Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steam Deck: First Anniversary

boilingsteam.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 258 posts

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#211

Post by yamtaddle »

eldaisfish wrote: post #201
cubefox wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony building a Switch competitor for the next generation, in addition to a PlayStation 6? That sounds very unlikely to me. With the Switch form factor, it would have to be a lot closer to the PlayStation 6 than the small PSP was to the PlayStation 3. I don't think Sony wants to have two similar consoles on the market; they would compete with themselves. And the memories of the PSVita misfortune will deter them furth…

The PS Vita was ahead of its time. I own a secondhand OELD model and the hardware is AMAZING, considering it is a decade old. The home brew community added lots of value with the emulation ability and the fact that sony abandoned the console. Yes, the vita was a flop at the time but i am convinced that if sony released a modern equivalents, it would sell like hotcakes. Where i am less certain is of what this means fo…

They even released the Playstation TV, which was a tiny little box (smaller than most portable hard drives) with the Vita internals and an HDMI port. Plays most Vita games, you just use PS4 controllers with it (and maybe also PS3? Can't recall for sure).

Really, take a Vita and add a cradle for TV, and you've basically got a Switch. And the Vita was developed and sold in parallel to a full Playstation console, so it's not unprecedented. Normal, even, except for Microsoft, until very recently when having a separate handheld system seemed to die a sudden death, I assume due to the rise of phone gaming—Nintendo, Gameboy series; Sega, Gamegear et c.; Sony, PSP/Vita.

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#212

Post by charcircuit »

charcircuit wrote: post #141
ElectricalUnion wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exclusiveness are the way you bring value to the people who choose to use Steam via the Steam Deck. The hassle-free portable experience is the Steam Deck killer app and value. You don't need "exclusives", you just need to be plain better as a product. It's less of a pain to use that most linux friendly laptops. It's less of a pain to use that constatly messing around with equivalent Windows-powered or Android-power…

Not everyone is looking for probably PC gaming, but everyone is looking for good games. People will by Switches just to play games like Animal Crossing. Regardless of if they intend to use their switch in a portable fashion. A similar thing could happen with the Steam Deck, but there doesn't seem to be any exclusiveness.

portable

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#213

Post by CharlesW »

ccouzens wrote: post #73
a13o wrote: post #36

The next generation of gaming platforms is really going to be heated. We basically have two philosophies in the field now. The Switch and the Steam Deck sacrifice high end hardware for portability and versatility. The PS5 and XSX are about as portable as a LAN party, but can theoretically push 4k@120hz for the cost of a graphics card. Is there room for everyone next gen? Each of Valve, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo h…

The Steam ecosystem has devices in both categories. It's the only ecosystem in the list where you can buy a game and have your progress synced between a performance device and a portable device.

> It's the only ecosystem in the list where you can buy a game and have your progress synced between a performance device and a portable device.

Just a reminder that console streaming exists, which can work really well. https://www.xbox.com/en-US/consoles/remote-play

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#214

Post by jxdxbx »

Yeah just another post to say how happy I am with mine. Maybe for a different reason. I'm not a big gamer, but I'd always have to keep some kind of PC gaming situation around (as a Mac user) because of nerd FOMO. Steam Deck is a much more reasonable secondary "PC" than a whole gaming PC or even a laptop or futzing with dual-booting (not even a thing with ARM).

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#215

Post by karmakaze »

elmerfud wrote: post #11

I have to say I'm very happy with it for the price I paid. Could it be better, sure, I wish the screen was better but I'm still very happy with it. I actually bought it on a lark because I'm 49 and I never really hand held gamed. Never got in to it beyond the beep-boop led games of the 70s/80s with boring family road trips. I watched many hand held platforms come and go and never could get in to using them. Always pr…

This sounds near-ideal for my uses also. The only change would be using a BigScreen Beyond[0] VR headset (or similar) to replace the bulky monitor.

[0] https://www.bigscreenvr.com/

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#216

Post by manmal »

anotherman554 wrote: post #158
willis936 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That login ability is nice. I usually have to use a second remote channel. Does Moonlight handle controllers and surround sound well?

