Valve Steam Deck • Hacker News Board

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#171

Post by reaperducer » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

ketzo wrote: 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…

But we’ve seen products like this before — the NVIDIA Shield, for one

Atari Lynx. Sony PSP. Sony Vita. Nintendo Switch. Any others I don't remember?

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#172

Post by Crash0v3rid3 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

I’d like a device that streams my home PC games with decent handheld controls, it doesn’t need to do anything else.

Any recommendations?

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#173

Post by CobrastanJorji » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

ortusdux wrote: post #100

I always felt their controller was a bit of a weird product. Turns out they were just dipping their toes in the water. I wonder if they are going to produce this fully in house like the controller. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCgnWqoP4MM

Valve wanted to compete with consoles. Consoles go in the living room and are played with a controller. Your home's PC is not in the living room, so how does Valve fix that? The Steam Link. Okay, but PC games are frequently designed to be played with a mouse and keyboard. There's lots of stuff to click on. So how do you play that from the couch without some elaborate lap pad with a mouse and keyboard on it? The Valve Controller. I see how it could very well have worked. Consoles are expensive, and if you already have a PC, it's an awfully cheap way to play games with better graphics for less money.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#174

Post by CivBase » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #82

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #56

Gotta admit, I never saw that coming. I thought SteamOS was dead after the failure of Steam Machines and Valve was only continuing with their Linux efforts because it's still a useful hedge against Microsoft locking everyone in the App Store. I totally did not expect them to copy the Switch use-case with it. I'm anxious to see how this turns out. Valve's history with hardware is not so great, so it could go nowhere l…

I love Valve but it seems like they create these hardware projects to occasionally remind platform owners like microsoft/playstation/nintendo that they can't completely abuse their users and software devs (Win10 store lock-in, etc) and retain all of them. Valve just wants to protect steam and credible hardware platform competition is how they do it. I don't think they have any real plans to produce and support hardwa…

> I don't think they have any real plans to produce and support hardware long term.

With Valve's track record, I absolutely believe they have limited plans for production in the long term. But their long-term hardware support is impeccable. I have several discontinued pieces of hardware from Valve (the Steam Link and Steam Controller), both of which are still used and work as well as they day I bought them - better even, thanks to continued software updates.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#175

Post by ehnto » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

romwell wrote: post #123

ketzo wrote: 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…

>I guess the question becomes “what percentage of current PC gamers are motivated to shell out $400 to play on the train?” Yup. Before clicking the "Reserve" link, I put a personal threshold for this thing at $300. If it was somewhere around that, it'd be an instant purchase for me. Over $500 for a version with barely acceptable (by 2021 standards) storage? No thank you. The 64GB version is almost a made-for-landfill…

Most blockbuster games are over 64gb on their own these days. You couldn't install just one of: GTA5, Red Dead Redeption 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Forza Motorsport/Horizon, Fallout 4, the list goes on.

At least Todd Howard can't sell Skyrim yet another time, it's already in my steam library.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#176

Post by desine » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #116

opheliate wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pedantic comment: it’s not that Debian itself is ancient, it’s that they prioritize stability and thus older packages. Both Arch and Debian get frequent updates in their packages, but Arch prefers cutting edge cool and Debian prefers “don’t break any users existing setups!”

Arch is still a better choice because gaming is generally using cutting edge software.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#177

Post by wil421 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

thorum wrote: post #111

caslon wrote: 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 w…

That’s almost a deal breaker. My hands get tingly after playing in hand held mode for too long. Not sure if it’s the weight or ergonomics.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#178

Post by danso » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

seneca wrote: post #16

Valve has a pretty bad track record with hardware, do they not? I'm not very aware of this industry, but the vague impress I have is that they've tried this a couple of different ways and it hasn't gone well for them. I'm curious why they would make this play again.

Valve's arguably biggest most obvious failure are the Steam Machines [0], but that doesn't feel like a track record failure in the way that, say, a PS Vita was. Weren't Steam Machines basically just branded (and reasonably priced) PCs pre-loaded with SteamOS/Linux? Not even the Steam Controller feels proprietary. I mean, in the sense that I can still use it handily on macOS despite its ending production 2 years ago.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/its-time-to-declare-v...

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#179

Post by sliken » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

NegativeLatency wrote: post #62

Is this going to be locked down? Can I use a web browser or install my own Linux apps?

Quotes from the announce and FAQ:

"Steam Deck is focused, of course, for running Steam but also advertised as an "open PC" that can run other software too."

"That said, Steam Deck is a PC so you can install third party software and operating systems."

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#180

Post by OscarCunningham » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

Most online gaming is currently borked on Linux because the anticheat software doesn't work. Does this get around that somehow? Will I be able to use the same method on my Linux machine?

EDIT: Otherwise 'runs the latest AAA games - and runs them really well' seems like oversell.

EDIT2: From their 'software' page: 'For Deck, we're vastly improving Proton's game compatibility and support for anti-cheat solutions by working directly with the vendors.' Yes!