in the day did also let you go into a bash shell?
full disclosure: i may contain traces of a valve fanboy.
> The new version of SteamOS is optimized for handheld gaming, and it won't get in your way with other stuff. But if you want to get your hands dirty, head on out to the desktop.
And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLtiRGTZvGM has a Valve engineer it's more accurate to view these devices as PCs with custom controllers, and that you can install your own OS.
I'd like to think they'll at least make it easy to root or otherwise repurpose these because I like them and would likely get one, however, in the software part of the specs they state that they have been in the works with game studios to basically have them implement their anti-cheat systems in their platform so I suspect said studios would be against that.
This is pure speculation on my side and I really hope I'm dead wrong but that's the first thing that comes to mind when I think about it (also, their own DRM right?).
Edit : the reply bellow seems to prove me wrong =)
Why speculate when you can read directly from the product page yourself?
>You can also install and use PC software, of course. Browse the web, watch streaming video, do your normal productivity stuff, install some other game stores, whatever.
and
>The default Steam Deck experience requires a Steam account (it's free!). Games are purchased and downloaded using the Steam Store. That said, Steam Deck is a PC so you can install third party software and operating systems.
> You can also install and use PC software, of course. Browse the web, watch streaming video, do your normal productivity stuff, install some other game stores, whatever.
>i would almost bet valve will let you have root on these and do whatever you want with the hardware without any jailbreaks.
Definitely. I have a Steam Link and you can enable ssh access to the root account by simply plugging in a USB flash drive with a particularly named text file and rebooting.
On the landing page they say "You can connect to peripherals, throw the picture onto a big screen, and do all the other PC things you'd expect."
On the hardware page they show it docked and running a normal desktop interface and say "Use your Deck as a PC. Because it is one" and "You can also install and use PC software, of course. Browse the web, watch streaming video, do your normal productivity stuff, install some other game stores, whatever."
On the spec page, it says the OS is SteamOS 3.0 (Arch-based) and Desktop is KDE Plasma.
I guess I'm just not understanding where you'd even get the impression that it would be locked into a Steam account.
Seems like you can access the KDE desktop, so I think using the Steam account isn't mandatory. Not 100% sure though. Previous Steam machines allowed full control, even changing the OS.
The FAQs and such make it clear that it's basically an ordinary PC in a handheld form factor; if you don't want to log into a Steam account, then any ol' Linux distro or even Windows should run on it just fine (though whether the handheld controls play nicely is something I'd be curious about).
You don't need a Steam account if you're not using the default Steam Deck install. Wipe it and install TempleOS.
> Do I need a Steam account to use Steam Deck?
> The default Steam Deck experience requires a Steam account (it's free!). Games are purchased and downloaded using the Steam Store. That said, Steam Deck is a PC so you can install third party software and operating systems.
> The default Steam Deck experience requires a Steam account (it's free!). Games are purchased and downloaded using the Steam Store.
I imagine that would be because the "default Steam Deck experience" probably defaults to booting into Steam Big Picture mode, just like SteamOS does by default.
They state you can install a different OS. That is just if you want the default system. There was a video playing CK3 that shows KDE running so it's not like you can't install windows or a different distro.
KDE is part of the stock software, apparently. Similar to existing versions of SteamOS in that regard, except with Arch + KDE instead of Debian + GNOME.
The thing about Valve's record with hardware is that the products aren't bad, just extremely niche. If this thing really can play most of most people's Steam games in a Switch-like form factor with a standard gamepad layout, I think it stands to be a hit in a way their past hardware attempts weren't.
It's also an interesting counterpoint to all the streaming services popping up these days. PC game streaming to mobile has major downsides, even more so when you're away from stable and fast internet. Until 5G is everywhere and mobile bandwidth [soft] caps aren't a thing anymore, a mobile device that can play games locally will be a much more attractive option for a lot of people.
I am one of them. I have three in the house, mostly for future parts.
