IGN was able to test one out for a couple of days and has two articles up: Steam Deck: The First Hands-On With Valve’s Handheld Gaming PC Steam Deck FAQ: Valve Answers the Biggest Questions
IGN was able to test one out for a couple of days and has two articles up:
Inovation! I'm excited! Or maybe not so excited because of this Really, Valve? You want your consumer to choose between dozens of implementations they know nothing about? Do you wanna make a new...
Inovation! I'm excited!
Or maybe not so excited because of this
Greg Coomer: We look at this as just a new category of device in the PC space. And assuming that customers agree with us that this is a good idea, we expect not only to follow up in the future with more iterations ourselves, but also for other people, other manufacturers to want to participate in the space.
Pierre-Loup Griffais: All the technologies and the OS and the building blocks that we've been working on over the years, that kind of means the Steam Deck will be available free of charge for people that want to build devices like that as well
Really, Valve? You want your consumer to choose between dozens of implementations they know nothing about? Do you wanna make a new 3DO? Or, "better" yet, a new Steambox? Please don't do that. Make something everyone can buy with their eyes closed. Something dad can buy to his kid at Christmas without fearing he got the crappy model. Something that works every time in the exact same way. You may say this is more a PC than a console, but let's face it: you are now in the console business. I really want you to not screw this up.
It's just not in Valve's nature to lock things down. They're basically as close to open as a multibillion dollar gaming company will get. I doubt they'll re-use the same branding approach with...
It's just not in Valve's nature to lock things down. They're basically as close to open as a multibillion dollar gaming company will get.
I doubt they'll re-use the same branding approach with Steam Box since that didn't work out well (for other reasons as well), and Valve's very good about learning their lesson when it comes to consumer behaviour. It seems they're much more interested in having SteamOS be available freely for anyone to use.
Look, I get that. It's awesome and I agree with that ideologically. Practically, I don't think this works for everything. For instance, I don't think the Steam platform is open source, is it?
Look, I get that. It's awesome and I agree with that ideologically. Practically, I don't think this works for everything. For instance, I don't think the Steam platform is open source, is it?
Ah, well sure, they're in a business where DRM and security is integral to function at the scale and scope that they do. Steam couldn't be what it is if it was open source but a few components of...
Ah, well sure, they're in a business where DRM and security is integral to function at the scale and scope that they do. Steam couldn't be what it is if it was open source but a few components of it and other Valve products are.
Open source is a great ideal but it's more of an extreme when it comes to opening technology up than many believe, especially for a corporation that has many legal interests around the world. Keeping SteamOS free to use and sharing patents and R&D around virtual reality is more the kind of level where Valve operates openly. They're not really a company for locking down IPs and trade secrets compared to, say, Facebook and Oculus.
The only issue is if the dad in this situation buys the cheapest one because "they're all the same." The same dad would've bought his son a $30 LCD 30-in-1 game in 1998 because it's "basically a...
The only issue is if the dad in this situation buys the cheapest one because "they're all the same." The same dad would've bought his son a $30 LCD 30-in-1 game in 1998 because it's "basically a Nintendo."
I think the larger issue is that Valve is trying to market a console for PC gaming. PC players have their PC, and console players have their consoles already, which means this is just a really tough middle segment to develop.
I was actually referring to a possible scenario in which multiple manufacturers are selliing licensed Steam Decks, with varying degrees of presentation, build quality, durability, customer...
I was actually referring to a possible scenario in which multiple manufacturers are selliing licensed Steam Decks, with varying degrees of presentation, build quality, durability, customer support, and maybe even resources such as RAM, CPU, and storage. Much like happened with the Steambox.
There's also a 7-minute video from Valve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q_C5KVJbUw It's intended to be more for developers, but shows off more about the system and has some interesting info.
It's buried in there that Valve is working with Anticheat devs to get a multiplayer solution available in Linux. On any other day, that would be the frontpage headline from Steam.
It's buried in there that Valve is working with Anticheat devs to get a multiplayer solution available in Linux. On any other day, that would be the frontpage headline from Steam.
Here's the big news from all of this: I honestly don't expect this product to ship many units. But if it takes this piece of hardware to get anti-cheat working on Linux it's a huge win for Linux...
My game uses anti-cheat, which doesn't work with Proton - how do I get around this for Steam Deck?
We're working with BattlEye and EAC to get support for Proton ahead of launch.
I honestly don't expect this product to ship many units. But if it takes this piece of hardware to get anti-cheat working on Linux it's a huge win for Linux gamers.
I'll be reserving one of these the moment they go live tomorrow. I'm fully aware that being an early adopter of tech is often a losing move, as it is very likely that version 2 of this is right...
I'll be reserving one of these the moment they go live tomorrow.
I'm fully aware that being an early adopter of tech is often a losing move, as it is very likely that version 2 of this is right around the corner and will fix all of the stuff that people will end up hating about this one, but I've been wanting a Steam handheld for a long time now and am happy to take the plunge on this.
