Steam Deck: First Anniversary
boilingsteam.com
boilingsteam.com
When I would travel I carry a work laptop and a personal laptop and... Then lugging around another device, no thanks... Then that changed with the steam deck, my daughter mentioned it and I was like hell I have money to waste so I bought it. For the first few months I didn't do much with it. Kind of shrugged and continued to use my laptop... but one day I kicked it in to desktop mode to load some mods for a game. It dawned on me, I don't need a personal laptop anymore.
Now when I travel I carry my work laptop, my portable keyboard and monitor (which I always did anyway) and the steam deck with a dock. This perfect,less weight over all smaller form factor etc... Using the deck with the external monitor and keyboard let's me do everything I needed my personal laptop for, plus portable gaming. It goes everywhere with me now.
Could it be better, absolutely, but for the price I'm very happy with it. That's really how I evaluate things price for value. This is way more powerful than a similar priced laptop and more flexible.
and if so, how big is your luggage? :)
Sorry for the tall ask. But I’ve been thinking about maybe buying a Steam Deck for a while. So these kinds of pictures would be most helpful.
I often carry my work laptop and my personal laptop with me. Tried an iPad Pro for a little while for personal things but decided the iPad Pro was not worth it for me at the time so I returned it. Might also try using an iPad Pro again in the future.
https://www.lg.com/uk/laptops/lg-16mq70
Although it's usb c only I found this guy:
Which hooks to the steamdeck-docks hdmi and usb (for power). The screen is just a big iPad in terms of size. The dock is like a very lightweight dongle and then whatever you go for for protection of the steam deck. I have a pretty standard rucksack bag that I can happily cram all of this (along with a 13inch mbp) nuphy air and wireless mouse with. It's the best for work trips because the screen does both work mode and then serious gaming mode.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07LGRK3J5?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_...
And a generic case
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08MXGHP6K?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_...
It looks like it's not available now but there's several Chinese brands that look like they sell the same thing. I was worried about it at first but I figure with Amazon prime coverage and credit card protection, if it lasted through those coverages of 90 days it will last for a few years if properly cared for.
I don't have any pictures of it setup. I didn't get the official dock for the deck.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0BKHBM1N9?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_...
When setup the dock tucks neatly behind the monitor so it looks like just a monitor keyboard thing.
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 unplugged if I want to use my laptop for personnal suff.
USB has some latency to it that I'm sure feels interesting, though
If I do benchmarks, yes it will be slower. Do I notice it when working? Or does it slows my actual work? No.
I also don't understand how he would work on his lap/when no desk is available though.
What about the GameBoy (my first and last handheld console)? From what I remember, Laptops back then were not really a thing.
Same for me, I did never realize before that I wanted to play Grindstone while laying on the couch just being in the company of my SO, semi-watching the same TV show as she is, instead of being in another room.
We actually have two, one for me and one for my son (though he has a gaming laptop and tends to use that).
I've docked the deck and played games just fine on it as well, no regrets here, I love the thing.
Linux-based gaming became a focus for the company for at least the past ten years. Steam Deck is the culmination of a focused, persistent strategy--the type most highly leveraged, public companies with unreasonable growth requirements are completely incapable of facilitating.
They have my loyalty as a consumer because they've treated me right. But let's not pretend that their success is tied to their culture or that the culture would work elsewhere. I reckon you could do anything and be successful if you had Steam's revenue rolling in.
I disagree completely. Most people in a company like that would completely take advantage of the monopoly they have and make everything miserable as hell for the end user.
I'm hard pressed to think of anything else over the past 20 years that hasn't sold out or been turned to utter trash in one way or another. Steam continues to be absolutely top notch. They have essentially lowered the price of all PC games over the years and added great features like family sharing etc. It just works. It's not some convoluted garbage interface that they try to keep updating every year to stay up with the pace of "modern design". They don't bombard you with crap when you aren't using steam, you don't get random pop ups (like Epic games...) and all that.
Anyway- I get what you are saying. Obviously they have some massive revenue to work with.. but I don't think it's as easy as you think to stay successful in the way they have to the end user.
Valve's 30% is well earned, not forced. There's nothing forcing me to buy the next game I buy from Valve, other than that I want to. And they have made me want to by offering an incredible product.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-gam...
Eh, as a developer I don't feel like I have a choice. There's a kind of vicious cycle where as a consumer it's honestly kind of difficult to not engage with Steam at all because a lot of games only release on Steam (looking at you, Vampire Survivors, which had an itch.io version during early access and then went Steam exclusive once it came out).
Part of the reason for that is that Valve offers a lot of services that you can't use outside of Steam -- you can't just pay for them as a developer, they're exclusive to the Steam version of the game. As a result, a lot of games get kind of locked into the platform or can't afford to offer full compatibility off of Steam. And the end result of that is that a lot of consumers only buy games from Steam. There are some exceptions, but it is remarkably difficult to get consumers to care about a game that's not on Steam, and a lot of the community management then gets centered on Steam.
You go off of Steam and you're losing access to Steam Input, you're losing access to mod management -- these are services that could be debundled from Steam, but aren't. Even on the Steam Deck itself, shader caches mean that games you buy from Steam literally perform better than games you buy specifically from a developer because distributing shader caches outside of Steam would be copyright infringement. To their credit, Valve is trying to improve performance in that area, but I have seen multiple people on the Steam Deck subreddit talk about how they've switched over to 100% Steam games specifically because of shader caches.
