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 preferred the laptop, probably because with having a game thing I always needed my laptop.
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.
you.. carry a monitor? how is a steam deck, a keyboard and a monitor better than just having a laptop? also how does the monitor survive this, do you put in in the original box?
Not OP but I guess they carry a portable monitor to use as a second screen for their work laptop. A usb-c powered 13inches portable monitor looks mostly like a tablet. It's very easy to bring with you.
I use a 15" 4k one, but yes exactly that, light portal, super thin, detachable full sized keyboard on it and slip cover carrying case. Great as a second screen or to use the deck in desktop mode... Plus on airplane I can just use the deck as is to game and pass the time
What model is your portable monitor? Do you have any pictures of what it looks like all set up on a table with the Steam Deck, the monitor and your keyboard? And also a picture of what it looks like all folded together? And also a picture of what it looks like when packed into a bag?
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.
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.
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.
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 unplugged if I want to use my laptop for personnal suff.
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.
That's certainly falling well behind theoretical speeds for thunderbolt at least. I wonder if yours is falling back to usb3 or something. I'm not speaking from experience, but that sounds off.
It's not, the steamdeck subreddit is full of these people. But I think the Steam Deck overall is much more attractive than a gaming laptop, and once you get a Deck, you don't want to then reinvest into a laptop powerful enough to compete, and so you end up with weird setups like this.
See ThinkVision M15 or Arzopa Portable Monitor as an example for a portable monitor. Comes with a case that doubles as a stand, it's +1kg in your backpack but is great when you are at a desk.
I also don't understand how he would work on his lap/when no desk is available though.
Yep, it's really great. I would buy the latest iPad in a hot minute it if had a way to be an external monitor (the software-based sidecar is 'ok' but not the same thing).
I don't think the OP carries the monitor with them, but it's just an option at home. Kind of like you can plug Switch at home and get a TV-based console - you can plug the Deck and get a computer.
Oh yeah, saw their comment now, that it's a portable monitor. But I guess the point still stands - this could be a sole computer for many people, if they just attach it to a regular desktop setup.
> For the first few months I didn't do much with it. Kind of shrugged and continued to use my laptop...
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.
That was the selling point for me. The Steam Deck lives next to my chair in the den so when I want to play a game I'm up in the family room with everyone else. It's super convenient.
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.
Valve is a pretty amazing company that consistently innovates and makes long-term, strategic decisions. Its a real model for a great tech company. Its unique capital and management structure has insulated it from any real competition. Companies like EA have to constantly turn a profit, cut corners where they can, and think in very short timeframes. Valve is completely private, with mostly (if not complete), owner/manager ownership. There's no managerial hierarchies. Ideas are both welcome and constantly challenged. If it was a public company we would likely see Google-like growth since its inception.
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.
Valve is cool, but they're only able to afford this style of development because they take a 30% cut of all PC gaming revenue. Not profits, revenue. When you're making that much money you can do whatever you want and still stay afloat. They've mismanaged some games (Dota 2), abandoned other games (TF2) and completely messed up other games (Artifact 1 and 2).
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.
It's not like they have some artificial monopoly though. Developers put their games on Steam (well, some do) because Valve has a huge audience. Valve's audience exists because Steam is a good client and has excellent features, and places the consumer first. Valve has no artificial monopoly, does nothing to keep people on their platform, refuses to even do things like sign exclusivity agreements, and the past decade have seen multiple big publishers (EA, Ubisoft) and developers leave to start their own thing, and then ultimately come back, because they couldn't do as good of a job. It isn't like Apple or Google where you can't be on the platform (phones) without paying a tax. And in the case where Valve actually controls the platform (SteamOS 3), they do nothing to stop other stores from being on it. I can still buy games on GoG, and install and play them on SteamOS. I just choose not to because GoG won't invest in making it as good of an experience.
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.
> It's not like they have some artificial monopoly though
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.
>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.
EA and Activision are a great counter-example of how "you could do anything" with revenue can vary from company to company. I think Valve's success being tied to their culture is pretty easy to prove, since as you say "they have my loyalty". How many other gaming platforms have done the same (particularly those aged 25< years)? I'm sure developers would love to pay less than 30%, but how is that cost compare to Valve's competitors? Valve is a for-profit venture and make their decisions based on the current economic environment.
Steam is just a better product, period. It does not spy or beg for your defaults like Windows. The review system is great, downloads are fast, and the community is awesome. No other platfrom provides this.
• 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 :)
Me too! It's the handheld gaming device I dreamed about when I was a kid. It's become my favorite platform, especially considering I don't game as much as I used to. It's perfect for a quick pick-up-and-play. I stopped using my PS5 last year, and the one time I did, I used remote play (chiaki) on the Steam Deck. And if I'm playing something that my kids want to watch, I can cast the screen to the TV via steam link. None of the other big companies will ever be able to produce something like this, especially with all the tweaks that can be made.
I need Thunderbolt! I don't hook up my Deck because my desk is built around a TB3 dock. That and USB-C at 4k 60hz isn't a given. Not that I'd run games at that resolution but it's sure nice for desktop mode.
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 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 is an extension of the already existing PC gaming market. I suspect that almost all Steam Deck owners already have a PC they game on. Steam Deck just makes it so those PC gamers will care if a game runs well on Linux.