Something interesting in the FAQ: That, combined with proton, has a ton of potential. Any free games you've picked up from Epic, maybe blizzard games. Maybe one-off games like Genshin Impact. But...
Something interesting in the FAQ:
That said, Steam Deck is a PC so you can install third party software and operating systems.
That, combined with proton, has a ton of potential. Any free games you've picked up from Epic, maybe blizzard games. Maybe one-off games like Genshin Impact.
But also...emulation. Without delving into the legality/morality of it, the potential to run modern emulators could add a ton of console-exclusive games to an already-extensive library. Definitely a wait-and-see for me, but will be looking forward to seeing what the modders do with it once they get their hands on it.
Retroarch does have a Steam version available. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1118310/RetroArch/ But agreed, this is Linux under the hood with all the trimmings and if you wanted to wipe it...
But agreed, this is Linux under the hood with all the trimmings and if you wanted to wipe it and install Windows, you could do that too. There will be some crazy nonsense coming out on this puppy.
Speculation time: I'm thinking Valve will probably roll out some sort of built-in game compatibility reporting system to Steam. Right now the two main places to report on Proton's performance are...
Speculation time:
I'm thinking Valve will probably roll out some sort of built-in game compatibility reporting system to Steam. Right now the two main places to report on Proton's performance are Proton's GitHub and ProtonDB, which is an unofficial third-party site.
Proton is genuinely incredible right now, but it definitely doesn't "just work" for everything (though the number of games that do continues to amaze me). Way back when it first launched, Valve added a few games to a Proton whitelist, but they haven't really emphasized or updated that ever since. Given the focus they're giving to this device, I imagine they won't leave the "will this game run?" question up to random chance for the tens of thousands of games on their store.
As someone who has submitted hundreds of reports to ProtonDB, I'd love to have a native option. It would also be great for information from that to be integrated into the store, so I can know at a glance whether a game is going to run on the device. Right now I'm dependent on a Firefox add-on that imports ProtonDB data to store pages, but it doesn't work within the Steam app.
Reservations are open now (if you can get Steam to load). There's a small deposit required (~$5 USD, I think), and you'll be able to choose to actually purchase later when they become available.
Reservations are open now (if you can get Steam to load). There's a small deposit required (~$5 USD, I think), and you'll be able to choose to actually purchase later when they become available.
Steam's HTML seems to have been inadvertently revealing the number of pre-orders for a while, so there was some data collected about how many people placed early pre-orders: HTML holes provide a...
110,000 in 90 minutes is ~1200 per minute or ~20 per second. And that’s a low estimate given that this isn’t counting one of the units. No wonder they had checkout issues!
110,000 in 90 minutes is ~1200 per minute or ~20 per second. And that’s a low estimate given that this isn’t counting one of the units.
I’ve been trying to reserve one since it opened, but their site has been crashing every step of the way. Now it’s telling me I’ve attempted “a lot of purchases in the last few hours … try again...
I’ve been trying to reserve one since it opened, but their site has been crashing every step of the way. Now it’s telling me I’ve attempted “a lot of purchases in the last few hours … try again later.” None of my payment methods failed, or declined. They just wouldn’t take them because it kept crashing. What a mess.
I clicked 'Submit' or whatever at 12:01pm CDT. Stayed at pending for like 25min in the Steam sales history, even saw the pending transaction on my credit card. I got the email confirmation a few...
I clicked 'Submit' or whatever at 12:01pm CDT. Stayed at pending for like 25min in the Steam sales history, even saw the pending transaction on my credit card. I got the email confirmation a few minutes ago, so I guess I'm good.
But who knows if it'll actually be fulfilled. According to their FAQ, the reservation obviously isn't a guarantee of fulfillment.
Did you ever get the message saying you’ve tried too much? I’m worried they might have me on an hour+ cooldown. The reservations close at 11:30 PT, so if that is the case, I’m SOL.
Did you ever get the message saying you’ve tried too much? I’m worried they might have me on an hour+ cooldown. The reservations close at 11:30 PT, so if that is the case, I’m SOL.
Glad you were able to finally get it through, and sorry you had to deal with that. I think Valve unintentionally punished a lot of their most interested customers with that lockout.
Glad you were able to finally get it through, and sorry you had to deal with that. I think Valve unintentionally punished a lot of their most interested customers with that lockout.
Incredibly interesting product, I wonder how this will be received by people who already have a large steam library. I personally only have maybe 20~ games that I enjoy playing with a controller,...
Incredibly interesting product, I wonder how this will be received by people who already have a large steam library. I personally only have maybe 20~ games that I enjoy playing with a controller, and maybe half of those would run on this well enough for me to want to buy it. I can't wait to see what the market impact of this is, here's hoping there won't be any Switch-esque thumbstick issues to kill it.