I have been gaming for 35 years, and in the 15 of those where I have played first person shooters, no controller compares. Even when I'm playing other kinds of games, the ability to do everything without having to remove your finger from the pads to hit buttons, the size is perfect, everything is so responsive.
They "feel" cheap, but I don't care. They are gaming nirvana for me.
I am definitely a SC Stan too. I learned how to truly master it playing Hollow Knight funny enough. Have a setup where I literally do not need to use anything but the trackpads and the occasional turning over of the whole controller to invoke the map. Absolutely love it.
Only things I don't like are the bumper buttons and I'd much rather USB C than micro usb.
I wish they would make an SC 2 with fixed bumpers, ditching the thumbsticks for bigger trackpads with more advanced haptics and a doubling of paddle buttons like with this new device.
Maybe by setting the gyroscope to directional pad and lowering the sensitivity? There are a few ways you could do it, those things likely the most customizable controller ever made.
Yup, and the remapping tool is killer and supports absolutely everything and has browsable and sharable configs that work like spotify playlists. They absolutely did their best to make it a hit. The quality of work they put into building the software for my SC is exactly why I'm reserving a Deck today.
Oh right, the controller has a gyro as well - something which for some reason Valve completely failed to advertise. You can use it both to aim and as a kind of spatial D-Pad (among a lot of other options).
But not all games are "PC" games. Plenty of games that are released on PC are best/better played with a conroller and thanks to the PC being a open platform you have many more choices than console. Hell you can use your console's controllers if you like.
Outer Wilds in general is better with KB/M because of mouselook's precision, but getting through Dark Bramble is significantly more difficult because of how thrust works.
Valve has experience already with making m+kb games playable via a trackpad on the Steam Controller, so I'm confident that the trackpads on the Deck will be good enough for a decent chunk of games (though I'm not about to try Dota 2 on the thing).
Not every game will be a perfect fit, certainly, but I've had a great time with my Steam Controller playing things like XCOM, Prey (2017), and Divinity Original Sin. IIRC Civilization 5 was explicitly a part of the advertising for the controller in the first place, as a way to play mouse-heavy games from the couch.
Not sure I agree. I feel like the majority of AAA PC games are designed for console first and work well with gamepads. At least the ones I play. It’s also just more relaxing since you can lean back.
Yeah even some of the biggest PC games out there like GTA just don't feel as good on KB/M as they do on controllers. Like others said, with the dual trackpads built in and the extensive controller configurations offered by steam's controller settings I don't see the controls being much of a problem on the steam deck.
You're in luck, then. The Steam Deck has thumb trackpads for mouse-like aiming. This is their 3rd kick at thumb trackpads (they're on the Steam Controller and the Index Controller) so they're established pretty well at it.
It's not the same as a mouse but it beats the pants off of thumbstick aiming.
The more interesting thing to me would be actual peripheral support. It's apparently a PC that can connect to an external display or mouse and keyboard.
These days I think many or even most PC gamers own a gamepad and choose to use it for certain games, even when they have a mouse and keyboard sitting right in front of them. These also tend to be the same games I'd consider most suitable for playing at reduced resolutions and framerates.
To add a point against comments here talking about some games being playable on controllers: of top 10 in Steam's own stats only Destiny 2 looks like you won't be handicapped by a controller.
Depends on the game. Flight and driving games are vastly better with a gamepad (let alone proper joysticks or steering wheels) than with a keyboard and mouse IMO.
PC games are built with power in mind that Switch does not have. So you couldn't play them. Switch games are not built with m+kb support, so that would be pointless.
I am sorry, but this got stupid very quickly. You are blind either by inability to see or by choice.
> Lots of PC games can be played without K+M, what's your point again?
The comment you were replying to directly answers you question about the point:
> PC games are built with power in mind that Switch does not have
The part of comment about "can be played without K+M" is entirely irrelevant to what I am saying because the preference _for_ K+M is the premise of this whole comment subtree.