And if you're a developer, that kind of becomes a chicken and an egg problem. You're not going to be able to convince those people to buy from you off of Steam now. So you release on Steam, and then it becomes harder for users to avoid Steam because you're not keeping an itch.io version up to date or it's missing features from the Steam version. So then those users decide they'll only buy from Steam. And it goes round and round.
Things are a little complicated, I generally like Valve as a company. But there's no denying that they have a lot of power over the gaming market, and regardless of their intentions, that power tends to be self-reinforcing. Not all of that is Valve's fault necessarily (it's not Valve's fault that the community-run SteamGridDB only allows API usage with a Steam account, making it useless for fetching artwork outside of Steam). But regardless of who's fault it is, the more that communities centralize around services the harder it is to build alternatives to them.
Consider something like Steam Input; good luck launching an alternative that's missing the thousands of user-submitted input configurations that are locked into Steam. You import a game from a 3rd-party storefront? Unless you're very particular about naming, you no longer have community input configs. That kind of stuff tends to create a lock-in effect where consumers feel like they can't buy games outside of Steam without sacrificing features, and so developers basically have to release there.
• Hardware is good enough and that's perfectly fine • It's repairable and can be easily opened • Software is open which is increasingly rare there days • Ability to play on TV, on couch (with headphones) and on monitor with keyboard/mouse is awesome • Being able to play old games is great (I finally finished Assasin's Creed 2) • It's still a PC where I can switch to Linux Desktop and tinker with stuff • Battery life isn't the best but I almost always have power source near me • Valve did awesome job with handling controls in games with Community layouts etc • I finally found sense in USB-C where I switch between Deck and Macbook with a single cable • Hacker community is vibrant • It's an emulation heaven :)
Is there room for everyone next gen? Each of Valve, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have the expertise to field a machine serving one or both philosophies. But I don't think the customer base is there to support so many consoles. Which configurations will we see?
Is the next Switch as popular when the indie games can release on the much more open Steam Deck instead? Will Microsoft choose to compete with Sony, or with Valve? They've always been after Sony's market, but Steam Deck puts them on defense.
Steam Deck numbers are nothing compared to what these 3 are selling, if i remember correctly, it was 1 million reservations total for a whole year, that sounds like a flop to my book when you compare with the 3 existing players
I think next gen we'll see Sony getting back into the handheld market, Nintendo coming up with a second version, and Microsoft coming up with a cloud stick
Microsoft doubling down on cloud gaming might kill their Xbox brand, it's too early for that, they'll miss the handheld market just like they missed the smartphone era
No, I think they just do an ordinary PS6 and nothing else. They could, theoretically, make the PS6 itself a hybrid like the Switch, but that would be a really bad strategy, since they'd give up their stationary dominance to Microsoft just to compete with a market where Nintendo is dominant.
A handheld will be the catalyzer for cloud gaming market, just like what smartphones did to landline telephones
I can see a PS6 with a handheld as companion, it perfectly make sense, if they don't then that'd be a missed opportunity
It definitely is better than Xbox X/S, Microsoft missed a huge opportunity there, they have to manufacture 2 different SKU (sony will soon have just one with their modular design)
I can't be the only one to sense this signal?
If they don't do a handheld then that could only mean they got pressured to not do it, by whom? shareholders? insiders? 3rd-party?
The PSVita story is unfortunate, but lot of solid reasons why it didn't do as good as they'd have hoped, it sold ~ same as the WiiU and yet Nintendo doubled down and were successful with the Switch, it could have been PSVita2 or PSP2 and Sony would have found similar success, even thought Switch took some time before going mainstream, that's another evidence that the market is demanding it, you can see it with the boom of the handheld retro consoles that all are running android/linux
Successful games like CoD Mobile and Genshin Impact, as well as the countless of games getting ported to the Switch and Smartphones is a better evidence than my comment, smartphone users are demanding premium games, and that played a big role in the Switch success
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 for sony’s strategy - and there i agree with you. Two consoles with two different graphical capabilities could be a disaster. Or it could not? I don’t know.
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.
My take is that Valve is using the early adopter crowd to help iron out the kinks (of which there were many at launch) and will then push harder later. Whether later means later in this console's lifetime, or in a few years with a new iteration I'm not sure.
While I have a hard time imagining Sony making another play at the handheld market after two failures, maybe they’ll realize that if they actually market it well and don’t use weird non-standard hardware like the PSP’s did they’d stand a better chance.
I'm not convinced this is going to be a winning strategy. It clearly doesn't work for TV/Movies. I'm not kidding. The model of "grow as fast a possible" means low prices and lots of content. Once the bean counters show up, the prices go up and content development becomes a trickle. Look at Netflix. By that point, it is way easier to launch a product with preorders to pay off investment. Microsoft's key play will be that they own the console and can force game pass/etc but seemingly, gamers prefer the other platforms so they may run. If Valve builds a living room next-gen console from Steam OS, they may have the most well-liked platform for devs.
It would be a flop for a traditional console, but the Steam Deck isn't a console, it's a PC. The reason that consoles need massive sales is because consoles have a limited repertoire of games (at best, they might be backwards-compatible with the previous-generation console), so they need large sales to demonstrate an install base and convince developers to make games for the platform. But if you're compatible with PC software, you don't care about that. Valve doesn't need to entice anyone to make PC games; the install base for the Steam Deck is the entire PC market. And with the help of emulators, a PC has access to multiple orders of magnitude more games than any existing console.
