The Steam Deck wasn’t born ready, but it’s ready now | Hacker News Reader

The Steam Deck wasn’t born ready, but it’s ready now

theverge.com

24 pointsCharlesW11 comments

I like the openness of the system, and it works both ways. You can install your own operating system in the Steam Deck, but you can also install SteamOS in your own device.

When it comes to the main concern that the article presents, battery, that is something that Nintendo has always prioritized over anything else. And it has paid off handsomely for them. The PlayStation Portable or the Sega Game Gear both suffered from poor battery and failed, even that their graphical quality was superior to Nintendo alternatives. Long term, this could also be the undoing of the Steam Deck. But battery tech has improved a lot in the past decade, so time will tell.

Omg the amount of batteries you needed for a Game Gear. This console was so useless as a portable.

Is that really apples-to-apples, though? I can play Pentiment or Olli Olli World on the Deck for hours, but Arkham Knight, RE2 or Hitman 3, much less. Nintendo can’t run those. Nintendo games don’t seem to optimise for graphics bells and whistles - which is fine - and the more graphically intense titles tend to run at 30fps. I’m not sure there’s any great mystery to the Switch battery life than a low TDP.

One aspect of the Steam Deck that hasn't gotten as much attention as I think it deserves is that it costs about half as much as any competing device with comparable specs. Why? Valve is subsidizing the cost like Sony and Microsoft have done in the past. Sell the console at cost or even at a loss, because you're going to make a 30% commission on every game sold. Gabe Newell said that the pricing is "painful", especially for the 64GB model. I suspect this won't be an issue in the long run, if others' Steam purchasing habits are similar to mine since getting a Steam Deck.

I don't think they're subsidizing the cost. Gabe never said explicitly they were selling at a loss, and even if they were in the beginning, given their sales they probably aren't anymore.

The cost of the specs itself is likely to be very minor. I'd be surprised if they're paying more than 120$ for the APU. I imagine a lot of the cost came from it being so different from anything else.

It does seem like an interesting device to me, i'm looking at some way of gaming in the future now Stadia has closed down and i'm bummed about that.

My experience with Geforce now hasn't been positive and i don't play enough for a subscription to be a good idea.

I'm not sure how much headheld matters to me though, but i'm certainly keeping an eye on it in the future, particularly as I'm a big fan of the Mac platform for a personal computer, which isn't great for gaming, I currently have a 2015 iMac with a m395x chip that can boot into Windows and it runs games quite nicely.

But i can see a future steam deck might end up being my gaming platform of choice when I have to jump over to the apple silicon Mac's, hopefully future versions will be a bit more powerful when docked.

It will also be intreasting what Nintendo comes up with in response and as an upgrade to the ageing Switch 2.

I’m in a gratifying relationship with my steam deck.

My games (mostly open source or legacy)

Remnants of the Precursors

7 Kingdoms

Warzone 2100 (steam version is broken, native works great through steam)

The Ur-Quan Masters (Awkward install through bottles)

Wizardry 6 (through steam)

Wizardry 7 (through steam)

There are many more playable old school open source games one can install through desktop (and play through steam app for full controller immersion.)

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