I just got back from the 'Nintendo Switch 2 Experience', so I though I'd share my thoughts on the console for those who didn't/won't get a chance to check it out.

The Console Itself - 8/10

The S2 is a decent amount larger than the original, which really helps with the ergonomics. Pretty much all the controls are bigger, and the rounder shape might alleviate fatigue when holding it (I never got to hold it for long, the demos were mostly on TVs). I think it looks a lot worse than the original, but that's neither here nor there. The pro controller was a huge upgrade from the (already great) original, super comfortable materials and nice buttons. The screen is not OLED, which I think is ridiculous for the price tag. It theoretically has HDR, but I could not tell. Overall, it's bigger and better, but nothing super special.

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour - 0/10

For the price of $10, Welcome Tour is a complete joke. There's absolutely nothing to say about it, it's basically an ad for hardware you'll already own. Should be free, don't buy it.

Donkey Kong Bananza - 5/10

This is the Mario Odyssey formula applied to Donkey Kong, you run around, collect bananas in some semi-open worlds. All the environments are destructible, which is super fun but adds one huge caveat: the game runs like shit. A nice 60fps when running around, but as soon as you try smashing stuff (the main gimmick of the game) the framerate jumps all over the place, and going to the world map tanks the fps to 20-30. I enjoyed surfing on chunks of the ground I pulled up, but I was constantly pulled out of the fun by performance hiccups. It looked about as good as Mario Odyssey (but at native 4k ~60pfs, of course).

Mario Kart World - 9/10

Okay, now I can start saying nice things! Mario Kart World is–as you might expect–awesome. It's a really fun twist on the formula that was perfected in 8 Deluxe. There's no more kart customisation, which I don't mind, but each kart looks really nice and detailed. I got a slight taste of free-roam mode before each knockout tour I played, and it was... fine? The open world looks great and plays well, but I'm curious to see how it's "gamified". The knockout tour was the main booth on the floor, with 24 people playing at once with the last placing racers getting eliminated at different checkpoints. It was chaos, but that classic Mario Kart chaos that works really well. I managed to come 2nd on my first race. It looks quite a lot better than 8 Deluxe, but that's mostly in the art style and animations.

Drag X Drive - 9/10

This is the gimmicky competitive game for this system (like Arms or Splatoon), showing off the mouse controls in the form of Wheelchair Basketball. I was super surprised by this game, the gimmick clicked with me instantly. I got dunked on like twice, but I also only had 5 minutes to prepare, so cut me some slack!

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond - 7/10

Again, the mouse controls work super well. It all felt pretty simple and intuitive, but that might be because I'm a PC player most of the time anyway. I don't know anything about the Metroid series, so I can't comment on the story or gameplay beyond that. It looked pretty good and ran at (I think) the full 120FPS the whole time.

Cyberpunk 2077 - 4/10

Cyberpunk was... rough. It had that classic "really really upscaled" look, and dipped down to 10fps a lot in combat. I tried both "performance" and "quality" mode, but both looked and played about the same (which might be a bug).

Breath of the Wild: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition - 2/10

I can't believe they're charging for this. It's literally just the original game running at 60fps with slightly better draw distances. You can get this look with CEMU. This is how I felt about all the "Nintendo Switch 2 Edition" games that I tried.

Conclusion

While the games were pretty good and the experience was nice, I don't think the console has justified itself costing as much as it does, and so I'm not going to buy it on launch. I'll probably pick it up used when there's a reliable jailbreak, but the preview event really dissolved any feelings of FOMO that I might have had about it, which I'm glad about because now I can save that $800! I hope there's still people playing Drag x Drive when I get to it in a few years.

Feel free to ask me any questions, and hopefully I can answer them.

I believe a few of us have Steam Decks, thus I wanted to do this kinda public announcement.

TL;DR

• If your Steam Deck reports low battery health (low % of original capacity) drain the battery until it shuts down and then fully charge and check again
• Use your Steam Deck until it shuts down from time to time (say once every 6 months?) to keep your battery level indicator (and remaining time) precise

Long version

I have my Steam Deck since May 2022 and I put certainly over 1000 hours in gaming on it. I would believe if it was even approaching 2000 hours.

Lately I played demanding game and battery was discharging rather fast with remaining time on full charge being under 1:30 hours, which I wasn't used to just a few months ago when it lasted over 2 hours even in demanding games (I limit to 30 fps and I also limit TDP/power). This weekend I jumped into desktop mode and checked the battery life which showed me what I feared - 65% of original capacity.

I went on iFixit page and the price for new one is hefty 95€, but since Steam Deck got me so much enjoyment, I was ready to pay for it - if it was in stock, that is. I'm glad it wasn't!

