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Valve Steam Deck

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Re: Valve Steam Deck

#111
post #38

First impressions: Really good hardware for the price. They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base. They're definitely overcharging for storage, but I imagine it'll be easy enough to modify one, so it probably doesn't matter much. Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days? Going with a relatively low resolution compared to modern ones is actually a surprisingly smart mov…

One negative: With all that hardware it’s almost 3 times heavier than the Nintendo Switch, which is already near the upper limit for holding comfortable for longer play sessions.

edit: On closer look that's comparing the Switch without controllers (297g) to the Steam Deck with controllers (669g). The Switch with controllers is 398g, so the Steam Deck is only ~1.7x times as heavy - though that's still a lot of extra weight to hold in your hands.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#112
post #38

First impressions: Really good hardware for the price. They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base. They're definitely overcharging for storage, but I imagine it'll be easy enough to modify one, so it probably doesn't matter much. Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days? Going with a relatively low resolution compared to modern ones is actually a surprisingly smart mov…

What was wrong with SteamOS being based on Debian? I’ve not used SteamOS myself, but I wasn’t aware there were problems in that regard.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#113

Finally a linux gaming console Now valve, for the love of god, PUSH NATIVE LINUX GAMING, proton only as a way to supplement the library.. Reduce your steam tax for the companies that provide a native linux build I will not buy this if your main selling point is "proton" As for the price, 419€.. very bad marketing, 399€ would have been perfect... you got greedy for 20€, that'll hurt sales

> Reduce your steam tax for the companies that provide a native linux build

The idea that this would move the needle seems like wishcasting. Ten percent less of 0.89% of the Steam hardware survey is a couch-cushions rounding error. Meanwhile, Proton is a really good way to get hold of that rounding error as-is and works with surprisingly few problems across most games I've tried; For the amount of noise that 0.89% of the audience makes, Valve's spent quite a lot of time-and-effort to come up with something that works quite well.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#114
Bringing PC gaming to a portable form factor will probably be successful, but I don't game on my phone, so I don't think I'd buy this.

I am in the market for a gaming laptop that can dual boot Linux as my work machine. If they did an Alienware or ROG style build I'd very likely buy that.

Btw if anyone has recommendations for me, I'm looking right now. Looking for a 15-17" heavy ass laptop with minimum 32gb ram, quality 4k or close display, and as much performance as I can find.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#115
post #44

There’s obviously a lot of people who like playing games in a more mobile format, as evidenced by the huge popularity of the Switch Lite / mobile gaming. Giving the PC games market access to that form factor seems, on its face, like an extremely good move. But we’ve seen products like this before — the NVIDIA Shield, for one. Pretty cool piece of tech, but didn’t exactly start a revolution. I guess the question becom…

Had to google what you meant by NVIDIA Shield (wrt portable gaming): https://www.amazon.com/NVIDIA-SHIELD-Portable-pc/dp/B00E3667...

One major difference (besides the form-factor obviously) is that the Deck doesn't require WiFi + desktop to play your PC games. I'd also argue that the trackpads will be a major difference. The Steam Controller's trackpad wasn't perfect, but it made possible to sanely play a ton of designed-for-mouse games

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#116
post #38

First impressions: Really good hardware for the price. They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base. They're definitely overcharging for storage, but I imagine it'll be easy enough to modify one, so it probably doesn't matter much. Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days? Going with a relatively low resolution compared to modern ones is actually a surprisingly smart mov…

What was wrong with SteamOS being based on Debian? I’ve not used SteamOS myself, but I wasn’t aware there were problems in that regard.

It's ancient and Valve had to do tons of backports to support it properly. I imagine they didn't like that very much.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#117
post #54

This looks like it will trounce the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo doesn't even have new hardware in the pipeline other than an iterative OLED screen. Now that Nintendo depends on a single portable console, is there a risk that they'll go the way of Sega?

Nintendo has the best IP as a whole in the industry. Nobody has what they have. They also aren’t going down the crazy AAA shooters who will milk every skin or map pack penny from their users.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#118
post #38

First impressions: Really good hardware for the price. They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base. They're definitely overcharging for storage, but I imagine it'll be easy enough to modify one, so it probably doesn't matter much. Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days? Going with a relatively low resolution compared to modern ones is actually a surprisingly smart mov…

>They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base.

I'm a little surprised they didn't go with something like Fedora. The kernel / drivers are kept just as up-to-date as Arch but the rest of the system is a little more stable.

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