Did not see that coming! I’ve been saying for a while that the nintendo switch is one of the best idea of the decade and the poor quality leaves a lot of room for competition. My first guess at a successful competitor would have been Apple, who I think has a lot to win in entering the market with a switch-like console.
Valve Steam Deck
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Re: Valve Steam Deck
#582The display specs seem very mediocre: Resolution: 1280 x 800px (16:10 aspect ratio) Type: Optically bonded LCD for enhanced readability Display size: 7" diagonal Brightness: 400 nits typical Refresh rate: 60Hz I feel like they dropped the ball on d
No point in a higher resolution display if you can't get above 30 fps.
Re: Valve Steam Deck
#583Honest question. Is there a gaming platform where I can play only free games? Or atleast where I don't have to put a credit card number before giving it to my kids?
Re: Valve Steam Deck
#584Gotta 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…
To be fair though, Valve does make the best consumer VR headset available (Valve Index).
What? That’s false. Oculus quest 2 is hands down the best consumer VR headset available. It’s not even comparable.
Re: Valve Steam Deck
#585From the FAQ [0]: - What OS is Steam Deck running? SteamOS 3.0, a new version of SteamOS based on Arch Linux. - Will people be able to install Windows, or other 3rd party content? Yes. Steam Deck is a PC, and players will be able to install whatever they like, including other OSes. [0]: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq
`Steam Deck is a PC, and players will be able to install whatever they like, including other OSes.` this is probably this most exciting thing about this release. How many days until this thing is running k3s and/or serving up a prometheus dashboard on the same device that is touch capable?
Finally, someone thinking outside the box! :D
Re: Valve Steam Deck
#586Typo in the title. It’s “Steam Deck”, not “Steam Desk”. Interesting that Valve is diving deeper into hardware. Remember when they still made video games? Remember when there was still a hope they would some day release Half-Life 3?
Finally, the year of Linux on the Desk.
Re: Valve Steam Deck
#587First 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…
> Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days? Almost certainly has to do with cost and PCI-E bandwidth. Mobile chips like this only have so much bandwidth, and USB3 requires more dedicated bandwidth than USB2, not to mention more complicated circuitry that drives up price. And when your expected use case is attaching keyboards and mice, which generally are USB2 only anyways, it reduces the cost…
It's not really a mobile chip, it's a full laptop-grade Zen 2 processor.
Re: Valve Steam Deck
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a great link. Perhaps even more interesting is this: Valve is working with anti-cheat vendors for Linux (Proton) support. So one of the biggest remaining obstacles to Linux gaming may soon be addressed as a side effect of this.
I hope they put some effort into anticheat on Linux for their own games. Team Fortress 2 has been barely playable for the past year because of cheaters running bots using widely available software which Valve seemingly can’t detect on Linux.
Non-gamer here: what’s the point of these bots? Is there money as stake? Or just a leader chart? But if you get your bot to #1, but you’re not able to do anything with it and it’s a bot, what’s the incentive?
Re: Valve Steam Deck
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a great link. Perhaps even more interesting is this: Valve is working with anti-cheat vendors for Linux (Proton) support. So one of the biggest remaining obstacles to Linux gaming may soon be addressed as a side effect of this.
do you think anti-cheating is ultimately solvable? it seems likely to me that eventually bots just take in a video stream, running on an otherwise separate device. what happens to gaming then?
Not eventually: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/cheat-maker-brags-of-...
Re: Valve Steam Deck
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I've been thoroughly unimpressed with the build quality of the Switch, I'd probably have paid more for a sturdier 'pro' version, to be honest.
That’s what I keep saying. The switch is amazing but the quality is truly bad. Apple launching a switch-like console would be amazing.