Since I have a bit of electronics and software background (hobby level), I realized that the charging chip (or whatever keeps the info about state of charge) was running since day 1 on relative data. What I mean: I have never discharged my Steam Deck lower than 10% and most of the times charging anywhere between 30-80%. And since the charging chip likely measures last fully charged capacity (and thus battery health) based on, well, how much it was charged and discharged all over again, it probably skewed its measurements in those three years.

So I went on a "quest" to play until dead. And I was surprised when Steam Deck reached 3% battery and kept running for another hour (ligthweight game) until it was finally dead. Then I fully charged it and voila - battery health 90%!

I have already said how it likely happened, but once more and in short: the charging chip needs to reach both limits, 0% and 100% of battery, from time to time = You have to let it drain fully here and there if you want your battery level indicator (and remaining time) to be precise or if you want to get the real state of your battery.

A bit offtopic: I've had laptop that had 50% of original capacity. I have changed the battery cells inside the battery and let it fully discharge and charge again but the vendor locked the chip from "learning" the real capacity making the new cells useless because the chip still reported 50% thus telling me when I booted it up that the battery has to be changed and also telling me non-relevant remaining time based on this 50% battery health... I'm glad that Steam Deck is capable of re-learning this data and not playing dumb.

Just for fun, given that we're probably on the eve of the announcement of the announcement of the Switch 2, a look back on some of the online reactions when the first Switch was first detailed, pricing and all.

First, we have this (in)famous neogaf thread.

I don't see that happening. With that price, that paywall and that game line up, I see it below 40M after 5 years. Maybe even below 30M units.

With that price point and lineup? Fuck no.

Eventually if they drop the price big and have a lineup worth a shit maybe they can recover. Maybe. But starting off this bad doesn't inspire me with confidence.

On Reddit, the reception was equally as negative in volume, but the tenor was more reserved

Watched the presentation and was surprised at how little they did to promote the value of purchasing the Switch at $300.

Of course, fans will buy it at any price, but many consumers are gonna see two confirmed launch titles, a paid online service from a company with no proven record in that regard, and Nintendo's history of lackluster third party support and sparse releases. Consumers are liable to perceive better value in Sony's or Microsoft's offerings.

What large games they did show (Zelda, Mario, Xenoblade 2, etc.) looked good, but really not digging the console itself currently. Not a good value proposition.

EDIT: The more I try to inform myself, the uglier this whole situation looks. This console just doesn't look good.

The games from in-house Nintendo look fantastic, it contrasts so starkly with what I posted above. I don't get it. Hardware and all such related services are not their thing at all, not even remotely.

Some opinion pieces as well

The Nintendo Switch is going to be a flop.

Sorry, but it’s true, and what’s ridiculous about the whole thing is that it’s a result of Nintendo making exactly the same mistakes that turned the Wii U into a disaster – an astonishing lack of games and a price that’s too high – £280 – given said astonishing lack of games.

I'm a new Deck owner, recieved unit in May and played sparingly for the past 2ish months.

Overall really liking it, gushed about it everywhere to everyone, and big fan of Valve. But two days ago, one of the Deck shoulder buttons stopped working suddenly. Reached out to steam and they're having me send it in, which is what I would expect. But the way they phrased it kind of souring my initial high of owning the Deck:

Based on the information you have provided, we believe it is unlikely that the current issue reflects a problem with this device as it was delivered to you. It may instead be related to your particular use of the product. Regardless, we would like to offer complimentary service as a gesture of goodwill.

So it's one of those kinds of warranty that excludes regular use? Is this one rep just awkwardly placing blame on me or is that their overall vibe? In contast, I have PS1, PS2, xBox original/360 controllers that still have all the shoulder buttons functioning normally, along with super old PSPs, DS, DS Lites, 3DS, Switch'es and none of them have failed aside from the infamous Switch drifts. Nintendo, for their part, fixed the drifts without implying it was my fault.

Anyone else dealt with Valve customer service and warranty?

I recently had a hankering to return to one of my all-time favorite games: FUEL. I couldn't stop thinking: how cool would it be if I could revisit the game from the comfort of my Steam Deck?

That was my dream, but a few problems stood in the way:

1. FUEL was released in 2009 and was delisted from Steam in 2013. (Thankfully, I have a copy of it in my library, but we're talking about an installation build that is over a decade out-of-date at this point.)

2. FUEL still has Securom DRM.

3. FUEL still requires Games for Windows Live, which was also shut down in 2013.

4. FUEL is pretty mediocre unless you install the REFUELED mod.

So, I sat down with my Steam Deck and a hope and a prayer that maybe, somehow, I could get this game working?

Hurdle 1 wasn't even a hurdle. Proton is so damn good now. The game installed and ran flawlessly. I honestly never should have second-guessed it in the first place!