I've been using a Steam controller for quite some time now, and this basically uses an improved version baked in. You can customize every keybinding, comeplete with mode switching, UI overlays....
I've been using a Steam controller for quite some time now, and this basically uses an improved version baked in.
You can customize every keybinding, comeplete with mode switching, UI overlays. I've bound 30+ hotkeys using these tools, and thats even without a second grip on each side to work with.
The trackpad keyboard functions much like a cellphone one.
@Seven the touchpad + gyro is fantastic. you use the touchpads for broad movements and gyro for precision aiming.
Back when I used to game on a 16:10 monitor, nearly everything supported it. I only ran into a few issues with old games and console ports, where the supported resolutions were hard coded, or they...
Back when I used to game on a 16:10 monitor, nearly everything supported it. I only ran into a few issues with old games and console ports, where the supported resolutions were hard coded, or they only supported 4:3.
8K/60Hz is VESA certified in DisplayPort 1.4 spec thanks to Display Stream Compression.
This is... something. How is it USB 3.2 if it supports 8K 60Hz? How is it DisplayPort 1.4? Neither of those are fast enough for 8K 60Hz. That's only available through DisplayPort 2.0, USB4, and Thunderbolt.
If the display is OLED then they could use the extra 80 vertical pixels to hold a black background status bar with a full 16:9 display left for the game and it would blend into the bezel pretty well.
If the display is OLED then they could use the extra 80 vertical pixels to hold a black background status bar with a full 16:9 display left for the game and it would blend into the bezel pretty well.
Very interesting. I'm trying to make sense of the specs. I'm assuming this is kinda the "next gen Switch" everyone was hoping for, in terms of raw hardware power. Unfortunately, numbers hardly...
Very interesting. I'm trying to make sense of the specs. I'm assuming this is kinda the "next gen Switch" everyone was hoping for, in terms of raw hardware power. Unfortunately, numbers hardly mean anything anymore, so how does this compare to, say, a base PS4? 1.6 Tflops for the GPU should come close. 16GB RAM is kinda insane for a handheld.
I saw this screenshot earlier today of Durante (the modder behind the Dark Souls DSFix mod and others) comparing its specs to the recent Playstation/Xbox consoles.
I saw this screenshot earlier today of Durante (the modder behind the Dark Souls DSFix mod and others) comparing its specs to the recent Playstation/Xbox consoles.
Here's a good article looking at the specs by the Technology Editor of Digital Foundry: Spec Analysis: Steam Deck - can it really handle triple-A PC gaming?
The developers have said that the processing power is roughly equivalent to the PS4/Xbox 1, but since its only rendering at a 720p resolution, it can run most modern titles without issue.
The developers have said that the processing power is roughly equivalent to the PS4/Xbox 1, but since its only rendering at a 720p resolution, it can run most modern titles without issue.
Wow, this looks interesting. If only I didn't own a Switch... Boring Linux thoughts The choice of Arch Linux for the operating system was a little surprising at first. You don't see it used often...
Wow, this looks interesting. If only I didn't own a Switch...
Boring Linux thoughts
The choice of Arch Linux for the operating system was a little surprising at first. You don't see it used often (or ever, really?) outside of servers or personal computers - and certainly not in consumer products. After some thought, though, it makes sense:
Arch Linux's package management is leaps and bounds above Debian and derivatives
Arch has been remarkably stable, even more so than Debian, since about 2015
While Proton is great, it's far from "done" - Valve is going to be doing major development over the course of the Steam Deck's life and having up-to-date packages (which is difficult to do with Debian) is a necessity
Some questions I have:
Why the weird screen size? Why not 1080p?
Why did they ship with a touchscreen? Such a small number of games benefit from that, and it has to be a battery suck, right?
What's the dock going to look like?
What's performance going to look like? It has wildly impressive stats - but how will those be impacted by thermals?
How is it for games outside of Steam? Could software like Cemu or yuzu potentially run?
Absolutely waiting for reviews, but this looks like the best gaming platform for the price point out there. It smokes the Switch, and seems likely to be competitive with the latest Microsoft/Sony consoles from the looks of the specs. I'd be surprised if it doesn't wind up being a hit.
They won't use system libraries for Proton though, they'll use pressure-vessel as they've been doing for the past few months.
While Proton is great, it's far from "done" - Valve is going to be doing major development over the course of the Steam Deck's life and having up-to-date packages (which is difficult to do with Debian) is a necessity
They won't use system libraries for Proton though, they'll use pressure-vessel as they've been doing for the past few months.
I've had good luck playing multiple games without touch support when streaming to my phone. Magic came to mind. If you only need click, drag scroll it works great. Civ 5 and 6 have touch support,...
Why did they ship with a touchscreen? Such a small number of games benefit from that, and it has to be a battery suck, right?