I'd argue the Steam controller was kinda bad. But more in concept than execution. The touch pads were just not a good replacement for a thumbstick or a D-pad
But I agree with what you're saying. If this thing is actually good, it could have some real mainstream appeal.
I felt almost the exact opposite, in that I think the concept was great but the execution fell a little bit short, mostly in build quality/button-feel.
The biggest single win for me is replacing the right stick for camera control, as the trackball emulation with haptics on the touchpad is so much faster and more responsive than a traditional thumbstick. There are some games that I'd still prefer the standard twin sticks or dpad (twin-stick shooters maybe, some platformers, or hyper-specific designed games like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons), but overall I've much preferred the touchpad over thumbsticks for almost every first- or third-person game I've played.
Yeah the controller was really good in theory and the technology was definitely great but the build quality just felt really off and like you said sometimes you can't beat twin stick/dpad but overall the controller was a great concept and paved the way for the index controllers and now the deck's controllers too.
I felt completely differently, the Steam Controller is my favorite one by far. The touch pads make so much sense for a lot of games, and you still have the analog stick for the rest.
> I'd argue the Steam controller was kinda bad. But more in concept than execution. The touch pads were just not a good replacement for a thumbstick or a D-pad
There are plenty of people with great things to say about it, but they largely seem to be people who wanted to play FPS games without a mouse and keyboard, and were willing to put in some effort to get it configured right. I can imagine it being more successful if it had gotten first-class out-of-the-box support for more games, but it seems like it never reached the level of adoption where that was worth it for developers.
I've never tried it myself, though. If the Steam Deck is a success, maybe we'll see the Steam Controller model finally take off (since the Deck has similar touchpads built in). Or maybe it will be like the Kinect, a pet feature deleted in later hardware revisions.
Touch pads a better than a joystick by far. You don't need to snap back the stick to stop moving. Where ever your thumb stops is where your aim is at. A fast flick of a touch pad can 180 which takes a lot longer on a joystick. Plus gyro support it's almost as good as a mouse.
It was great but not ergonomic. I have the same concern about the steam deck (that and the name that sounds like something from a 1920s bathhouse). I still use the steam link.
It's still one of the best tethered headsets even considering it's 2 years old already. Other ones have disadvantages in many areas (like tracking) still.
I'm waiting for some company to release a decent hybrid standalone + tethered headset (that can compete with Oculus Quest at least on the hardware specs), but most companies are only interested in selling very expensive devices for enterprise
is there any indication of a valve index 2 coming? given that facebook is a no-go for me, that makes the index the most appealing VR option for me. but it would suck to buy soon and have the next iteration come out right after I buy
Having tried both, my preference is definitely for the Index. The controllers alone are a substantial step up, not to mention the graphics, tracking, and pretty much everything else.
The Quest is nice because it's cheaper and self-contained, but that's about all it has going for it.
I don't really see how a cheap, low-end, mobile computer is going to kill off desktop gaming. Why would that happen? People will all of a sudden stop wanting top end equipment and big high-res screens because they can play some Steam Gameboy?
You can plug it into a display, and plug in a mouse + keyboard.
I'd be inclined to buy one of these for gaming and an ultra light laptop for laptop stuff when the time comes, versus getting a gaming laptop or desktop.
That is my question also and presumably the answer is "not very good" but we'll have to wait and see as I can't find any info on this. Surely they'll have to rate the experience on a per-game basis when in 4k docked mode else (a small number of) people won't be happy.
Well I guess I don't necessarily mean professional competitive players, just people who play a versus game and take it seriously. If you could plug it in and get 120FPS, I could see some of these people consider getting one, especially if it overlaps with their interest in non-competitive games.
Did the steam link really go nowhere? I have a physical box, and it works magically well. My understanding is it's still available, just not as a physical box.
Parsec works great for me. Main gaming PC + Parsec macbook client via ethernet.... enables a Switch emulator running in 4K on the living room OLED! Yes please.