Hurdle 2 was also, surprisingly, a non-issue. Either the Securom servers are somehow still live and actually checked my CD key, or the dialog box lied to me as part of an offline fallback and told me I was cleared anyway (I'm thinking this is more likely?). Either way, I was happy.

Hurdle 3 was the first actual block. The game crashes when trying to pull up GFWL, which is pretty much what I expected -- the service has been down for over a decade now. Thankfully, there's an unexpectedly easy fix. Xliveless is a DLL that bypasses GFWL and lets the game boot (and save) without it.

Hurdle 4 isn't really a hurdle per se, but that's only because the Steam Deck lets you boot into Desktop Mode and get fully under the hood. I downloaded the mod, dumped the files in the installation folder, ran the mod manager through Protontricks, and then set up all of my mod choices. I then jumped back into game mode, and the game is flawlessly running -- mods and all.

I should also mention that I did all of this on-device. I didn't need to break out a mouse and a keyboard or transfer files from my desktop or anything. From the first install of the game to running it fully modded took me maybe ten minutes total? It was amazingly quick, and most of that time was me searching up information or waiting for the Deck to boot over and back between Desktop and Game Mode.

I realize that, in the grand scheme of game tinkering, this doesn't sound like a whole lot, but that's honestly the point. The fact that this comes across as sort of mundane and uneventful is, paradoxically, what makes it noteworthy. If we're keeping score here, I am:

• playing a 2009 Windows game,
• that was delisted in 2013,
• on a Linux handheld device in 2024.

I also:

• somehow passed the game's decade-old DRM check,
• bypassed the game's second DRM system that has been officially shut down for over a decade,
• modded the game in literal seconds,
• and did all that using only a controller -- while lying on my couch.

From a zoomed out perspective, I shouldn't be able to play this game. FUEL should be dead and buried -- nothing more than a fond memory for me. Even if I turn the dial a little more towards optimism, it really shouldn't be this easy to get up and running. I thought I was going to spend hours trying to get it going, with no guarantee that it ever would. Instead I was driving around its world in mere minutes.

I'm literally holding FUEL and its massive open-world in my hands, fifteen years after its release, on an operating system it's not supposed to run on, and on a device nobody could have even imagined was possible when the game released.

We really are living in the future. I remain in absolute awe of and incredibly grateful for all the work that people do to make stuff like this possible.

According to SteamDB, at the time of this posting:

• There are 5,006 Verified games.
• There are 10,240 Playable games.

I thought this was a noteworthy milestone worth sharing -- The Little Linux Handheld That Could now has a definitive library of >15,000 games!

(The actual library size is significantly larger when you consider how many games run on it that don't yet have a rating, and even that's saying nothing of non-Steam games and things like ROMs as well).

I guess this is just a thing I like to do lol. I got an OLED Steam Deck and have been playing around with it for about a week, so I wanted to share what all I got.

TL;DR: OLED is the definitive version of this product. If you're at all interested, whether or not budget is a concern this model is worth looking at, especially if you can actually get your hands on one to try for a bit. Words aren't quite what they need to be to get across how it looks and feels.

The long of it:

Valve wasn't kidding about stuff like a little performance improvement and better battery life. It feels like someone took the LCD deck and made a checklist of every single thing that could be improved, and then did it. The result is just about the best refresh of a product I've ever seen.

The screen is the most obvious upgrade and it really is great to look at. It is a big jump to go from an LCD at 60hz, to OLED at 90hz with HDR available. As great as VibrantDeck is, no amount of color fuckery can really reproduce what is happening when you have these features. For games that support HDR, it can feel like you've actually made an upgrade, because of how differently it can handle things like bright flashes of light and particle effects on top of the color differences. The refresh rate is tied to the frame limiter by default, so when you drop the frame limit the refresh rate tends to stay double whatever that is. 40fps/80hz feels better than 40/40 to me, like stuttering just isn't as bothersome.

Be aware it's on developers to implement HDR, which means sometimes you run into a game with a shitty implementation. FFVII R comes to mind. Just know that if you run across a game where this feature seems to make the game look terrible, it's not the device doing it.

The improvements to the battery do mean something like a ~40% increase. Games like Armored Core VI and Elden Ring tended to last about 1.5-2 hours on the LCD model, on OLED it's more like 2.5-3, and this is the sweet spot imo. Rare that I'm gonna sit down and play for that long in the first place, so having this much power available means being able to play here and there with much less concern. Games that already played well in a low power state just get that much more time. One thing to know if you're coming from an LCD - it doesn't save your power profiles. Input profiles yes (if you saved them), but power settings need to be redone game-to-game.

The device itself is a little lighter, and it feels like it sits in my hands a little better. The difference is minute, but noticeable, and nice. All of the buttons feel good, the sticks have slightly more resistance to them, and the trackpads are much nicer to use. In particular, the way you click the trackpads is more forgiving by default, so while it is a little easier to mis-click it feels more like using a "real" trackpad. The deck in general is the only device I find doesn't really aggravate my carpal tunnel, and the OLED model keeps that up.

