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Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

arstechnica.com

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Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#131

Post by justinclift »

dbetteridge wrote: post #95
justinclift wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Half-Life Alyx is almost universally hailed as the best VR game and as good if not better than the previous Half-Life games. Yet weirdly, Valve refuses to sell their Index VR system to people in Australia. As I discovered recently, when looking to get one, here in Australia. :/ There are people selling some international version via Amazon, however apparently if any kind of warranty issue happens then you're screwe…

Probably related to https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/high-court-dismisses-v... Hardware devices have an even higher cost burden for warranty handling then software products, So given they're not really wanting to do proper warranty on software I don't see hardware being better.

Interestnig. Valve doesn't honour that agreement anyway.

I bought a game a while back that turned out not to work on my system (very clearly), and Value rejected the (several) refund requests I created for it.

So it became a matter of "do I want to do a chargeback on this (and lose my entire Steam account), or not?". Decided to just put up with it, as it wasn't much money.

That being said, I rarely buy via Steam any more, and never full price.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#132

Post by joshschreuder »

alias_neo wrote: post #110
DeliriumTrigger wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psst... PS4 and Xbox One rendered 90% of the games at 900p. It's just your pretentious self who thinks it needs 4k.

Ive been PC gaming at 4K for several years now. Who mentioned consoles? I'm not sure why you saw my want for 4k visuals in the single player, visual, story based games I prefer to play, as an opportunity to attack me personally. Perhaps read the rules or go back to Reddit or wherever that attitude is welcome.

Didn’t the Steam Link stream video from a full on PC? I’m not sure the 4K encoding and streaming in near-realtime story is particularly good even today, let alone a year or two ago when a 4K Steam Link might have been a possible hardware iteration.

Though they could have done 4K UI / other apps like an Android TV device I suppose.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#133

Post by juanuys »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #125
FemmeAndroid wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, it's not like there were never steam machines for sale, but manufacturers stopped making them. Here, you can see five for sale in 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160225105722/https://store.ste... I don't know that Valve were ever going to make physical devices themselves (other than the 100 they made for beta testers.) From pretty early on, and definitely by Steam Dev Days 2014, it seemed to me like…

> Halflife Alex Alyx. Sounds the same, but this spelling has the right gender. > And even with [Alyx], the player base is so limited due to being a VR exclusive. I have played it, and am currently replaying it with developer comments on. There's a reason it's a VR exclusive. There is no way this could transfer over a flat screen. VR interactions are fundamentally different. Motion sickness severely constrain how many…

> Alyx. Sounds the same, but this spelling has the right gender.

Our female friend Alexandra introduces herself as Alex.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#134

Post by joshschreuder »

justinclift wrote: post #131
dbetteridge wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably related to https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/high-court-dismisses-v... Hardware devices have an even higher cost burden for warranty handling then software products, So given they're not really wanting to do proper warranty on software I don't see hardware being better.

Interestnig. Valve doesn't honour that agreement anyway. I bought a game a while back that turned out not to work on my system (very clearly), and Value rejected the (several) refund requests I created for it. So it became a matter of "do I want to do a chargeback on this (and lose my entire Steam account), or not?". Decided to just put up with it, as it wasn't much money. That being said, I rarely buy via Steam any…

From memory they give refunds based on some time threshold of hours played. So if you’ve played more than say 2 hours, it’s much harder to get a refund

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#135

Post by 22c »

ihuman wrote: post #130
22c wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the controller just didn't sell From my perspective, the controller was never sold . I could not buy it anywhere, I am assuming they were only made in a relatively small batch and sold mostly in mainland US. I had been looking since it was released for a place to buy it at a reasonable price, but could only find exorbitantly priced resellers that would ship from USA.

They sold at least 1.3 million steam controllers [1]. That's relatively small compared to the 3 major console's controllers, but it's still a lot. IIRC the only place Valve officially sold it was on Steam itself. Based on forum posts from the time and Valve's Index shipping FAQ, they could ship it to the USA and Europe. While you can't buy it there anymore, its store page is still up [2] [1] I can't link it directly,…

>IIRC the only place Valve officially sold it was on Steam itself.