Do any major Switch emulators natively support JoyCons the way Dolphin does WiiMotes? (Do JoyCons even use regular ol' Bluetooth the way the WiiMotes do? EDIT: quick Google says yes :) )
Switch emulation is quite good, and gets better by the day.
I have no experience with JoyCons unfortunately. I use an Xbox Elite controller + PS4 controllers. They map extremely well to a Switch Pro controller in Yuzu emulator. Launching Yuzu via Steam via Parsec works surprinsgly well to recognise the controllers, despite the occasional hiccup. Smash Bros and Mario Kart are a blast on the big screen.
I am not a Switch owner - surprisingly, I don't think I've even held one - (I am a pretty big fan of Nintendo consoles) - and I know there is some sort of motion control support in the JoyCons? I wasn't sure the extent to which the motion would be required for game play.
I figure in Smash, Kart, etc; it doesn't matter, but I'm just curious how deeply the motion controls affect the gameplay on average in Switch games. :)
I have one too, I got it on ridiculous clearance when they stopped making them. If they had been successful, why would Valve have needed to liquidate stock?
It currently sits in a box somewhere in my house because I have never had any use for it, which I think is the case for most PC gamers, hence its failure.
The Link hardware just wasn't necessary anymore once the software became good enough to run on any device as an app. I have Stream Link on my TV as an app now.
I tried Steam Link on my Android TV and it ran like hot garbage - I think the main issue I had was bluetooth input lag was very bad. My physical Steam Link still works very well with my bluetooth controller.
Right, my understanding is it's still available but not as a physical hardware box anymore but instead as some kind of software. But it's still there and supported, no?
It's a neat piece of hardware, but I have a hard time believing it will be any more than a fad. Who is this for? Serious PC gamers? Why not just play on the "real" PC they already have, with the super-expensive monitor, graphics card, and input devices they carefully assembled? Casual gamers that don't care so much about those things and want to play meatier games on the go? Why wouldn't they just buy a Switch (which already carries many "PC" games, large and small)?
The Index was genuinely revolutionary, despite also being punishingly expensive. It's hard not to feel a sense of envy on seeing one in action. But this? No one will care in a year (or maybe even six months).
I have a gaming PC and a switch. I buy and play lots of indie games. Each time I have to pick a platform.
Steam: more support, lower price, won't have to buy it again if another "version" of the hardware comes out
Switch: portable, multiple controllers for local multiplayers.
Now I don't have to choose anymore. And I already have a big library of games. I will only need a switch for exclusive games and local multiplayer games.
I have exactly the same use case and everytime I had to choose a platform before buying I was hoping Valve would release a handheld machine, my wish was granted :).
I game casually and did not buy a switch, simply because I do not want to plonk $300 on a single-use device that does a marginal job at gaming (mediocre graphics, expensive games).
Steam Deck is a slightly more expensive gaming device, but it does so much more. Previous attempts at these palm sized gaming PC failed because they were half assed, software and hardware wise. Steam deck isn’t.
I never saw the switch as a device for games in general. It is mostly the vessel for the next iteration of Nintendo-exclusive games. Those games don’t need super fancy hardware because the point of the games isn’t to show you the latest graphics.
The switch isn’t “just a handheld games console like any other.” It is “this thing you must buy to play the latest mario/Zelda/animal crossing game.” Obviously if you aren’t interested in those games there isn’t so much of a point.
The Steam Link continues to be very useful for my girlfriend and I. It’s plug and play and we haven’t had issues with compatibility or controllers like we have trying to set steam up on a Pi 4.
There's a relatively niche segment of the PC gaming population that really wants to push the envelope in graphics. I think most PC gamers like gaming on their PC because it is a very open platform that allows them to play games they bought the 90s, all sorts of mods, games from random nobodies on the internet, the latest games, and also emulate a wide variety of game systems and computers.