So the metric for success for the Steam Deck isn't to compare it to a console, rather it's to compare it to other specific PC form factors (e.g. a specific model of laptop).
I don't think people use it as a PC, but more like as a portable media center, the Switch and the PSP do that as well (even the PSP had a web browser!)
So it's wrong to picture the Deck as the exception, even thought it can and is a supported use case
They sell it and market its gaming capabilities
https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck
You see games, not office apps, emails or social media apps, you don't have front facing camera so you can't use it for your meetings
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
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.
Then Sony and Xbox compete on exclusives but ultimately I think there’s room for everyone in the space regardless. Gaming is probably the most lucrative entertainment sector at this point, and mobile gaming hasn’t eaten console gaming yet. A generation or two more from the next one…harder to say.
The Switch's entry price is actually $200 for the Switch Lite. I think it's even had small discounts on occasion too.
Not countering what you wrote, just clarifying what that device is.
(personally, if they didn't deliberately cripple its ability to do TV out at all, I'd buy a lite instead of the regular Switch—I hate using joycons so we have like three pro controllers anyway, and the joycon dock points have proven a highly-breakable weak spot on my Switches so far, under actual use by kids)
I'm not sure people even really compare costs for videogames. If they did, they'd notice that everytime you buy a new Nintendo system, you have to re-purchase all of your old games if you want to run them on the new platform. You don't have the same problem with PC games.
I'm finding that even 10+ year old PC games are still enjoyable today. Maybe more so than originally because my own hardware has advanced and I can pump up the graphics quite a bit. My back catalog of games in Steam isn't something you get from traditional console makers.
As for the price thing, I suspect it’s the big vs small purchase mentality. Same reason it’s easier to get someone to buy a 10 dollar monthly subscription than a 100 dollar flat out purchase. Most people compare instant costs and ongoing ones in different ways.
Personally though, agreed on the value of having a massive backlog of games to play on PC. Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s part of why PC revenue has caught up to consoles.
If we ignore that each is exclusive to the other's platform (i.e. Switch 1st party don't go to Deck, many huge games Deck can play Switch never gets), and just compare the average cost with sales of those "exclusive" games, you high quality games on Switch (Nintendo 1st party) cost way more than you high quality games on Deck (most AAA games Switch doesn't get).
ahem, I hear that Switch emulation works quite well on the Deck.
The point isn’t to take over the console market but to defend the PC gaming market from console exclusivity and Steam itself from e.g. Microsoft Store
I don’t know if I’m in the minority or not, but I have never owned a gaming PC, and have not had a console since I was a teenager with an Xbox 360. I’m now 30, and I bought the Steam Deck precisely because of its portability.
That was initially the case for SteamOS/Steam Machines, but the MS Store has been a _resounding_ failure in the gaming market. It's use is largely limited to PC Game Pass subscribers, who use it as the download backend for the Xbox app (which is the primary interface for installing/managing games).
If anything, it's a way for Valve to hedge against streaming platforms.
I guess the target audience is those previously gamers with an extensive collection of games to play "someday" who now have kids that would like something to game on. The deck fills this market very nicely and Switch has already paved the initial road.
Countless 1000+ hour per year players aren’t getting caught up in competitive-tier multiplayer content with high performance requirements and yet qualify as something besides “casual wannabe” gamers. The Steam Deck is a nice way to take their serious hobby down the hall or on vacation.
There are people who want to play games, but cannot or do not want to spare the expense for a gaming rig. Rising component prices have expanded this category. There is very little overlap between competitive gamers and people wanting to be gamers, some of whom are caught by rising component prices. Again, nothing surprising here.
Steam Deck seems to be designed mostly for this market: people who want to play games, have a leaning towards PC games (possibly due to preexisting Steam library), but have no requirement for mouse and keyboard form factor. Steam deck captures the market of people who "would start playing games if cost of the rig was $(cost-of-steam-deck)" AND the market of people "would play PC games if the rig was more portable".
I'm pretty sure that if some compatibility layer, allowing to use Steam libraries on xbox/PhlashSpeed and Switch, existed the Deck would be dead on arrival.
And if my gramma had wheels she would be a bicycle.
The hole point of the Steamdeck is that existing consoles are locked down and would never allow running your existing steam library.
I'm not sure that it's close enough for truly competitive play, but look into flick stick and gyro mouse. For first person games it's good enough that I've been able to hop online in a couple of older first person shooters without aim assist and get roughly (or at least close to) the same performance I would get from a mouse today. It's certainly good enough for the vast majority of single-player campaigns to the point where you wouldn't be missing much if anything by not using a mouse.
Gryo mouse isn't quite as good, it's fine for menus and point-and-click games, but falls down a bit more for stuff like RTS games. I've been trying to figure out control schemes to make it perform better for faster movements without losing precision. It's comfortable enough to use as a general mouse, but I don't think I could use it competitively in an RTS (although I do think I could probably get through a single-player campaign).
I'm mildly hopeful that those control schemes will get better in the future, but even today as someone who pretty much only ever played PC games with a mouse, it's switched me from thinking of the Steam Deck as a primarily 2D/3D/platformer device where I could maybe pick up an FPS if it had really good aim assist, into a device where I wouldn't hesitate to load up pretty much any FPS on it without aim assist. I'm not getting 100% of the performance I used to get with a mouse in older high-precision aiming games like Sauerbraten, but I'm not sure how much of that is that I'm generally out of practice using a sniper rifle and that I haven't put hundreds of hours into practicing with gyro controls. I am still getting kills in those games.