On the software side there isn't really a difference - SteamOS is more or less exactly the same with a few OLED-specific settings. Most of your info gets saved and loaded up when you log in. Cloud saves are one piece of course, but too, any controller profiles you saved will come back, and the SD card can just be freely transferred/there isn't really any setup to it. From boot to play I mostly just waited on the game to download - setting up the device was as simple as waiting for it to do an update, then log in, and that's it. It doesn't pester you to register for anything/no ads.

Things like sleep/wake and transitioning to desktop mode are faster and more consistent. Pretty regularly, my LCD model would fail to sleep/wake correctly - I'd put it to sleep and upon waking it, it would reboot. Inconsistent but often enough to get annoyed with. With the OLED model, i notice this doesn't happen as often. It still does, but much less frequently. The improvements to the trackpads means I use desktop mode more often, it feels much nicer to navigate. All of the stuff I had before was simple to install and restore - emudeck, decky, cryoutilities all installed without any issues and worked fine after I moved over all my stuff from the first deck. Haven't hit any issues with decky plugins either.

Even the carrying case got a pass. It's been redesigned a little, with an extra velcro fastener bit and tighter mold inside, black instead of white.

Transferring my information was about as easy as you could do. There are several options - I mostly used KDE connect, but there's also Warpinator, and a deck plugin called DeckMTP that can let you do a direct USB connection. Literally just copy/paste, once I installed all the stuff I had before I could just drop in the old device's things and be good to go. One thing to be aware of, is that for games which don't support Steam Cloud, you need to copy their save data over. That's gonna mostly be in a folder in /steamapps called CompatData. Takes a little doing but it's not hard to figure out. The hardest thing to set up was STALKER Anomaly, and all that was was about a five step process of clicking things in Wine. By the way, if you make a custom controller profile for a non-steam game, when you add that game to the library make sure it has the same name as before and your controller profile will be saved!

Overall I'm impressed to the point I intend to hold off buying any more PC hardware until a Deck 2 appears. If that product gets the same kind of attention this one did there's no doubt in my mind it will be fantastic. Considering too, the ability to dock and use peripherals, I think I'd feel safe recommending an OLED steam deck as a replacement for a gaming machine + non-work computer to just about anybody. $399 as a base price for PC Gaming is fucking awesome, and $549 for this improved model, at least I feel is very much worth it. $150 for an OLED screen, more storage, bigger battery is not bad. The deck is a hugely popular product, which means you get the added benefit of folks constantly tinkering and messing with stuff to make it work, on top of the odd developer specifically targeting it (such as in Cyberpunk, or how Bannerlord reworked its control scheme). Those kinds of communities exist around other devices, but not nearly to the same extent, and they'll die fast as those products come and go.

So that's what I got. I hope this was informative and helpful. If you have any questions I'm happy to answer as best I can. I'm super happy with the deck as a product, it feels a lot like getting to see what it looks like when someone goes the distance and throws their full weight behind this kind of product.

Edit: I don't know how well this will come through looking on different screens, but here are a few screenshots from AC VI and Morrowind that made use of HDR. Even if it doesn't come through - if you've never owned a deck and were considering one, yeah stuff can look this good on it! It's amazing.

As title says, once Valve announced the OLED deck, I saw the refurbished originals go on a deep discount and figured it was time to buy in. So I ordered a refurb 512GB and I’m so excited for it to arrive! Been in a gaming rut for a long time now and, having never been a PC gamer, I’m look forward to checking out a bunch of games I’ve never played before.

What tips do you have for a first time Deck owner?

Any essential games I should be sure to get?

And finally, is it possible to get games I own on the Epic Games Store (I collected all their free games over the years) or Xbox Game Pass PC games on my Steam Deck?

I live in a pretty compact house, and have my work office upstairs in a corner of one of my kids bedrooms.

Obviously, gaming in there after they are asleep is a no go! Our one tv is usually given over to my wife on evenings I break out the Steam Deck - which has been my first foray back into gaming since having kids and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

However, I'm interested if anyone has found a neat solution to use it in e.g. desktop mode without a conventional monitor or TV to dock with, that I could break out quickly on a breakfast bar and then stow easily.

I'm envisaging some kinda of Frankensteined cheap laptop shell housing to contain the screen and keyboard-

Steam Deck -> USB C Dock -> HDMI out to laptop screen and USB out to keyboard.

Anyone familiar with something resembling this kind of setup, or something similar?

The idea is to get a console to play raging in complexity from the NES, SNES, up to Nintendo DS and PSP. Anything above that is not a priority or a necessity. But it would be nice to have a screen large enough to handle DS games in some form. Can I find anything decent in that price range?

Thanks :)