As far as I know, that's correct, but it was region locked. You could not officially buy it where I live.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#136

Post by swiley »

fotad wrote: post #42

Why not making a phone and enter mobile market?

Phone manufacturers are all just selling tweaked Qualcomm reference designs. Unless you want to go the route Pine64 or purism are going or have the resources to build your own SoC like Apple or Nvidia did you will have no control over the device. This is why even high end Android phones have such short support periods.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#137

Post by loup-vaillant »

juanuys wrote: post #133
loup-vaillant wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Halflife Alex Alyx. Sounds the same, but this spelling has the right gender. > And even with [Alyx], the player base is so limited due to being a VR exclusive. I have played it, and am currently replaying it with developer comments on. There's a reason it's a VR exclusive. There is no way this could transfer over a flat screen. VR interactions are fundamentally different. Motion sickness severely constrain how many…

> Alyx. Sounds the same, but this spelling has the right gender. Our female friend Alexandra introduces herself as Alex.

Oops, now I remember that one of my classmates back in middle school had the exact same name.

I missed an opportunity to shut up, there.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#138

Post by me_me_me »

croon wrote: post #124
me_me_me wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most games are made for consoles first, rarely other way around. Anyhow, you can play on your screen with docked switch. You can play on your couch with steam link, or pc hooked up to tv. I am just not seeing a competitive edge for this device.

> Most games are made for consoles first, rarely other way around. Except in the actual case I mentioned with the list, where almost all of the cross-platform ones are made for PC first, from Divinity to Hades to Undertale to Inside, Steamworld, Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, Ori, Bastion, Dead Cells, Into the Breach, Fez, etc etc etc. Seeing how basically all games that aren't first party or specific exclusives are l…

> This would be for anywhere you play your Switch undocked, and you don't want a Switch for whatever reason (likely more indies, emulators, "apps").

And now we came the full circle. Back to the original point. I don't believe Valve is capable of competition at this point.

I would require serious people and money effort to create this 'whatever reason'. Because I gave you a big one for Switch and I don't see one for Valve (obscure small indie games that don't get ported to Switch is hardly a selling point).

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#139

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

libertine wrote: post #3

I wonder who will be the target for these devices, because a great part of portable consoles strategy was: to be a gateway for kids to buy into the "big-boy" consoles down the line. Basically win their hearts and trust early, so they can become loyal throughout their life. So these devices had to check some boxes, one of the main factors being the price. These devices had to be cheaper then regular consoles (among ot…

> ...to be a gateway for kids to buy into the "big-boy" consoles

Game consoles are like vinyl record players. Despite the huge nostalgia market in a demographic with lots of disposable income and lots of potential free time due to a looming retirement, to "kids these days" it's already a legacy format that's dead from any practical perspective.

Re: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

#140

Post by croon »

me_me_me wrote: post #138
croon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most games are made for consoles first, rarely other way around. Except in the actual case I mentioned with the list, where almost all of the cross-platform ones are made for PC first, from Divinity to Hades to Undertale to Inside, Steamworld, Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, Ori, Bastion, Dead Cells, Into the Breach, Fez, etc etc etc. Seeing how basically all games that aren't first party or specific exclusives are l…

> This would be for anywhere you play your Switch undocked, and you don't want a Switch for whatever reason (likely more indies, emulators, "apps"). And now we came the full circle. Back to the original point. I don't believe Valve is capable of competition at this point. I would require serious people and money effort to create this 'whatever reason'. Because I gave you a big one for Switch and I don't see one for V…

I think you missed for the third time the point that almost all Switch games that aren't Mario, Zelda and the likes are specifically "obscure indie games". And there are multitudes more that aren't ported to Switch.

And even the ones that are, would be available here as well, along with potential other features that Switch doesn't have (over the air streaming games), etc.

Personally, if I were to buy a Switch, I would have to buy all the games I wanted to play on their for, I assume, $50 each. With something like this I own half of the games on the Switch top 100 games already, on Steam. If it could access Humble Bundle games etc too, would be a plus.

But the price point will probably play a big part.

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