Gyro controls have a couple of issues to work out, mainly stability when you're trying to hold the cursor still, but there's potential there to get (very close to) mouse-like precision for the majority of players who aren't investing hundreds of hours into getting competitive -- especially if games start to take advantage of them natively instead of forcing players to hack them together with mouse emulation.
Since January GeForce now supports 4k@120 and the hardware required to render that is probably going to be much less than the next gen kind of switch will have. I would not be surprised to see tv sticks + controller given away for basically free. Like stadia but properly this time.
It won’t be for everyone and I have no idea how quick they can scale this but it’s nonetheless an interesting development.
Currently there’s a bit of a hybrid thing going on with ideas that combine cloud gaming with Xbox or PlayStation but here the consumer still has to pay for more hardware than necessary for streaming only
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 regular console mode.
I really can't say enough good things about it, but one thing I'm wary of is the DRM stuff Steam uses. Never had a problem with it, but my Switch doesn't need to phone home to believe I own the games I've bought, and it worries me that even the "offline mode" needs to check-in every three weeks :/
However once your Switch _can_ connect to the internet Nintendo can just erase all your games.
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).
What are your top 10 games that you have caught up on so far? (please exclude any recent blockbusters from this list)
The only ones that remained, I bought, and were actually _good_: Uncharted, Resident Evil 2 (Remake), South Park The Stick of Truth.
Ones I bought still thinking they should be good, and was disappointed: Horizon Zero Dawn, Borderlands 3, Brutal Legend, Yakuza 0, Metal Gear Rising. They're not bad games, just not worth my very limited time. I probably would have loved them when I was younger though.
Valve provides a very simple (and easy to bypass) DRM which many games on steam use, this is likely what you're referring to.
Other games use third party DRM such as Denuvo which is hard to bypass and generally hated (can cause performance issues). These games have warnings on the store page.
Ultimately Steam had (has?) a monopoly on the PC distribution market and didn't really take advantage of it to do anything anti-consumer (instead this period introduced a number of prosumer changes like refunds) so while it is a company it's one I trust more than most.
Its also pretty good as a mini PC when paired with a dock.
That said it's still a PC and you will occasionally run into little foibles. Docking is not as smooth as a Switch, at least with my monitor the resolution isn't quite right when plugging in and I have to quit to get it to use the whole thing. Sometimes there will be minor issues even in verified games like them not actually using the correct controller layout or occasionally borked sound on resume for whatever reason. But still, it's great. Favorite PC by a mile even if my desktop will curb stomp it visually.
Minor issues is that it could use a usb a port. One of the things I tried was reinstalling the os from a usb stick for my initial battery issue..
The screen is great. The software sometime asked me how the game experience was as its running under wine/proton. There is https://www.protondb.com/ for compatability checks but steam now lists games that “run great on the deck” which means new ones will probably test on it. There is a plug-in I was told about that integrates those scores into the steam software.
The screen is great except for board games which benefit from screen size, but it’s a portable.
Overall a great device, especially if you have a stash of steam games you got and been meaning to play..
the problem with games is only windows compatibility. nothing else matters. valve has been attacking that problem head on with proton and financing wine development. GUI or data issues, or user preferences don't matter. Steam is the same on both, the games are the same too, and more and more of them run on proton/linux. Steam users can switch from windows to linux without noticing any difference whatsoever. desktop users can't.
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.
It won't make your screen look like OLED but it definitely helps bring out the colours.
I do hope someone comes up with an OLED replacement screen for it, hopefully with thinner bezels (like the Switch did between the original and the OLED) but I find the OEM one pretty adequate.
I still have hope for Linux gaming because the Steam Deck clearly has appeal that goes beyond the extreme niche that was Linux gamers prior to the Steam Deck's release.
Game updates are what I have read about breaking compatibility with Proton. In this case AFAICT Valve's only option is to try to fix it with a Proton patch. I don't think Valve's standard distribution agreement gives them the right to distribute whatever old version of a publisher's game Valve feels like. Most games I've seen, Steam enforces automatic updates to the latest version. Pinning a previous version is such a rare use case, it is confusingly under the "Betas" tab of the game properties when it is even available to the user.
Even when Valve has the rights to arbitrarily pick an old version of the game to distribute, the only way to find out if an update is breaking is to test it, so if the developer doesn't test it, the players do. So either way, if Proton isn't a target platform, you have a higher risk of breaking bugs making it in front of players. I guess since serious bugs make it into release so frequently on supported platforms, this may not seem like an issue, but there is a very real psychological phenomenon where when software breaks on Windows, it is the software's fault, and when software breaks on Linux, it is Linux's fault.
holding games back because of proton bug is not acceptable (yet), although from the players side it would of course be nice to choose an older version if the new version fails to run.
there is a very real psychological phenomenon where when software breaks on Windows, it is the software's fault, and when software breaks on Linux, it is Linux's fault
of course, that is unfortunately going to remain a problem for some time to come.
If anyone knows of a historic archive of data for the Steam Hardware Survey, it would be interesting to see whether or not the Steam Deck has made a dent in the overall Windows percentage since last year (Windows is still sitting pretty at 96.02%, but that just means there's a lot of room to grow, eh? :P ).
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 TV and have a max res/max framerate solution on the deck with little power usage. My main concern is latency. I have scanned through all setting permutations and I can't get what feels like a sub 100 ms experience on an apple tv decoder even when the telemetry reports sub 25 ms end-to-end latency. Now that I think about it again maybe it's the TV not being in game mode.