I've had good luck playing multiple games without touch support when streaming to my phone. Magic came to mind. If you only need click, drag scroll it works great. Civ 5 and 6 have touch support, and this looks great for passing back nd forth for that.
If nothing else, it will reduce number of complaints exponentially because almost everyone expects all screens to be touchscreens. The number of times people have smudged my laptop screens since 2002 is proof enough of that.
What would be neat is if they take the Steam Link's touch control settings for something like FTL and incorporate them on the device as on screen buttons. Could probably do it simply enough with...
What would be neat is if they take the Steam Link's touch control settings for something like FTL and incorporate them on the device as on screen buttons. Could probably do it simply enough with physical controls.
FTL has an iPad port with fantastic controls; I wonder if the devs would consider moving those controls into the desktop version with a toggle e.g. "touchscreen mode". It's like 6? years old at...
FTL has an iPad port with fantastic controls; I wonder if the devs would consider moving those controls into the desktop version with a toggle e.g. "touchscreen mode". It's like 6? years old at this point, but they did release an update to achievements in 2020...
Hope so, I would kill for a portable version and got into Android hacking to specifically try and run this game on my phone. (It hasn't been going so hot as of late, but Box86 looks pretty promising.)
Hope so, I would kill for a portable version and got into Android hacking to specifically try and run this game on my phone. (It hasn't been going so hot as of late, but Box86 looks pretty promising.)
FTL had a asm.js port years ago. I wonder if that would be a better base for running it on Android. (I assume it would technically work right now, but you'd need some user-scripts to make it...
FTL had a asm.js port years ago. I wonder if that would be a better base for running it on Android. (I assume it would technically work right now, but you'd need some user-scripts to make it touchscreen friendly.) (I wonder if the old asm.js version could be converted into WebAssembly and whether that would get better performance.)
It can run just fine on newer devices, you can try Humble's Demo here, but it would only take Mouse Controls, and I haven't the faintest idea how to translate that to touch.
It can run just fine on newer devices, you can try Humble's Demo here, but it would only take Mouse Controls, and I haven't the faintest idea how to translate that to touch.
If you have USB debugging enabled on your phone and connect it to a computer while you have FTL running in Chrome or Firefox on your phone, then you can use Chrome/Firefox dev tools on your...
If you have USB debugging enabled on your phone and connect it to a computer while you have FTL running in Chrome or Firefox on your phone, then you can use Chrome/Firefox dev tools on your computer to connect to the browser running on your phone. Then use the element picker in dev tools to pick the canvas element so that the javascript context menu switches to the iframe containing the canvas. Then you can enter this code to convert touches to mouse events:
The main menu of FTL and more then becomes usable, but it's still pretty incomplete: there's no right-clicking and no keyboard inputs, so certain actions aren't possible and if you open a text input you become stuck. It would be possible to improve upon this by adding support for long-presses or adding extra buttons on-screen for doing these actions.
Then once the code is polished, it would be possible to make a Firefox extension that automatically runs this code when you open up the FTL webpage, or you could extract the code for FTL from the Humble Bundle webpage and put it on your own webpage and add the javascript to it there.
Thank you very much for the insight. If I get a spare moment and feel like opening up that project again, I will definitely keep you posted on what comes out of it.
Thank you very much for the insight. If I get a spare moment and feel like opening up that project again, I will definitely keep you posted on what comes out of it.
Problem is that they won't get any extra sales from this as everyone already has the game. When they port to the switch or ipad that means new sales, often to the same people who already owned the...
I wonder if the devs would consider moving those controls into the desktop version
Problem is that they won't get any extra sales from this as everyone already has the game. When they port to the switch or ipad that means new sales, often to the same people who already owned the game.
If I can give my speculative answers to your questions 720p is a fine enough resolution for games without needing to push the specs (and by extension, heat, battery life, etc.). At 7 inches and...
If I can give my speculative answers to your questions
720p is a fine enough resolution for games without needing to push the specs (and by extension, heat, battery life, etc.). At 7 inches and 720p+, which is nearly the size of some modern smartphones, the panel quality matters a lot more than the actual pixel density. Phones have much higher res screens but tend to be focused towards consuming textual information compared to a gaming device. So the extra pixel density wouldn't do much here.
Likely for UI/UX purposes. The bits they showed off look to resemble a switch interface. And to be frank, many younger generations are now reaching a point where a screen on smaller than 20 inches is "just touchable". It'd be there for the same reason computers expect a mouse (despite technically being able to operate without one); it's just a natural part of their UX lexicon now. It'd be a battery drain, but nowhere near the largest offender for a device like this.
Great question, I'm wondering this too. I'm guessing the dock isn't finalized which is why nothing is shown yet.
Remains to be seen, but many people used to this market predict it performing much better than the Aya Neo. You can check out videos to see how that performs and uptick it for this.
