All hands on Steam Deck - Valve's handheld PC

720p games at low quality settings often with FSR1 on performance mode would look like completely unacceptable dogshit on a large TV.

I was telling him to dock his Switch, not his Steam Deck. (!!!)

Mario looks great on the big TV. So does the latest Portal Companion game, btw, which is better than the ports they did to the 360, since it gives 1080p60, not 30fps like it was on the 360/XB1/XSX.

The deck can be docked and run at resolutions higher than 720p and it’ll do so at higher framerates than a Switch. Just saying… I don’t own either “platform”.

Oh sure, the Switch jumps most games up to 1080p when docked.

The steam deck doesn’t run faster or use more power when docked by default, although you can set that stuff yourself. It will not run current graphically demanding PC games at higher framerates than the Switch runs its far less demanding games. Far from it.

The steam deck works because its small screen hides a multitude of sins. On a big screen, no way. Not unless you’re running old games.

Deck is what, three times faster than Switch, even docked?

So while it is not intended for TV gaming use, I would assume something like Witcher 3 or Doom Eternal will look/run lot better on Deck connected to TV than on Switch connected to TV.

The W3 and DOOM ports were “miracle ports”, in that everybody was amazed the Switch could even run them, so I imagine you’re probably right. There are vanishingly few miracle ports of graphically rich modern games on both platforms to directly compare, though.

Mostly you’re looking at games designed for the Switch hardware, meaning they utilize stylized graphics and don’t attempt realism. That is not the case for a lot of PC games.

Sure. I am just saying, Deck is not any less useful than Switch is when connected to TV. Both are bad at it, Deck slightly less so, but it depends on the person and what they are willing to stomach. Also, there are thousands of PC games with stylized graphics that do not require latest hardware…

I would not be even particularly surprised to see some Switch games run better on Deck, tbh

The big thing about the Switch is that you can run games handheld and not eat the entire battery in an hour.

The big thing about the Deck is that you can run games handheld and eat the battery according to your chosen settings. But even Cyberpunk in native res and no framerate cap doesn’t eat the battery in an hour.

I couldn’t finish a game of baseball (Super Mega 3) before the battery drained. My enthusiasm for the device has drained as well.

You basically need to turn on vsync and the 30fps lock to get decent battery life. Probably turn down graphical quality too. Does the steam deck not tutorialize that? Valve needs to improve the onboarding experience to offer that console-like experience.

Some of the games I have run really well, but what I think my main use for this is going to be emulation. Make sure you’re running any games with profiles the community has created, as it can often increase battery life and make the controls more intuitive.

Supposedly there’s a program that handles all the emulation stuff for you, including downloading/installing the emulators and all the proper settings for the steam deck to play them as well as possible. I watched a YouTube video about it but don’t remember the name, I’m sure someone will chip in.

People are really excited about the Switch emulator Yuzu which apparently works just as well or better than a Switch on the deck. I played BOTW in a WiiU emulator many years ago and that worked fine so it seems the state of the art has progressed.

My guess is Valve would sell a ton more decks (if they had the capacity) solely to people looking to play pirated switch games on a handheld.

They have every incentive to make this as difficult as possible, up to and including cooperating with Nintendo to do so. Based on Nintendo’s legal history, the alternative would likely end the Steam Deck’s existence.

There’s nothing they can do. The steam deck is a computer, users have root.

“as difficult as possible” ≠ “impossible”

There’s plenty they can do. Including hardware-level stuff.

Nothing’s impossible, of course. But if Switch emulation on Deck ever became a big thing, it would be the end of the Deck. And the best thing that ever happened to Nintendo, to be honest. Nintendo should be secretly facilitating it so they can crush this competitor.

If they wanted to make it as difficult as possible they wouldn’t have spent time and effort on windows drivers (even if they aren’t as good as the linux ones, they still took considerable time).

Not applicable, all the emulators run fine in Linux. They’re built by enthusiasts.

There’s literally nothing Valve can do about this other than closing off the Steam Deck with a hypervisor like a modern console. That would be anathema to their vision for gaming as a whole so it seems rather unlikely.

Emulation is already huge on the steam deck. There’s nothing anyone can do about that, because emulation is legal and it’s a computer so users can install whatever they want.

This exposes a problem with Nintendo’s strategy, where they release underpowered consoles and rely on great first-party titles. That’s great for battery life and light on hardware, but it also makes their consoles much easier to emulate. I can’t recall another time period when a current console could be flawlessly emulated. That’s unprecedented.

Emulation is legal! Doing literally anything to defeat copy protection is not (in the US). There’s no way to get a Switch game on a Deck without doing that.

That’s right, but that isn’t Valve’s problem. They’re just selling a computer. You can run emulators on your Dell or Apple computer too.