One big upside of Sunshine is that you can log into your host user remotely. So you could wake up the host with WoL and do the rest on the Deck.
Does Moonlight handle controllers and surround sound well?
It's fine for most cases but not for motion controls.
The options are nice and it sounds great on paper, but Steam Link is a better solution right now.
What actually has worked far better for me is Xbox Game pass. It means I can easily give games a try without paying a lot of money upfront to buy them. Instead I can dip my toes in and see if a game takes my interest.
Just my 2 cents as someone that has gamed a lot in their childhood but largely stopped past their 20s.
Steam Deck is in an odd place since it works worse for low end indie games than a Nintendo Switch (it lacks the "it just works" experience) and it's worse for high end games than an expensive gaming PC (which admittedly not everyone can afford.)
I like the idea of Steam Deck and there are many games it can handle that the Nintendo Switch cannot, but when Nintendo finally updates their hardware this advantage will be reduced.
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.
This is Valve's first success at this whole console thing after all.
But honestly Valve didn't seem to break out of their main patterns for the Steam Deck: It still very much feels like very smart people worked on all the fun parts of solving a very hard problem and did great, but then kind of skimped the boring parts until the last minute.
So the end result is something that the tinkerer in me loves... but the product person in me doesn't see as ever having even had a sliver of a hope of becoming an actual platform.
I was hoping Steam was going to position the Deck as a full blown platform play. Yes some devs have thrown it breadcrumbs with graphics settings and control schemes, and sure Valve is committing working with developers. But what I was hoping for was something extremely polished that would entice other publishers.
Right now Steam Deck feels very much destined to be a quirky computer, not really its own platform. Handheld PCs in general are kind of having a renaissance moment, but no one has made something so compelling that publishers are banging on the doors to get in, and Valve was the only company I could have seen do it.
I think a large part of that is ironing out the kinks that come with launching a new product, especially in a space where you have little experience.
The Steam Deck launched with some software quirks, that would not have gone over that well with the general public, but by focusing on PC gamers who are used to a little more jank, they can launch to a more forgiving audience while improving the experience.
Selling in stores comes at a price (retail will easily charge you 20 to 30% for the privilege) and my guess is that Valve has fairly limited production runs anyway which makes the proposition unattractive.
I don't understand how you can call a product that is one magnitude off it a niche product. Valve probably didn't dream of being this close.
The only way one could improve from that would be instant swap between different games, and that's just technologically impossible at this time.
Arch Linux on a cute handheld you can play games on? Valve made the year of the Linux 'Desktop' happen.
TEXT!
Text designed for giant flat screen TVs or even just modern monitors cannot just shrink down to that small screen. I do not have perfect eyesight. It is too often unreadable.
Do something about the text and the Deck will be as close to perfection as I could hope.
You can also press the STEAM + LB buttons to open a magnifier for reading small text.
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.
Do games just work like a console? Or do I have to mess around like on a PC?
I’m old, and don’t have time to game. I don’t want to spend 20 minutes of the first hour in a settings menu.
Get a console (PS5, Switch, Xbox), they cater to alleviating exactly that!
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 :)
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.
Ocasionally you get a glimpse of the underlying PC-nature of the thing. Once I had to choose one of the community-provided control schemes for a mouse-heavy tabletop game (so even then, pretty straightforward).
For the 2nd tier (I think they called it "supported"), the defaults may not expose everything (e.g. in-game text chat kinda implies keyboard), but what is exposed tends to be good. If your eyesight is less than stellar, the built-in screen can be tiny for "PC-style" game text, but plugging into a monitor fixes that.
And then there's community control schemes, on top of that. E.g. the default bindings generally don't use the back buttons, and community bindings can be more comfortable and productive for a non-novice player.
Steam makes it clear what works well with the Steam Deck. Not everything does for various reasons, but if you stay with what works well, my experience is you'll be fine.
while rural backwater places like Norway are left out it seems
But after spending some time in the last week in the desktop mode, the thing that is striking me is that the steam deck is a serious alternative to the raspberry pi insofar as using it for a tinkering, first computer kind of way. A few years ago I bought my son a rpi and after getting it, a case, keyboard, mouse, sd card, usb hub, etc, plus needing a monitor, it ends up being a few hundred dollars. And at the end of that you still cant really play any games on it. You would still need accessories, but they technically wouldnt be _required_ for the steamdeck. I bet I could use it for a lot of programming without any issue.
It was an awesome device for its time, and ahead of its time, but hindered by poor marketing, proprietary hardware (those memory cards that nobody had), lack of direction (the "2nd generation" and "PS TV" were actually a step backwards!) and probably internal corporate strife.
It had powerful enough hardware, with a vibrant screen, wide array of controls, solid build quality, an OS that was fast and smooth and capable with some innovate UI, and it already had a wide library of existing games through the PSP compatibility.
Few people talk about the rear touchpad but I thought it was genius! Even in titles where it had no effect on the gameplay, like the beautiful Knytt Underground, where the trees in the background would sway as your fingers slid behind the screen, it added a nice new layer of interactivity and immersion.
Such a shame when products like this with clearly a lot of potential and passion in them get left behind, due to the decisions of a few people who didn't really understand them.
I have taken on trips and it works well. Battery life isn't great but it's good enough for a few hours of non-intense games (Slay the Spire is perfect for this).