Non-existent out of the box. Unless Valve does indeed allow you to access the underlying Arch Linux (which IMO would be a UX mistake outside of power user tinkering) this is purely to access 1) Steam games that 2) allow for playability through Proton. Proton covers a lot, but not everything. And there are many big games that just aren't on steam. Valve advertises being able to just install windows on the device, so from there the performance will likely be comparable or slightly better than existing portable PC's.
It is by far the cheapest option into this market, regardless. GPD Win3's start at $1000 with the benefits being a smaller form factor, built in slide out keyboard, and included windows 10. decent benefits, but not enough to cost $600 more for many people. Aya Neo is also $1000 with less benefits. The highest cost model at $600 is still a massive reduction over these options.
Even if this fails to make a dent in the "console market", this this is gonna completely flip the existing portable PC market on its head. It's nuts.
Sounds interesting to me. It is unfortunate that it really cost $529 to avoid Emmc memory, but I can just forget that the $400 is an option. Dock is also interesting - this could be a solid...
Sounds interesting to me. It is unfortunate that it really cost $529 to avoid Emmc memory, but I can just forget that the $400 is an option.
Dock is also interesting - this could be a solid (albeit very expensive) emulator machine if nothing else.
As a portable, from the images either the models have small hands or it’s pretty big chungus (I already find the non lite switch kinda clunky to use in portable mode)
To be fair, there is a wide range of eMMC modules out there and the ones you see in most computers tend to be some of the lowest tier stuff. You might be surprised at the performance in this...
To be fair, there is a wide range of eMMC modules out there and the ones you see in most computers tend to be some of the lowest tier stuff. You might be surprised at the performance in this implementation.
While I'll likely pick up one for fun, my real anticipation is for the Steam Controller 2 followup. Not to mention additional developer support for Steam's controller library, which integrates...
While I'll likely pick up one for fun, my real anticipation is for the Steam Controller 2 followup.
Not to mention additional developer support for Steam's controller library, which integrates nicer with their customizable controls and easily subs out Xbox/PS4 icons as needed.
I picked up the Steam Controller during the firesale when it was $5. That was easily one of my best purchases. I always had trouble getting my PS4 or PS3 controllers working, having to use...
I picked up the Steam Controller during the firesale when it was $5. That was easily one of my best purchases. I always had trouble getting my PS4 or PS3 controllers working, having to use DS4Windows or whatever. So I was glad to have a controller that just worked. Should've gotten a second one just in case.
So if they release the next version, I'll definitely get it.
I'm sure the discussion within the yuzu sphere has already begun. Everything that's been stated so far is really pushing the statement that it's really a PC in a Nintendo Switch body, so it would...
I'm sure the discussion within the yuzu sphere has already begun. Everything that's been stated so far is really pushing the statement that it's really a PC in a Nintendo Switch body, so it would seem running yuzu on it would be a trivial matter.
I’ve been seeing a ton of comparisons. And the timing for this announcement is perfect, since it’s coming right off the tail of the underwhelming OLED Switch announcement.
I’ve been seeing a ton of comparisons. And the timing for this announcement is perfect, since it’s coming right off the tail of the underwhelming OLED Switch announcement.
The main thing I would be concerned about is how well games actually run on this interface. The switch is great because everything is designed for that form factor but not a whole lot of PC games...
The main thing I would be concerned about is how well games actually run on this interface. The switch is great because everything is designed for that form factor but not a whole lot of PC games work really well on controllers.
This may have been true 10, 15 years ago, but a vast majority of new games play fine with a controller on PC today. MOBAs and RTSs aside, you can play pretty much anything with a controller. Even...
This may have been true 10, 15 years ago, but a vast majority of new games play fine with a controller on PC today. MOBAs and RTSs aside, you can play pretty much anything with a controller. Even games that don't have native controller support, or wonky controller support, can be done thanks to all the work Valve and the community already put into controller support middleware via the Steam controller.
You should try filtering your Steam library on games with explicit controller support. You might be surprised.
That shouldn't be too big of a problem, as the control scheme seems like an evolved form of the steam controller, which worked pretty well for pc (M+KB) games.
That shouldn't be too big of a problem, as the control scheme seems like an evolved form of the steam controller, which worked pretty well for pc (M+KB) games.
On one hand I'd be interested in this, on the other, we've only recently gotten the Index in Australia so I expect this'll be all but discontinued by the time they start selling them here.
On one hand I'd be interested in this, on the other, we've only recently gotten the Index in Australia so I expect this'll be all but discontinued by the time they start selling them here.
IGN was able to test one out for a couple of days and has two articles up:
Inovation! I'm excited!
Or maybe not so excited because of this
Really, Valve? You want your consumer to choose between dozens of implementations they know nothing about? Do you wanna make a new 3DO? Or, "better" yet, a new Steambox? Please don't do that. Make something everyone can buy with their eyes closed. Something dad can buy to his kid at Christmas without fearing he got the crappy model. Something that works every time in the exact same way. You may say this is more a PC than a console, but let's face it: you are now in the console business. I really want you to not screw this up.