Based on my experience, people wanting to play games which are over 20 years old are much more of a niche crowd than those using beefy GPUs. Obviously, few people have RTX 3080/3090 levels of investment, but based on Steam statistics, mid-tier cards from a few years back like the GTX 1060, RTX 2060/2070, and RX 580 are all near the top of the most recent steam surveys.
Certainly the Steam surverys support the notion that the people who won't shut up about $1,000 graphics cards are very much a minority in PC gaming. They eat up all the oxygen in the room, but they certainly aren't the actual majority of the group.
This is directly from valve. It's probably what Valve looks at when making these decisions. I assume this APU is relatively similar to the 1060 in power? Maybe the 1050. But I haven't seen any benchmarking around the APU.
The APU is certainly not slower than a PS4, it has Zen 2 cores. The GPU might have fewer flops but it has a much newer architecture, so it could easily be faster. Just comparing flops across different architectures isn't an accurate way of determining GPU gaming performance.
Do you expect this 15W APU to be faster than full TDP Desktop AMD Ryzen 5700G? The "Fastest Integrated Graphics Ever" 13 days ago https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-7-5700g-review? 5700G reaches GTX760 parity in some games like Witcher3, while in others like Overwatch its medium for APU while dedicated gpu runs same framerate at Ultra.
It'll be interesting to see. RDNA2 is definitely a significant upgrade over Vega. Also I would assume most of that desktop TDP goes towards the CPU. The LPDDR5 RAM will also help the GPU in the Steam Deck.
>I think most PC gamers like gaming on their PC because it is a very open platform that allows them to play games they bought the 90s
This is just not true. Most pc gamers are playing free to play competitive multiplayer games. Think league of legends, fortnite, call of duty warzone, and hearthstone. The people playing these games care about framerate for competitive reasons which means they need good gpus.
For me personally, PC gaming is all about being able to play anything from multiplayer FPSs to moddable content to random indie games in my web-browser to emulated games from the early 90s to keyboard-centric roguelikes. Ie, more about having a vast backward-compatible library and the ability to hack on the games for fun than about cutting edge graphics.
There are various game genres (flight sims, real-time strategy, simulation games like Factorio and Kerbal Space Program) that just don't fit the console + controller paradigm. Individually, the niches may be small but together they're not insignificant.
Steam link is not the best example as they’ve made it available on standard hardware like raspberry pi and it’s baked into the OS of many smart TVs now. They just pivoted from selling their own hardware for it. They also continue to update the controller features, including adding in Bluetooth support long after release.
I appreciate what Valve is doing and I will vote with my money. I don't see myself as a "handheld gamer" but I am making a reservation today just to be able to play with that device a bit.
Same, I even made a comment a few weeks ago that SteamOS seemed abandonware w/o any recent updates. Glad to be wrong.
And sure their hardware projects often don't hit mainstream success & stick around for multiple generations, but I still had a Steam Alienware Alpha that was both my daily driver & gaming rig for a few years, and still occasionally use a cheap Steam Link for in-home streaming.
Microsoft seems to think Windows is better for ads than anything else at this point. It doesn't matter if it makes sense, the people running the show have made up their minds and game developers and players need somewhere else to go.
I'm also wondering if they'll open the door to third-party apps on the Steam Deck, which could let you use it for other cloud-based gaming platforms like Stadia.
It's a PC running SteamOS (apparently Arch base with KDE Plasma). You can install anything on there that you can install in Arch, or install Windows or another Linux distro if you want. This is all in the copy:
"You can also install and use PC software, of course. Browse the web, watch streaming video, do your normal productivity stuff, install some other game stores, whatever."
I'm anxious to see how this turns out. Valve's history with hardware is not so great, so it could go nowhere like Steam Machines, Steam Link, and the Steam Controller did. On the other hand, it could end up all but killing off PC gaming if it is super successful. If it lands somewhere in the middle it will at least be yet another boon for Linux gaming brought to you by Valve as more developers will port or ensure compatibility with Proton.