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Steam Deck: First Anniversary

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Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#71

Post by fnands »

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…

Super exciting to see where this all goes. As consumers, having the big boys competing for our attention is great place to be.

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#73

Post by ccouzens »

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.

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#74

Post by laidoffamazon »

I had zero expectations for the Steam Deck and thought it was underpowered and silly when it was first announced. Boy was I wrong - I ended up buying it on a whim and I've gotten a ton of use out of it. I played through multiple AAA games that came out just last year on it on vacation without wanting to tear my hair out, and the installation workflow is near perfect. Valve has finally made Linux a console experience.

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#75

Post by cubefox »

> My wild guess is that there’s between 1 and 2 million units already shipped out there.

While there was a lot of initial hype around the Steam Deck, it almost sounded as if it emerged as a serious Switch competitor. Unfortunately that didn't happen. Its sales are around an order of magnitude below the Switch, which sold 13.12 million units in its first year (and 122.5 million total).

So despite its modest success, the Steam Deck is still somewhat a niche product. Many people likely haven't even heard of it. I'm puzzled why Valve doesn't want to sell it in stores.

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#76

Post by BizarreByte »

It’s the best gaming system I’ve owned and the one I’ve enjoyed the most since the PSP. It’s big, but I love the form factor.

Quite literally the last thing I want to do after work is sit at my desk and the with Deck I don’t have to. It’s not as much of a commitment and it’s easier to pick up for ten minutes and then put down.

Graphics? Doesn’t matter to me, it’s good enough and being able to use it in the hammock in my backyard is more important. Most of what I play on it is ps2/1 games anyway and it runs them perfectly.

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#77

Post by willis936 »

manmal wrote: post #49
willis936 wrote: post #45

Does anyone use their deck as a steam link box? I've had mixed success with apple tv (including newest model) when feeding a 4K TV (no 120 Hz support, decoding chokes on resolutions above 1440p regardless of encoded bitrate). I have a 13700k+3070, so it's not for want of encoding horsepower. The most common use case of the deck is similar to mine of the link: couch gaming. It might be nice to free up the living room…

Have you looked into Moonlight? Nvidia is sunsetting GeForce Experience which would be a convenient streaming server, but Sunshine seems to be almost on par now, latency wise. So you‘d run Sunshine on your host machine, and Moonlight on the Steam Deck. I’ve seen people report a minimal input lag of just 1 frame @ 4k60 (with most recent Sunshine versions, there was a big leap recently) but haven’t tried it myself yet.…

That login ability is nice. I usually have to use a second remote channel.

Does Moonlight handle controllers and surround sound well?

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#78

Post by Dalewyn »

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…

>but can theoretically push 4k@120hz for the cost of a graphics card.

While a desktop computer can't get anywhere near that price range for similar performance (because, other than Intel ARC, video card prices are still ridiculous across the board...), the cost of a decently performant desktop computer actually isn't as high as most would think if you just use low- to mid-tier hardware instead of going for the high-end stuff.

Anyway, as far as the question of market share space: It's still the same players, with the small addition of Valve potentially carving a niche for itself. Sony hasn't delved into mobile since the PS Vita, and Microsoft has flat out never bothered with mobile gaming. As for Nintendo, they'll do Nintendo things as they always do.

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#79

Post by mahmoudhossam »

cubefox wrote: post #75

> My wild guess is that there’s between 1 and 2 million units already shipped out there. While there was a lot of initial hype around the Steam Deck, it almost sounded as if it emerged as a serious Switch competitor. Unfortunately that didn't happen. Its sales are around an order of magnitude below the Switch, which sold 13.12 million units in its first year (and 122.5 million total). So despite its modest success, t…

Most of that year has been catching up to the orders they already got. My bet is that they can't make it at a big enough scale to sell directly to stores.

This is Valve's first success at this whole console thing after all.

Re: Steam Deck: First Anniversary

#80

Post by dadoomer »

trabant00 wrote: post #54

I would love to hear from Deck owners that have migrated from or also have a 4k capable gaming PC tower. I know the difference in specs and performance and I'm not expecting this to compete. But I'm interested in the experience, how enjoyable it is to play on this compared to the PC. Do you play on a monitor or TV? Do you use the controls on the Deck or attach keyboard or mouse? Is the dock worth it? Things like this…

I have not felt like getting the Dock, since the experience has been great out of the box. Maybe if I didn't own a PS5 I'd get the Dock for couch gaming. But some 3D games might suffer in 1080p output.

The controls are obviously perfect for games that support gamepads (which is a surprisingly substantial fraction), but even some keyboard and mouse-games can be played, specially those that do not require super fast reaction times and a million keybindings.

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