Valve just announced their own handheld gaming PC (not a console):
Can be reserved on Steam, shipping in december
IGN hands on preview
Personally, while I have no idea how comfortable it will be et cetera, I think I want it. It seems fast enough to provide good performance for most of my Steam games, and the functionality of full PC is unbeatable.
As cool as this looks, I don’t see myself using it much. It’s too big to throw in your pocket, so it would be staying at home since I don’t really travel anywhere. If I’m at home, I’ll just use my PC.
Lot of people use their Switches in bed for a bit, before going to sleep, so it gets some use at home too.
But yeah, handheld devices are usually meant to be used outside home.
Ironically, the thing that actually interests me most about this is the emulation capabilities. Being able to play MAME/SNES/Genesis/DC/GC/PSX/PS2 games on a (somewhat) portable system intrigues me.
Valve’s new Steam Deck can run Windows and turn into a handheld Xbox
Something like this would be nice for travel, but I can read or watch stuff on my iPad. I can also play some games on my iPad. This would be a luxury item for me.
The only other use I could see would be to use it as a handheld on the couch so I’m not isolating in my office to game. That’s a good use, but I like my big screen, my desk, etc.
Does look cool, though.
You could sell iPad and do everything on this instead :)
It is a PC. It can run anything. That said, I suspect some of the wonderful seamless suspending functionality demonstrated below will need the Valve’s system to work.
There’s a ton of cheap, little devices that can handle most of those.
The Anbernic RG351 for example.
Almost all of them struggle with many Dreamcast and newer games though.
I can already see everybody’s eyes crying when they’ll notice none of the interface are readable.
How awesome would it be if other companies also adopt the device as their handheld thing. Totally possible due to its open ended nature. Xbox game pass interface for Steam Deck?
LOL, 64gb for the basic version? Has Valve even looked at the average size of the games on their store?!
Could fit into a purse, alongside a controller.
I see potential for this , but I could wait 2-3 years to figure it out.
It does have a microSD slot for those who want to bring their own storage.
I thought the same at first, but the video does point out that there’s an SD card slot that you can put any size SD card in to install games on. The real question is will Windows even fit on 64gb (if you wanted to put Windows on it)? ;)
And that’s eMMC for the 64GB. It’s an internal SD card, essentially. Those things are terribly slow for solid state storage. Throughput is okay, but if you try to do thousands of tiny read/writes? Choke city.
I want this, but for absolutely no reason.
This might be pretty cool but I haven’t had the greatest track record with Valve hardware. Will have to see how this shakes out.
That’s less than one CoD monthly patch
Hm, I just ordered one of these for a grand: ONEXPLAYER: Best Performing Handheld Game Console | Indiegogo.
From what I’m seeing, the Steam Deck has a nice amount of RAM and a good AMD SOC, but storage tops out at 512gb, the screen is 7" at 1280x800 and it runs SteamOS. While I don’t care for the control layout, those programmable back buttons are nice. Not feeling any regret just yet, but if this gets a next iteration, it could be pretty sweet.