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Valve Steam Deck

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Re: Valve Steam Deck

#591

Post by baby »

Topgamer7 wrote: post #302
thorum wrote: post #111

Earlier 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…

As someone with with incredibly poor wrists, the OG switch is already too heavy.

On the other hand I find the switch pretty light.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#592

Post by pinkythepig »

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…

This has so much more potential because its a desktop OS. You could e.g. play WoW using this. Not to mention the huge selection from emulators. I've tried gaming with Android before and the game selection is awful. Realistically, the only good gaming options are from e.g. snes emulators. On top of that, most phone GPU drivers are horrendously broken when doing advanced 3d stuff so even if a good game was released for android, you wouldn't be able to play it on 80% of phones.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#593

Post by cesarb »

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…

> Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days?

I think it's not a case of "having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 slots", I think it's instead a case of "having precisely two USB-2 slots", no matter how many USB-3 slots there are. The reason for exactly two USB-2 slots is obvious: one of them is for the keyboard, the other one is for the mouse. Neither the keyboard nor the mouse need more than USB-2, so there's no reason to have the more complex USB-3 hardware for these two ports.

Other than those two ports, it makes sense to have the rest of the USB ports be USB 3, which seems to be the case here, even though there's only one (the USB-C port seems to be meant to be always plugged into a charger, so it might also be USB-2 only).

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#594

Post by capeterson »

baby wrote: post #584
capeterson wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What makes it "not even comparable"?

The Q2 is good, and certainly a better value, but I'm not sure I'd say "not even comparable".

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#595

Post by Ajedi32 »

Seems great as a niche enthusiast device. Based on my past experience with Steam Link though I'm not sure how well it'll do as a mainstream gaming console.

Too much of Steam's game library just wasn't designed to be used without a keyboard/mouse, and touchpads + mappable controller buttons aren't a great substitute, particularly when the game you're playing still thinks you're using a keyboard.

There's a certain level of polish expected from console gaming. People expect to be able to launch a game and have it just work; they don't want to be futzing with controller mappings and adjusting graphics settings for 15 minutes before they can start playing.

To be clear, I think these are surmountable problems. From what I've read though I'm not sure if Valve has done anything to address them. There's a lot of talk on the website about having access to "your entire Steam library", and a mention of how the touchpad lets you play games designed with a mouse in mind. But again, based on my experience with Steam Link, it's not really that simple.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#596

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #247

Everyone is talking about gaming, but do you guys think this could be a laptop replacement? I've been intrigued by docking tablets for years now, but haven't found one I like yet (that can run linux well, so no Surface). I like the tablet form factor for web browsing and watching videos, but nearly all the tablets are too phone-like to get real work done. I don't actually play games much anymore, but do people actual…

Honestly full linux desktop in a handheld form factor is pretty attractive.

One of the biggest pain points of linux laptops is getting the drivers right.

That being said The screen is quite small if you are dealing with text & while you can do some typing with the steam controller you won't want to do too much.

If your general set up is doing a tiny bit of work while away from a dock (with mouse + keyboard + monitor) and you dock it most of the time I think this could be a really nice package.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#597

Post by phendrenad2 »

techrat wrote: post #518
phendrenad2 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh oops, when I said "pacman" I meant "or a GUI on top of it". I figured that would be obvious.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#598

Post by matheusmoreira »

css wrote: post #135

From 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

This is absolutely awesome!

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#599

Post by matheusmoreira »

modeless wrote: post #211
css wrote: post #135

From 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

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.

God I hope not. I don't want invasive proprietary kernel modules screwing up my system.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#600

Post by asah »

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 for one love my Shield and would upgrade / buy again - real-time upscaling/upmixing makes YouTube into a competitive "channel" I regularly watch on my 4K TV.

The shield runs all the major streaming networks and there's now Airplay apps that run in the background, closing that gap.

As with all chrome-based devices, the Google voice assistant blows away AppleTV and Roku.

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