All hands on Steam Deck - Valve's handheld PC

Games
43

The fighting game crowd is having a debate over this now.

There’s a debate in the community whether PC should become standard for offline games, with TOs saying it’s too expensive/too hard to support, and a lot of the players (who got used to superior PC versions during pandemic) saying consoles are laggy and crappy. They’re both right.

If this can provide standardized hardware, and reasonable cost, while being able to play the games without much lag, this would be a good solution. The Storage space would not be a huge concern, as only a few fighting games are huge (Tekken is the largest at 80 Gigs, Guilty Gear clocks in around 15 I think)

I don’t think it will be able to do it.

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All of which leads us on to what I think is the key factor that could make or break Steam Deck - developer buy-in. Nintendo and Nvidia gave developers the tools and API to make Switch everything it could be, but fundamentally it’s the game makers that tailored their code to the Tegra X1 processor. The list of so-called impossible ports for the Nintendo hybrid is immense, but the reason why they exist is because the time and effort was put in for this individual platform. So for Steam Deck, that’s going to start with bespoke settings profiles that deliver a good experience for the hardware right from boot, with no further tuning from the user required - though of course, settings menus should remain.

But going forward, ensuring scalability is key to Steam Deck’s future fortunes. Many existing techniques, such as temporal super-sampling and dynamic resolution scaling were existing technologies brought across from other console versions that proved crucial for Switch ports and I strongly suspect that Steam Deck is going to need them too to really be the best it can be. And if this leads to a stronger basis for scalability for PC ports in general, that can only be a good thing. Generally speaking, if the aim is to bring PC gaming more into the mainstream, the process of getting good out-of-the-box performance needs to be just as seamless as it is on consoles and to keep Steam Deck viable, more lower end options are going to be required for the latest games.

45

Horses for courses.

I use my switch as a portable ‘in house’. It allows me to play a game on the sofa next to my wife watching TV so not an issue for me.

The Stream Deck will fulfil a similar role so I’m on board but have always been a sucker for portable PC all the way back to the Atari Portfolio.

The real question for me is whether Valve will continue support it in the longer term…or it goes the way of steam link, steam machine…

I’ll be risking the £4 to see what happens though.

46

Valve seems lot more “all in” on this one compared to previous endeavors. But even when e.g. Steam Controller stopped being manufactured, they are still releasing software updates for it, years later.

Good article.

But I gotta say, as a bit of a counterpoint, I was surprised when Warhorse announced there will be a Switch version of Kingdom Come Deliverance. That game seems like too much for it. So Saber will have to spend a year+ figuring out how to put it there.

Meanwhile, it will run on Steam Deck on day 1, with zero porting effort needed, at much higher quality than the eventual Switch version.

47

Apparently not even Warframe runs well on the Switch (and I can get that running smoothly on my son’s non-gaming laptop). Kingdom Come has no chance, surely?

48

Warframe runs fine on Switch. As do Doom Eternal and The Witcher 3, which are closer to Kingdom Come in their demands.

49

Watch grandmas everywhere buy the Elgato Stream Deck accidentally this Christmas.

50

This thing looks so, as Lisa Left-eye Lopez might say, crazy, sexy, cool.

It reminds me of how the Atari Lynx looks in my nostalgia-clouded, unreliable narrator memory.

God, it looks so cool.

Is this for me?

I’m a grown man, married with children, who lives in the burbs, and is the one driving 99% of the time I go anywhere. When I do go somewhere, it is because I have something to do where ever that is - unlike my kids, who are sometimes unwilling captives stuck in backseat purgatory. If there is downtime, it is typically very brief, something like an elevator, waiting in a checkout line, or waiting at a red light. Maybe enough time to check email or sneak in a quick peek at google news, probably not enough to fire up Europa Universalis IV.

When I want to game (and have the time to do it), I’m probably at home, at my desktop or fighting the kids/wife for control of the living room when I want to slum it as a dirty console kid for a bit.

Holy smokes, it does look so sexy, though.

One image shows it running CK3 while docked - that’s my type of game, but would I want to play that on the 7 inch screen undocked? I think I’m due for an eye exam soon, I’m going to need new ‘readers.’ If I am docking it, why not just use my desktop.

It’s a PC! It can run any software just like a real PC. God that is so cool.

And you can connect a keyboard… its like a portable computer. Totally, awesome!

Is it going to replace my laptop? Goodbye, Macbook Pro?

If I were a high school or college kid again, practically living out of my bookbag or a 1992 Nissan sentra, this thing would be so incredible.

Maybe if I were some urban hipster who spent hours on mass transit commutes and couldn’t figure out a way to convert that time to billable work it would be super slick.

I’m going to reserve one, but I’m not sure this is for me.

51

720p. Blech. Playing Diablo 3 on the Switch was a struggle because of the tiny screen and low resolution. This will be another .8" bigger, which doesn’t sound like a whole lot, even taking into account the inverse square.

What I want is an iPad like device with a big beautiful screen that I can attach wireless controllers to. The 11" iPad Pro actually has the hardware to run most games, it just doesn’t have many that I care about unless you cloud stream, which never works when I want it to (ie, not at home).

52

Well, plus Diablo 3 on PC doesn’t have controller support anyway, so it would be a pain in the ass to play on the Deck anyway.

53

I take it this thing won’t handle VR very well? Though the PS4 can somewhat manage it with a 1.8TF GPU……maybe low resolution VR 😆

54

That’s almost word for word what my thought process was, lol

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I’ve only attempted a lot of purchases because steam seems overwhelmed :( I’d kind of like to know how long “a while” is.

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Yeah I don’t know why I thought this ordering process wouldn’t be a clusterfuck.

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Got my reservation in, but it was rough going. If you manage to get past the initial click, hang in there through the cart. It seemed stalled at several points but eventually processed.

58

I’m surprised your battery died so soon. I almost bought one after your original post, looked cute. Will have to try Tyrian handheld someday. Loved that game

Here’s a spreadsheet I found if anyone else might be interested in emulation:

Handhelds - Google Sheets

59

Still can’t complete a transaction… ugh.

60

Just got the same here. Ah well, maybe this is the gods telling me I don’t need this.

61

Has anyone gotten past the “you’ve been attempting a lot of purchases” error?

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The low price point is probably justified by the lack of quality control: a bunch of people seems to have had screen dying very soon. I am lucky enough that mine is a working one. Not so lucky with the lithium alien blood from hell though!