It's just not in Valve's nature to lock things down. They're basically as close to open as a multibillion dollar gaming company will get.
I doubt they'll re-use the same branding approach with Steam Box since that didn't work out well (for other reasons as well), and Valve's very good about learning their lesson when it comes to consumer behaviour. It seems they're much more interested in having SteamOS be available freely for anyone to use.
Look, I get that. It's awesome and I agree with that ideologically. Practically, I don't think this works for everything. For instance, I don't think the Steam platform is open source, is it?
Not sure what you're getting at with that, but it is specifically addressed on their SteamOS page.
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I was referring to the Steam platform itself, which includes the store and the client, not SteamOS.
Ah, well sure, they're in a business where DRM and security is integral to function at the scale and scope that they do. Steam couldn't be what it is if it was open source but a few components of it and other Valve products are.
Open source is a great ideal but it's more of an extreme when it comes to opening technology up than many believe, especially for a corporation that has many legal interests around the world. Keeping SteamOS free to use and sharing patents and R&D around virtual reality is more the kind of level where Valve operates openly. They're not really a company for locking down IPs and trade secrets compared to, say, Facebook and Oculus.
The only issue is if the dad in this situation buys the cheapest one because "they're all the same." The same dad would've bought his son a $30 LCD 30-in-1 game in 1998 because it's "basically a Nintendo."
I think the larger issue is that Valve is trying to market a console for PC gaming. PC players have their PC, and console players have their consoles already, which means this is just a really tough middle segment to develop.
I was actually referring to a possible scenario in which multiple manufacturers are selliing licensed Steam Decks, with varying degrees of presentation, build quality, durability, customer support, and maybe even resources such as RAM, CPU, and storage. Much like happened with the Steambox.
There's also a 7-minute video from Valve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q_C5KVJbUw
It's intended to be more for developers, but shows off more about the system and has some interesting info.
It's buried in there that Valve is working with Anticheat devs to get a multiplayer solution available in Linux. On any other day, that would be the frontpage headline from Steam.
Here's the big news from all of this:
I honestly don't expect this product to ship many units. But if it takes this piece of hardware to get anti-cheat working on Linux it's a huge win for Linux gamers.
I'll be reserving one of these the moment they go live tomorrow.
I'm fully aware that being an early adopter of tech is often a losing move, as it is very likely that version 2 of this is right around the corner and will fix all of the stuff that people will end up hating about this one, but I've been wanting a Steam handheld for a long time now and am happy to take the plunge on this.
Something interesting in the FAQ:
That, combined with proton, has a ton of potential. Any free games you've picked up from Epic, maybe blizzard games. Maybe one-off games like Genshin Impact.
But also...emulation. Without delving into the legality/morality of it, the potential to run modern emulators could add a ton of console-exclusive games to an already-extensive library. Definitely a wait-and-see for me, but will be looking forward to seeing what the modders do with it once they get their hands on it.
Retroarch does have a Steam version available.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1118310/RetroArch/
But agreed, this is Linux under the hood with all the trimmings and if you wanted to wipe it and install Windows, you could do that too. There will be some crazy nonsense coming out on this puppy.
According to r/SBCGaming, the chip used can run both CEMU and RPCS3. Exciting stuff for emulation.
Speculation time:
I'm thinking Valve will probably roll out some sort of built-in game compatibility reporting system to Steam. Right now the two main places to report on Proton's performance are Proton's GitHub and ProtonDB, which is an unofficial third-party site.
Proton is genuinely incredible right now, but it definitely doesn't "just work" for everything (though the number of games that do continues to amaze me). Way back when it first launched, Valve added a few games to a Proton whitelist, but they haven't really emphasized or updated that ever since. Given the focus they're giving to this device, I imagine they won't leave the "will this game run?" question up to random chance for the tens of thousands of games on their store.
As someone who has submitted hundreds of reports to ProtonDB, I'd love to have a native option. It would also be great for information from that to be integrated into the store, so I can know at a glance whether a game is going to run on the device. Right now I'm dependent on a Firefox add-on that imports ProtonDB data to store pages, but it doesn't work within the Steam app.
Reservations are open now (if you can get Steam to load). There's a small deposit required (~$5 USD, I think), and you'll be able to choose to actually purchase later when they become available.
Steam's HTML seems to have been inadvertently revealing the number of pre-orders for a while, so there was some data collected about how many people placed early pre-orders: HTML holes provide a glimpse of Steam Deck’s initial preorder numbers
110,000 in 90 minutes is ~1200 per minute or ~20 per second. And that’s a low estimate given that this isn’t counting one of the units.
No wonder they had checkout issues!
This is why they should do performance testing.
...
I should do more performance testing.
It doesn't really matter because they still sold all of them. Not much point showing people a sold out page faster.