I have had ocassional issues with external controllers. Adding in more than one sometimes fails in unpredictable ways. That is the only issue I've noticed.
The Steam Deck feels like what it used to be: joyful and fun, a total lack of cynicism.
I could lay in my bed and play switch games for hours without issue, but with the deck, I need to introduce some resting device to not lose feeling in my hands.
Also, its awkward for me compared to any other contoller in terms of trigger reach.
Other than that, I still enjoy using it quite a bit.
Interesting. I never found the Switch good for that. I don't find the Deck good for that either. I'm not really complaining though, it's just a generally uncomfortable position for almost anything except sleeping. :D
> Also, its awkward for me compared to any other contoller in terms of trigger reach.
I find the triggers pretty good. I need to twist my hands a little to press the bumpers though. Otherwise I find the ergonomics quite good!
I would like to acquire some AR glasses too, so I can just use the glasses while traveling, but I'm not sure what's the quality for those yet, they are quite expensive.
• The Deck's screen is not OLED, which is pretty dumb in 2023, especially when they have a "nano-texture" option for glare reduction; why not also provide an OLED option??
• By default it's Linux, and runs Windows games via Proton, resulting in some weird emulation bugs (like physics lag even when everything else seems to be running correctly).
• If you install Windows, apparently Microsoft doesn't allow you to get updates (on W11) because of the Deck's lack of a "TPM".
• There is no higher performance profile for docked mode, and apparently a dock doesn't come in the box.
• The haptics aren't so hot.
• Valve is almost as infamous as Google for abandoning their hardware and projects. Until there's a Deck 2 with substantial upgrades, it's hard to foster long-term confidence.
It DOES seem pretty attractive as a one-stop hub for retro emulation, but it's far from being the "ultimate gaming platform". For anyone who really wants portable "PC" gaming, a laptop would be a much better choice. Heck even an M2 MacBook + Windows VM would do.
♥ Wishlist for a Deck 2:
• Fix all the above criticisms. Can leave Windows out if Proton becomes better.
• Some Deck-exclusive features and API so that it can be an independent platform in its own right, instead of just a mobile PC. Maybe things like the advanced haptics of the PS5 controller.
--
I really wish Sony would reenter the handhelds market. The Vita was and still is an amazing device, and they could make an ever better one with the lessons learned from the Vita's failure and the success of the Switch/Deck, combined with new tricks like the awesome haptics of the DualSense/PSVR2.
I bought a steam deck instead and I’ve been playing basically all I would’ve been playing on the PS5 I wanted to get, plus it’s a nice emulation machine and I’m also catching up on my PC backlog.
Compatibility is great in my experience, sleep mode is incredibly convenient, and the only real complaint I have is battery life is basically awful for modern games. You’ll be recharging after any modest length session.
One of the most surprising benefits of getting a real PS5 has been the DualSense haptics. It's more than just a gimmick and makes a real difference in games that utilize it well: Demon's Souls, Ghost of Tsushima, Doom Eternal, No Man's Sky...
Combat feels so solid, with every hit and clang of a sword ringing in your hand (literally, with the audio from the controller) and guns having distinct effects via the trigger resistance.
After you've tried that, playing non-DualSense games feels so dead in the hand. There's almost a physical discomfort from the lack of that extra dimension of sensation and interactivity.
Microsoft has also increased the price of their consoles in some territories. Meta also increased the price of the Quest 2.
I haven't run into issues like wonky physics and I pretty regularly play "unsupported" games. You can also use literally any USB C hub (~$20) and there's several docks to choose from for like $50. Admittedly the docking stuff needs more work but PC games were not really designed to have the monitor/controller unplugged mid-game so the fact it works at all is amazing.
I think using Linux is what allows stuff like sleep to work better. The Windows handhelds seem to have issues with that.
You can dock it with any hub that supports 45W usb c power and hdmi. There are lot of docks and valid cables online - it's really not that difficult to get it.
So far Valve's support has been great and I'm not sure I agree that their infamous for abandoning hardware. The steam link has been merged into as a software project and steam controller still receives support though is no longer in production.
In what way?
The Steam Machines didn't really take off, but they didn't sell any hardware for that - and they kept supporting the whole software side of things and progressing SteamOS, Proton, etc ever since - making the Steam Deck itself possible.
Steam controller and Steam link are still alive, get support and new functionality beyond the discontinuation of the hardware. The stuff they spawned, SteamInput and the Steam Link app, all still there and not abandoned.
Their VR stuff still gets updates frequently - the Vive, the Index, all still supported.
If anything, Valve are a good example of how to support your stuff long term even when the hardware hasn't sold as well as you'd like. This is really a bizarre view to me and the complete opposite of my experience as someone who owns at least something from every 'category' of hardware product Valve released. None of them feel abandoned whatsoever.
They've discontinued Steam Controller quite a long time ago, but it is perfectly supported with the new Deck/BigPicture UI.
The docked mode doesn't come with a higher performance profile because you're already pretty much at the power/thermal limits of the device, and AC power won't address those. And the dock not being part of the box is a bit of a non-issue where a 15$ USB-C PD/HDMI hub allows you to plug it into a big screen and use it as a controller.
Worth noting:
Between the crazy electricity prices in EU (my PC when the 3080 is active uses over half a kilowatt, that's easily 400 EUR/year worth of electricity) and the crazy convenience of instant suspend/resume and being able to play on the go, I find myself using the deck more and more often compared to the PC.
