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Valve Steam Deck

steamdeck.com

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Re: Valve Steam Deck

#481

Post by IggleSniggle »

belltaco wrote: post #165
superkuh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And yet it looks like you cannot use the Steam Deck without logging into a Steam account. Looks like we are trading in one lock-in for another.

On the landing page they say "You can connect to peripherals, throw the picture onto a big screen, and do all the other PC things you'd expect."

On the hardware page they show it docked and running a normal desktop interface and say "Use your Deck as a PC. Because it is one" and "You can also install and use PC software, of course. Browse the web, watch streaming video, do your normal productivity stuff, install some other game stores, whatever."

On the spec page, it says the OS is SteamOS 3.0 (Arch-based) and Desktop is KDE Plasma.

I guess I'm just not understanding where you'd even get the impression that it would be locked into a Steam account.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#482

Post by Rebelgecko »

bogwog wrote: post #306
caslon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to consider that PC hardware is currently spiraling out of control in terms of price, and $400 for the specs it has presently is a fairly decent buy even if you don't care about the form factor.

I wonder if they're selling at a loss? Valve can afford it, plus it'd be no different than Sony/Nintendo/etc subsidizing hardware since they make most of their profits from software sales. Only difference is that, unlike traditional game companies, this Steam Deck thing isn't a walled garden. But of course, Steam has a near monopoly on PC gaming so it's unlikely that'll be a problem for them.

Similar products (look up GPD Win for example) are roughly in the same ballpark cost wise, and that's without much economy of scale.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#483

Post by Minor49er »

notjustanymike wrote: post #265
Minor49er wrote: post #53

The button placement seems really high, but it might be comfortable to play while resting the bottom on a table.

I just hit the site on my desktop. Like the steam controller before, it's got a lot of back buttons that you can likely remap (R1 to R4 and L1 to L4). So yes, the front buttons are backups.

Judging by the image in the "Speeds and feeds" section, there are only four shoulder buttons. Also, looking more closely at the placement, it looks like they're putting more emphasis on touchpads over the joysticks, and certainly over the D-pad, much like the Steam Controller.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#485

Post by slmjkdbtl »

This is my chance to finally play the 1000+ games I bought on steam but never touched.

Curious to know how they map the buttons / pads / sticks to PC game inputs, or games have to manually provide input scheme for this system.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#486

Post by sdwr »

spiralganglion wrote: post #382

Impressions: * 1.47 pounds is 666g, versus the Switch’s 398g (with Joy-Con attatched). 67% heavier. * I do like that the two people I can see on the landing page both appear to be female, and not overtly "models" at that. I don’t want to read into whether this implies anything about what the marketing for this system might be — rather, I just like that we’re seeing a further erosion of the video-games-as-boys-club tr…

Nintendo has a major advantage, in that they're not trying to run everything on the Switch. All their first-party titles target low-power hardware, and they make those games smooth and responsive. Valve is trying to give people their entire Steam libraries on a portable device, which is bound to lead to a worse user experience.

If they keep trying, one day the stars are going to align and their hardware dream will hit, but today isn't the day. I give it 18 months to live, no chance at a v2.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#487

Post by sprafa »

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…

The Valve Index was a testing ground for their hardware efforts. I 100% believe they are serious, they've built a hardware operation.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#488

Post by IggleSniggle »

chx wrote: post #187
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…

> On the other hand, it could end up all but killing off PC gaming if it is super successful. Why? I thought PC gaming is about powerful graphics cards you can't have pretty much anywhere else.

For me personally, PC gaming is all about being able to play anything from multiplayer FPSs to moddable content to random indie games in my web-browser to emulated games from the early 90s to keyboard-centric roguelikes. Ie, more about having a vast backward-compatible library and the ability to hack on the games for fun than about cutting edge graphics.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#489

Post by jcelerier »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #435
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…

I really wonder what it means to be based on Arch Linux. Are users supposed to run packman to grab the latest security fixes? Are users going to be installing apps from the AUR or whatever? Why does this thing even need a package manager at all? Or is there more to a Linux distro that I'm not getting? It seems like a distro is mostly defined by it's package manager and repository paradigm or philosophy, with Debian b…

> Are users supposed to run packman to grab the latest security fixes?

there are plenty of graphical frontends for updates on Arch.

Another big thing is more recent glibc and mesa for instance which can be huge for performance. Also, Arch makes it fairly easy to rebuild all packages with optimizations for a given CPU ; for instance someone recently made a test of arch built with x86_64-v3. Also there's the way packages are built (much simpler than with debian), etc.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#490

Post by rkido »

ezoe wrote: post #55

>SteamOS 3.0 (Arch-based) What? So they ditched Debian? >1280 x 800px (16:10 aspect ratio) Yeah... that's like 2000s. Seriously who what this? For those who can spend fortune for the PC games, they have better options. Those who can't spend that much, Nintendo switch is probably better for the gaming.

It's a 7" screen, so this resolution is comparable to an Apple Retina display in terms of ppi.
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