I’ve been trying to reserve one since it opened, but their site has been crashing every step of the way. Now it’s telling me I’ve attempted “a lot of purchases in the last few hours … try again later.” None of my payment methods failed, or declined. They just wouldn’t take them because it kept crashing. What a mess.
I clicked 'Submit' or whatever at 12:01pm CDT. Stayed at pending for like 25min in the Steam sales history, even saw the pending transaction on my credit card. I got the email confirmation a few minutes ago, so I guess I'm good.
But who knows if it'll actually be fulfilled. According to their FAQ, the reservation obviously isn't a guarantee of fulfillment.
I’d been trying since it went live in five minute intervals and just got mine through. Definitely frustrating.
Did you ever get the message saying you’ve tried too much? I’m worried they might have me on an hour+ cooldown. The reservations close at 11:30 PT, so if that is the case, I’m SOL.
No, but I got every other error, including that my account was too new. Best of luck — hope you’re not locked out.
Were you able to get your order through?
I was! Apparently the reservations didn’t end at 11:30 as the email suggested—that, or they let me complete it since it was already in my cart.
Glad you were able to finally get it through, and sorry you had to deal with that. I think Valve unintentionally punished a lot of their most interested customers with that lockout.
I was able to put in a reservation for a 64GB one just an hour ago, so you might be in luck if you haven't already gotten one.
Incredibly interesting product, I wonder how this will be received by people who already have a large steam library. I personally only have maybe 20~ games that I enjoy playing with a controller, and maybe half of those would run on this well enough for me to want to buy it. I can't wait to see what the market impact of this is, here's hoping there won't be any Switch-esque thumbstick issues to kill it.
I've been using a Steam controller for quite some time now, and this basically uses an improved version baked in.
You can customize every keybinding, comeplete with mode switching, UI overlays. I've bound 30+ hotkeys using these tools, and thats even without a second grip on each side to work with.
The trackpad keyboard functions much like a cellphone one.
@Seven the touchpad + gyro is fantastic. you use the touchpads for broad movements and gyro for precision aiming.
I'm used to gyro aiming on games like Splatoon, so I can't wait to play my favorite FPS games on this.
looks like between the gyroscope and the touchpads, M+K games might be playable on the system
Back when I used to game on a 16:10 monitor, nearly everything supported it. I only ran into a few issues with old games and console ports, where the supported resolutions were hard coded, or they only supported 4:3.
8K/60Hz is VESA certified in DisplayPort 1.4 spec thanks to Display Stream Compression.
They probably are using tablet parts?
If the display is OLED then they could use the extra 80 vertical pixels to hold a black background status bar with a full 16:9 display left for the game and it would blend into the bezel pretty well.
I wouldn't be opposed to how an edgeless phone screen looks, where you swipe up/down on the screen's edge and you get the contextual status bar.
Very interesting. I'm trying to make sense of the specs. I'm assuming this is kinda the "next gen Switch" everyone was hoping for, in terms of raw hardware power. Unfortunately, numbers hardly mean anything anymore, so how does this compare to, say, a base PS4? 1.6 Tflops for the GPU should come close. 16GB RAM is kinda insane for a handheld.
I saw this screenshot earlier today of Durante (the modder behind the Dark Souls DSFix mod and others) comparing its specs to the recent Playstation/Xbox consoles.
Here's a good article looking at the specs by the Technology Editor of Digital Foundry: Spec Analysis: Steam Deck - can it really handle triple-A PC gaming?
The developers have said that the processing power is roughly equivalent to the PS4/Xbox 1, but since its only rendering at a 720p resolution, it can run most modern titles without issue.
Wow, this looks interesting. If only I didn't own a Switch...
Boring Linux thoughts
The choice of Arch Linux for the operating system was a little surprising at first. You don't see it used often (or ever, really?) outside of servers or personal computers - and certainly not in consumer products. After some thought, though, it makes sense:
Some questions I have:
Absolutely waiting for reviews, but this looks like the best gaming platform for the price point out there. It smokes the Switch, and seems likely to be competitive with the latest Microsoft/Sony consoles from the looks of the specs. I'd be surprised if it doesn't wind up being a hit.
They won't use system libraries for Proton though, they'll use pressure-vessel as they've been doing for the past few months.
I've had good luck playing multiple games without touch support when streaming to my phone. Magic came to mind. If you only need click, drag scroll it works great. Civ 5 and 6 have touch support, and this looks great for passing back nd forth for that.
If nothing else, it will reduce number of complaints exponentially because almost everyone expects all screens to be touchscreens. The number of times people have smudged my laptop screens since 2002 is proof enough of that.
I suspect typing stuff would be considerably more comfortable with a touchscreen, but then I haven't tried the steam controller touchpad solutions.
What would be neat is if they take the Steam Link's touch control settings for something like FTL and incorporate them on the device as on screen buttons. Could probably do it simply enough with physical controls.