--------Editing since you added a couple items to your post:
> Some Deck-exclusive features and API so that it can be an independent platform in its own right, instead of just a mobile PC. Maybe things like the advanced haptics of the PS5 controller.
Absolutely not! That's the complete opposite of the deck's philosophy.... it's awesome BECAUSE it's "just a mobile PC", and exclusivity deals are absolutely poisonous. It's already an "independent platform" - it's called Steam and millions of people love it to bits.
I have installed Win 11 on my Deck because Easy Anti-Cheat does not work with Proton yet and have no issues with updates. The latest firmware (BIOS) seems to work fine for Win 11 requirements and I receive updates for Windows as well as new drivers from Windows Update.
False for almost a year, a fTPM was added in a system update in March 2022. It's even a note in Valve's Windows drivers page.
> Heck even an M2 MacBook + Windows VM would do.
I seriously doubt it, you have questionable GPU acceleration + 2 levels of binary translation + 3 GPU translation layers in the way. (I know VMware's DX virtualization is good but I have no experience with Parallel's) It's also at least 3x the price for meh gaming (on WOWARM64 on VM on DirectX on Parallels on Metal) performance.
> Valve is almost as infamous as Google for abandoning their hardware and projects.
Steam Link as an app is still fully supported and my Steam Link box not only works but gets updates, still.
> Some Deck-exclusive features and API so that it can be an independent platform in its own right, instead of just a mobile PC.
That's kind of the charm of it, though. It's meant to be a "play your existing games" type thing. Making more vendor-exclusive garbage won't drive adoption. The mouseaim-like trackpad, analogue triggers and haptics are useful exclusive features already, and they can be implemented by a user instead of relying on the dev.
> The Deck's screen is not OLED, which is pretty dumb up here in 2023, especially when they have a "nano-texture" option for glare reduction; why not also provide an OLED option??
I wish mine was OLED too but I was thankful it wasn't when I had to keep it on for hours to download games. I could look around for a screen-off tweak but I didn't have to worry about pixel burn-in.
Maybe someday a OLED screen mod will happen, the entire thing is super repairable and there's already hall effect joysticks available.
Is this a real concern? I have a 55" 1st gen LG OLED and haven't had any issues. The tv is now 7ish years old and still delivers an amazing picture.
I know I'm overly paranoid about it, though. But also: OLED TVs don't have much persistent HUD/chromes compared to a PC taskbar, an FPS counter/overlay at the top corner, etc. It might also be a case of "burn-in isn't a concern if the panel is high quality enough", e.g.: iPhone OLED panels compared to $200 Android OLED phones.
This is a good point too. The UI does hide itself and persistent elements (screen saver like) migrate/bounce around the screen.
Burn was a huge concern when these TVs were released. I assumed the threat was significantly less (across the class of screen) than originally thought.
Then again the Switch OLED exists; but it uses a very specific 720p OLED panel by Samsung so maybe it's made to withstand all those problems. (Maybe someone can "mod" it into a Steam Deck?)
> I seriously doubt it...
And you're right to do so. I've been a pretty hard-core gamer for 30 years. I also ran Linux on the desktop for almost 20. I've tried every version of Wine and Crossover and Cedega and PopOS to play games. Let's put it this way: I never got rid of my Windows partition.
Since buying a Mac, I've tried Parallels, bought an external GPU, and bought 2 MBP's with the highest-end graphics I could get. Let's put it this way: I sold the external GPU, and bought a Playstation. I've wasted a LOT of money on these experiments. TL;DR: Can confirm gaming on a Mac sucks.
(I have a couple of games on the Mac, like Civ 5 and Gloomhaven. The first runs OK, but the second I have to detune to almost the minimums, despite having a "Vega 20" GPU. Bite me, Apple.)
Same. Grew up on the Commodore 64 (long after its sun had set; it's just what my folks allowed me to mess around on as a kid)
> TL;DR: Can confirm gaming on a Mac sucks.
Nahh.
I jumped ship from Windows around 12 years ago and never looked back. Sure I missed out on some stubborn AAA titles, but I've played a lot of great games on the Mac just as well, and between native ports, CrossOver/VMs, and my Vita/3DS/Switch and now the PS5, I've never once thought about booting into Windows.
VMs I can forgive but now, between picking your poison of WOWARM64 vs Rosetta QEMU, I'm not sure it's as stable anymore.
Windows is a distraction and lots of us have spent years decoupling PC gaming from Microsoft. That said I do think first-class Windows support would be a boon for the Deck. Not sure how decent the user experience is on Windows right now.
Exclusives are a foreign concept on PC. We do not need exclusives on Steam Deck, that is a console marketshare corralling strategy. PC has been getting ports of Sony titles lately. PC players win when there are _less_ exclusives, not more.
In my mind Steam already is an independent platform, so the Deck benefits from that by extension. Steam has an API called Steamworks. Again exclusivity is not needed here, you can add non-Steam games to the Steam client and still benefit from some of the platform's features w/o using the API.
As far as Valve abandoning products... they kinda do the opposite of that but I understand the sentiment. I never had a Steam Machine and doubt they're still in support, but Steam Link works great and the Steam Controller still gets firmware updates. Software, too - Source engine games see regular maintenance. Backwards compatibility is taken seriously, platform-wide.
Even the Steam Machine could easily be reformatted with whatever OS, and as soon as the Steam client is installed, it instantly becomes a first-class citizen again.
It's hard to truly abandon products that run atop an open platform.