Moonlight only supports Xbox controllers or making a different controller (like a PS5 controller) appear to Windows to be an Xbox controller. You can't use a PS5 controller natively, instead windows sees the ps5 controller as an Xbox 360 controller. It's fine for most cases but not for motion controls.

Haven’t tried it but vigembus should support PS4 controllers too: https://github.com/ViGEm/ViGEmBus

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#217

Post by daedalus_j »

My deck has actually ruined gaming on my desktop for me in a lot of ways. There are some games that are just a LOT better on on the deck due to the controls and having the screen right in hand. The gyro controls on the deck are great, and they make a lot of games that I would normally never consider playing on a controller very playable, and in fact even more fun than with mouse+keyboard. (Mass Effect for example)

Metal: Hellsinger is another one that's just great on the deck. It feels way more kinetic to be on the deck with motion controls than sitting waving your mouse around.

As far as ergonomics go, I find it plenty comfortable to use, and so does my wife, and we're at opposite ends of the human size distribution. I don't really use it lying down like I used to do with my PSP, but that's not much of a loss to my mind considering how much more advanced games I can play with it on the go.

I'm a bit bummed that I haven't been able to find a good factorio-ish building/optimization game for it that actually works well without mouse+keyboard, but I'm sure one will show up eventually. I haven't really experimented with an external monitor+mouse+keyboard with it as I'd just switch to the computer at that point.

All in all super happy with it, it does what it's designed to do incredibly well.

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#218

Post by yamtaddle »

Razengan wrote: post #190
izacus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, until your PS5 demands a 40min patch to start the game. It's become almost a meme.... All the updates if you don't use those regularly and they don't stay in standby.

> until your PS5 demands a 40min patch to start the game. Never saw that happen yet or even heard of that as a meme. Even if it does happen it would still be less jank than PC upkeep :)

You probably pay monthly for their subscription service. With that, you can have it wake and auto-patch everything at night. At least, when I signed up back on the PS3, a subscription was required for that feature—maybe it's not anymore. Otherwise, it'd just hit you with the update when you tried to play.

It'll still happen when you bring a new game home on disk, though. Plug in to play: "hold on while we patch for an hour". More or less, depending on your internet connection speed. Certainly none of the gaming services ever come close to saturating my gigabit connection, though, so there's a practical cap on how much that helps.

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#219

Post by danShumway »

ghusto wrote: post #170

I'm catching up on the last 20 years of gaming I've missed for not having a Windows machine :) Bonus points for most of the old games being super cheap now. I'm really happy with mine. Games just work, no tweaking or weird configurations necessary, gamepads and other controller schemes work well, and; it's running Linux in the back! Once you configure something like Syncthing in desktop mode, it carries on working in…

The worst part about the Steam Deck is Steam; I'm eagerly looking forward to some more general Linux communities building alternative OS setups in the future, although Steam Input still doesn't seem to have a good Open Source alternative.

Aside from that, the device is fantastic, I have very few complaints. The portable form-factor is transformative for a lot of older PC games, it's an emulation powerhouse, gyro controls make first-person shooters actually playable (which was my big concern with not having a mouse). It's repairable, it's running Linux.

I don't know if I would recommend it for everyone, but it's pretty much the perfect console for me (or will be if I ever figure out how to replicate the OS experience without Steam).

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#220

Post by bravetraveler »

bobmaxup wrote: post #84
prmoustache wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

still, having n things cobbled together in a backpack are always less convenient than a flattiah device like a laptop. Not sure why the op never went with the usb drive solution. My work environment lives in a linux fedora installed on an nvme drive in a usb enclosure. It is secured with velcro tape to my different laptops and allow me to boot my pro environment on any of my computers by booting to usb and is left un…

It must be relatively slow to run your work environment like that, no? Modern NVMes grab like 7GB/s+ -- The best my external gets over Thunderbolt 3 is like 1.5GB/s -- not to mention the enormous latency difference.

I'm sure their bandwidth is fine, diminishing returns and all of that

USB has some latency to it that I'm sure feels interesting, though

Post reply on HN