FTL has an iPad port with fantastic controls; I wonder if the devs would consider moving those controls into the desktop version with a toggle e.g. "touchscreen mode". It's like 6? years old at this point, but they did release an update to achievements in 2020...
Hope so, I would kill for a portable version and got into Android hacking to specifically try and run this game on my phone. (It hasn't been going so hot as of late, but Box86 looks pretty promising.)
FTL had a asm.js port years ago. I wonder if that would be a better base for running it on Android. (I assume it would technically work right now, but you'd need some user-scripts to make it touchscreen friendly.) (I wonder if the old asm.js version could be converted into WebAssembly and whether that would get better performance.)
It can run just fine on newer devices, you can try Humble's Demo here, but it would only take Mouse Controls, and I haven't the faintest idea how to translate that to touch.
If you have USB debugging enabled on your phone and connect it to a computer while you have FTL running in Chrome or Firefox on your phone, then you can use Chrome/Firefox dev tools on your computer to connect to the browser running on your phone. Then use the element picker in dev tools to pick the canvas element so that the javascript context menu switches to the iframe containing the canvas. Then you can enter this code to convert touches to mouse events:
code to paste
The main menu of FTL and more then becomes usable, but it's still pretty incomplete: there's no right-clicking and no keyboard inputs, so certain actions aren't possible and if you open a text input you become stuck. It would be possible to improve upon this by adding support for long-presses or adding extra buttons on-screen for doing these actions.
Then once the code is polished, it would be possible to make a Firefox extension that automatically runs this code when you open up the FTL webpage, or you could extract the code for FTL from the Humble Bundle webpage and put it on your own webpage and add the javascript to it there.
Thank you very much for the insight. If I get a spare moment and feel like opening up that project again, I will definitely keep you posted on what comes out of it.
Problem is that they won't get any extra sales from this as everyone already has the game. When they port to the switch or ipad that means new sales, often to the same people who already owned the game.
If I can give my speculative answers to your questions
It is by far the cheapest option into this market, regardless. GPD Win3's start at $1000 with the benefits being a smaller form factor, built in slide out keyboard, and included windows 10. decent benefits, but not enough to cost $600 more for many people. Aya Neo is also $1000 with less benefits. The highest cost model at $600 is still a massive reduction over these options.
Even if this fails to make a dent in the "console market", this this is gonna completely flip the existing portable PC market on its head. It's nuts.
Sounds interesting to me. It is unfortunate that it really cost $529 to avoid Emmc memory, but I can just forget that the $400 is an option.
Dock is also interesting - this could be a solid (albeit very expensive) emulator machine if nothing else.
As a portable, from the images either the models have small hands or it’s pretty big chungus (I already find the non lite switch kinda clunky to use in portable mode)
Will wait for benchmarks, though.
(Also wish they went with a gnome based de)
What are the downsides of eMMC memory?
In my experience it's SUPER slow which means loading games and general operation is going to be slower.
To be fair, there is a wide range of eMMC modules out there and the ones you see in most computers tend to be some of the lowest tier stuff. You might be surprised at the performance in this implementation.
While I'll likely pick up one for fun, my real anticipation is for the Steam Controller 2 followup.
Not to mention additional developer support for Steam's controller library, which integrates nicer with their customizable controls and easily subs out Xbox/PS4 icons as needed.
I picked up the Steam Controller during the firesale when it was $5. That was easily one of my best purchases. I always had trouble getting my PS4 or PS3 controllers working, having to use DS4Windows or whatever. So I was glad to have a controller that just worked. Should've gotten a second one just in case.
So if they release the next version, I'll definitely get it.
This seems like it could be a possible Nintendo switch competitor. Especially because it has better specs and more games than the switch.
I wonder if it can run yuzu.
I'm sure the discussion within the yuzu sphere has already begun. Everything that's been stated so far is really pushing the statement that it's really a PC in a Nintendo Switch body, so it would seem running yuzu on it would be a trivial matter.
I’ve been seeing a ton of comparisons. And the timing for this announcement is perfect, since it’s coming right off the tail of the underwhelming OLED Switch announcement.
The main thing I would be concerned about is how well games actually run on this interface. The switch is great because everything is designed for that form factor but not a whole lot of PC games work really well on controllers.
This may have been true 10, 15 years ago, but a vast majority of new games play fine with a controller on PC today. MOBAs and RTSs aside, you can play pretty much anything with a controller. Even games that don't have native controller support, or wonky controller support, can be done thanks to all the work Valve and the community already put into controller support middleware via the Steam controller.
You should try filtering your Steam library on games with explicit controller support. You might be surprised.
That shouldn't be too big of a problem, as the control scheme seems like an evolved form of the steam controller, which worked pretty well for pc (M+KB) games.
On one hand I'd be interested in this, on the other, we've only recently gotten the Index in Australia so I expect this'll be all but discontinued by the time they start selling them here.