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Valve Steam Deck

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511–520 of 1001 posts

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#511
Two gripes: Wifi 6e should be included for a new device that's launching for gaming this holiday.

OFDMA really has the potential to decrease the lag of cloud gaming when playing wirelessly.

2 why would you just let the microsd card dangle in the breeze like that?!? It's a necessity at the storage sizes provided and ruining that slot will make the whole device a big hassle to use.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#512

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 don't really see how a cheap, low-end, mobile computer is going to kill off desktop gaming. Why would that happen? People will all of a sudden stop wanting top end equipment and big high-res screens because they can play some Steam Gameboy?

You can plug it into a display, and plug in a mouse + keyboard.

I'd be inclined to buy one of these for gaming and an ultra light laptop for laptop stuff when the time comes, versus getting a gaming laptop or desktop.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#513
post #408

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…

What windows store lock-in?

This is way back about a decade ago, when Valve was very Windows-centric and barely even had macOS ports of Steam running. Windows 8 was announced with an entirely new application type, APIs, and distribution model intended to support tablets. Existing applications were shoved in the Desktop penalty box, while new applications had to be fullscreen or side-by-side, like a tablet. Furthermore, Windows on ARM was announced, with the Desktop penalty box further restricted to only Windows apps (though you could jailbreak it). If you wanted your app to work as a tablet app, you had to rewrite it for XAML and distribute it through the Microsoft Store, with similar technical restrictions to that of Apple's.

The very clear message from Microsoft was that the future of Windows was in fullscreen tablet apps and that the desktop - as well as third-party app stores - was going away. Valve would proceed to launch a Linux version of Steam a few months before Windows 8 RTM'd, their own Linux distro a year later, and consolized PC hardware another year after that. Basically, the whole company made a very clear pivot away from game development (which they still haven't fully gone back to) to ensure Steam had a lifeboat if Windows 9 were to drop the Desktop or enforce app lockouts on it.

Of course, what actually happened is that Windows 8 became the laughing stock of the entire PC industry. Microsoft was trying, like, five developer transitions at once and nobody was interested. (Not even Apple can do that, and they actually did try. Ask me about Rhapsody sometime.) So the end result is that app developers never wrote anything to the new native XAML APIs, users just used the Desktop app, and nobody had any interest in Windows on ARM tablets. That's why you don't remember the Windows Store lock-in; in Windows 10, Microsoft got rid of it.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the steam link really go nowhere? I have a physical box, and it works magically well. My understanding is it's still available, just not as a physical box.

I have one too, I got it on ridiculous clearance when they stopped making them. If they had been successful, why would Valve have needed to liquidate stock? It currently sits in a box somewhere in my house because I have never had any use for it, which I think is the case for most PC gamers, hence its failure.

Right, my understanding is it's still available but not as a physical hardware box anymore but instead as some kind of software. But it's still there and supported, no?

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#517
> 2 x full-size analog sticks with capacitive touch

That’s listed separate from the track pads. The sticks have capacitive touch?

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#518
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…

There's unattended updates and GUIs for everything, bruh.

The adage that you have to use a terminal if you want to run a distro has been out of date for over a decade.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#519

Valve is like 90s id Software without Carmack. They understand business models. They know that the money is to be made in game engines and game platforms, not games themselves. However, they’ve never had the technical talent and vision to execute on that. Half-life was supposed to be a demo for GoldSrc. It never took off and I can’t name a single 3rd party GoldSrc game. Likewise, Half-life 2 was supposed to be a demo…

Titanfall, Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends all run on Source

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#520

So, I guess its plays only games from Steam? I'm curious, does every game on Steam run on SteamOS? cus SteamOS is Linux.

Nope, you can also install any other linux app / game on it. Or even an entirely different OS. SteamOS is arch based, so you can probably just pacman install whatever you please.
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