This is a loser mentality for when your platform is unwilling to fund exclusives. Exclusives are a proven strategy for driving market share for any platform. Having Steam Deck exclusive games would cause more people to go out and buy one. Some people will be content with just using their PC or Steam Link and never have a reason to get a Steam Deck. Why experience 720p with weird controls and a limited battery life if you don't have to? 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-powered tablet-slab devices.
I don't own a Deck but I've been gaming on Linux using Proton for quite a while now and I have yet to encounter an actual issue with WINEs platform implementation. So far, I'm very impressed with the stability and performance it provides.
- Lack of dependency to windows and dumb windows11 requirements is specifically what makes Steam Deck “ultimate” (or maybe some less absolute term); some stuff has negative impacts via Proton, some stuff runs better via Proton than Windows
- There is no higher performance mode for docked because that would be an arbitrary limit to handheld that valve does not impose.
- fancier haptics would be nice to have, but they're not really what could break the steam deck as a champion product
- as said elsewhere valve didn't “abandon” products in any similar sense to what Google has been doing; and is actively building on prior products
- deck-exclusivity would literally break trust in the mostly open platform that valve is pushing.
You're mostly talking about hype aspects that really miss on what makes the steam deck stand strong. You'd like it to be more like existing consoles, but it is strong precisely because it is not like existing consoles.
OLED is very power hungry and gets hot - the Steam Deck is already battery life and thermal constrained without it. Like the Switch, they would need to make the controls further from the screen, making it even bulkier.
I would HAPPILY spend money on a more premium version that had a better screen and hopefully a bit more RAM.
All that said, it is ridiculously impressive.
Edit: Kingdom come was a very different experience from PC.
It's not perfect. Maybe the battery could last a bit longer. Maybe it could be a bit more powerful. But who cares? It's a blast.
I've put together a howto for wireguard: https://zaggy.nl/nextcloud/s/yGW9SinMCoWcNZN
It's no turnkey solution, you can probably find an easier howto for popular VPN services and wireguard.
Personally I've been using the jellyfin client on my steam deck, which works well, add the dock and you have a home media machine.
Boy I was wrong, I've used it in bed, on planes, couch, and over lunch. Heck, I even convinced my girlfriend to buy one so she could play games with me, and we not worry about Linux/windows compatibility between our computers, let alone this being her first gaming 'computer' to begin with.
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.
I find they excel at different things. I don't feel locked to a desk with the deck - I can grab it and go chill on the couch with my wife while she's watching a show.
I can also lug it around on vacation/trips as an alternative to my personal laptop, since it's a real linux machine. I've done work on it while travelling without any problems (although I did have an external mouse/keyboard for that).
Where it doesn't really excel is information dense games - I really enjoy rimworld/factorio/ck3/df style games, and honestly - I still prefer playing them on the large screens because it's just hard to deal with the much smaller screen real-estate on the deck. It's doable - but it's not as fun.
On the other hand - I hadn't touched a pokemon game since I was a kid, and I've played through several of them on the deck. They're a blast. Most games that are designed for a small screen/controller are really great on the deck.
Most rpg style games are pretty solid as well. Again - the only games I've really felt limited on were the ones where I just needed more screen real-estate, because the game was designed entirely around PC play on a large screen.
I have not personally bought the dock from valve since I already have a usb-c dock and it works fine with the deck. It handles being docked to a 4k monitor without any issues, although I don't game much in that setup - I mostly do productive/work tasks.
As for controls - I think the most revolutionary part of the deck is the control overlay they have going on. Being able to customize any button to almost any input is very, very cool. there's a LOT of power there, and I really haven't felt the need to plug in a mouse/keyboard for gaming (even for very mouse-centric games). The only exception is text input: it's still fairly slow and clunky with the default controls.
You won't be playing "Mavis Beacon teaches typing" on it. But it can handle pretty much every other game I've tried (some better than others, but none so bad I couldn't play at all).
My opinion: It's a complete steal for the price. I still probably do more gaming on the desktop, but not by all that much, and the fact that it's a true general purpose computer and not a hamstrung, locked-down, consumption only device is a huge breath of fresh air. Makes for a great little travel computer.
However, one niche that the Deck is definitely better than my desktop at is emulation: projects like EmuDeck have everything set up to be a (mostly) slick plug-and-play experience once you have it installed, with the result being that I can drop a rom into a folder on the SD card, refresh the game library, and it'll be ready to go, often even with community Steam Input configurations for that specific game. This is significantly better than on my desktop.
Away from home the Deck is far more comfortable to use than my laptop, even with an external mouse. I don't typically use my laptop for info-heavy games like on my desktop anyway due to the lack of extra monitors, but even for mouse-heavy games like Shadowrun the Deck is better.
I do still carry my laptop on trips and use it in bed, on the couch, etc because it's much easier to use for productivity and web browsing. I could carry an external monitor and keyboard for my Deck but why, when a laptop takes just as much space as those?
Can anyone speak to the ergonomics of the dpad and buttons for unforgiving games like some fighting games and platformers? I also suspect the size and weight might prove prohibitive for portability compared to a much smaller retro device?
Does anyone know of any other companies jumping into gaming handhelds as a result? does Microsoft see the Steam Deck and SteamOS as an existential threat of any kind? as they obviously dominate PC gaming currently.
That being said, if you are afraid of opening it up, maybe go for 256.
I wish to see the day when all stupid regional restrictions will be over. How idiotic is that.