Compatibility with your existing Steam library out of the box will be a huge competitive advantage for Deckard over Meta Quest.
The other games on their list are too demanding for untethered play in the wattage one would have on a face mounted device. IMHO gorilla tag here is just a red herring.
IMHO this is just valve hedging the bet that ARM machines become more popular , and future steamdeck like devices might use ARM.
It would make sense that they test SteamVR running with proton and tethered to a headset rather than directly connected.
Imho, that’s the more straightforward explanation for this. The game is just a test bed for tethered play.
I wonder if with both Windows and Valve getting into ARM64, that will bring significant enough pressure on the market for ARM OEMs (and ARM itself) to start including a x86-transpilation mode similar to the one Apple has in their M-series of CPUs to increase the performance of Rosetta2.
The games that will ship this way will probably mostly be non-VR games that would never get ported otherwise. So you can play your Steam library full of non-VR x86 Windows PC games on a giant virtual screen in VR.
Gorilla tag also has an ARM version already for Quest. So why would valve not just start from there? The Quest line of products use effectively the only SoC that Valve would have access to anyway for the XR space.
Imho desktop and tethered playing are far more likely targets. I think Deckard might show up someday but it’s become a vessel for everyone’s hopes and dreams.
Macs would be a big juicy target, for example. If they can get emulation working well enough with proton on that, that's a huge market. Lots of people with disposable income on there that could be buying lots of games. And Apple is doing similar things as well so there might be some opportunity to tap into what they are doing.
I think Valve is reluctant to get any closer to Apple, or any large platform owner for that matter. They want to stay independent and own their own destiny. They even tried to get away from Microsoft with Steam Machines. It failed back then, but the Steam Deck is the continuation of that effort.
Please give us 30% of Steam. Tnx.
Now, post-ARM, it's beat by Linux even.
I don't have a PC for personal use, but I do have a lot of game consoles, an M1 MacBook Pro, and an M2 Mac mini. There are lots of games like Pizza Tower that look fun to me, do not have a Mac version, but do have a Switch version. So I wind up spending money on Switch games that would've gone to Steam if the publisher had bothered with a macOS release.
While I do have Steam installed on my M1 and M2, I rarely launch it because I've only bought eight games off Steam in two years because of this dynamic, meaning I haven't even participated in the survey myself. My Steam account is over 20 years old and has a healthy library from when I was a PC gamer. I'd say my money's on the table, but my money's in Nintendo's wallet. But I'd really rather be buying macOS versions!
And you forget that one of the largest gaming platforms out there is the iphone. Which also doesn't show up in the steam hardware survey because steam doesn't run on it. The iphone market proves that there is a gaming market for typical Apple users. A very big market even. People that spend a lot of money on their phone also seem to like spending a lot of money in the app store. And mostly on games. Apple rakes in billions via the app store.
If Steam were to get Mac support to the same level it is on Linux, most of the games would start working and there are a shitload of Apple PCs and laptops out there that would be able to run that.
Also, where is Apple's responsibility in all this? Steam this, Steam that. Apple changes arch, doesn't support vulkan and removes 32-bit support and then it's Steam's job to chase Apple? EA, Ubisoft, CD Project, Epic and Actiblizzard all also have store fronts and don't care to support mac. They could all be asleep behind the wheel, true. Or it could be that Apple makes it too annoying to support a platform that would barely yield any sales.
If Steam, a tiny company in comparison, and Codeweavers, also an tiny company in comparison, can get games to run on Proton+Linux then I'm pretty sure that Apple, with a little help from their trillion dollars, can manage something. But they also don't care cause Steam wont give 30%, which is Steam's fault of course.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-09/new-steam... (archived link w/o paywall: https://archive.md/VWvsW )
The Steam Deck was Valve finally getting sick of nobody doing what they wanted, and technology getting to where they could do something more interesting than just another desktop.
But generally, what is clear to me is that ARM is slowly becoming a lot more viable for general purpose computing. Apple's completely made the shift, and Microsoft seems to be persuing it for laptops at least finally. ARM seems like a great match for handhelds, if it wasn't for the compat issues.