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 dont pc game. I dont have space for a giant tower, etc. My main computer is a laptop (x1 carbon). The steamdeck allows me to enjoy all the awesome pc games, stores in a drawer, its portable if i want it to, and i dont need 4k 1000fps, 1080p and 30 to 60fps is plenty to single play with q screen on my couch. I am not a professional gamer, i dont need a full desk worth of gear. I am also busy, its nice not to worry about hardware, just plug and play (i did upgrade the ssd myself though). Its a great device.
I'm considering getting rid of my PC in favor of just gaming on my Steam Deck no matter where I am. If they somehow figure out how to create a dock with an external GPU then I'd 100% buy it and sell my PC since I need to play some games on low to medium setting when I want to play at 1080 to 1440.
>I suspect that almost all Steam Deck owners already have a PC they game on.
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 think while Steam Deck is an extension of PC gaming market, but more specifically an extension of this market to wannabe casual PC gamers. There is just nothing out there that beats mouse and keyboard for more competitive sessions of dota, csgo, starcraft. For a very long time a €1000/$1000 nominal would buy a rather capable PC gaming rig. Then cryptocoins happened and suddenly it was 1k for graphics card alone.
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.
Where do you see elitism here? Some games are simply designed for competitive play with mouse and keyboard control. These games require a PC and Deck is not really a target for those games/gamers. Would me stating that keyboard players stand no competitive chance against players with steering wheel in Forza be elitism too?
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.
The elitism is in calling what is absolutely the largest market for gaming "wannabe". I have sunk tonnes of money and time into gaming, and I spend a lot of time helping friends get familiar with games so they can play with their kids. But I am absolutely not competitive. It's ridiculously insulting for you to call me a "wannabe".
> 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.
> here is just nothing out there that beats mouse and keyboard for more competitive sessions of dota, csgo, starcraft.
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.
It’s important to recognize that while the Steam deck is awesome, it’s sold 1 million compared to the 100 million of the Switch. Nintendo has massive name recognition and exclusives of course, but also price. The cheapest Steam Deck is 400 dollars, whereas the Switch is 300. For people who don’t already have big steam libraries and don’t care about open hardware, the Switch is where they’re going to go for a mobile console.
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 price argument is completely reversed if you factor in that you need to buy games to play. Nintendo games prices are horrendous even for very patient gamers while Steam has big discounts on the regular. The same game on Switch vs Deck will routinely be 4-5x more expensive.
Not really. Nintendo first party titles hold their value well but you're not playing those on Steam either. 3rd party titles will often be the same price or close enough with the exception of super recent ports of old PC games. Definitely NOT 4-5x more expensive unless you're only comparing to full price not on sale eShop titles to best possible discount on Steam.
If you want to play Nintendo 1st party, you have no choice but Switch. But if you want to play any of the many AAA games that release every year, you can do that on Deck.
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).
Yeah that's the point, why would I not take the best price on Steam? eShop sales are like 20% off max, with a base price already often higher than the pc version. With a wishlist on steam you will build your collection at 4-5x lower cost than Steam if you are a bit patient (or go to key resellers if you're not).
The Lite is the portable-only version that's mainly for solo play. Doesn't come with a cradle, can't slot into a cradle and TV output is disabled, so no TV out, integrated controls (no detachable joycons, so you can't do that thing where you take your switch somewhere then pop the joycons off and play 2-player games)
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)
Hasn't console gaming always outperformed PC gaming marketshare?
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.
Historically it’s believed PC underperformed Consoles, but at this point it’s estimated that PC revenue is equivalent to the entire console market combined (for what it’s worth, both combined pull in less money than mobile gaming world wide).
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.
Sony used to have hardware and software for this, as you could cross-buy a title for a PlayStation 4 and a PlayStation Vita, and then sync the save data through the cloud. Unfortunately Sony abandoned the handheld gaming market just before the Switch and Steam Deck blew it up.
RIP PS Vita, the device was far ahead of its time; but Sony didn't abandon it "just before" the Switch and Deck blew up the handheld market again, they had shot it and left it to bleed somewhere between year 1 and year 2 on the market. Frankly it's amazing it has the library that it does considering Sony basically stopped supporting it or marketing it in any way long before they stopped producing the system.
Yeah, how Sony has managed to never build any synergy between all of their offerings is mind numbing. The success of making the PS2 backwards compatible with the PS1 was a huge thing that looked so promising. And then they just never bothered leaning in on that as a full strategy. Imagine if they had made it so you could play PSP games on any of the home consoles? Could have been amazing.
Handheld gaming has always been extremely lucrative (unlike their TV consoles which have a spotty record, the worst selling mobile console Nintendo sold was the 3DS at 70+ million.) Sony just couldn’t capture that market, so gave up.
>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.
There is a third category worth considering and that’s cloud gaming with a thin client.
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 think there is enough room for each. The switch basically exists because there is no reason not to have a portable form factor if your console is going to be so underpowered (compared to Xbox, PlayStation).
Both Nintendo/Sony sold ~3x more than Microsoft last month
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
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).
> It would be a flop for a traditional console, but the Steam Deck isn't a console, it's a PC
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
Flop is a strong word. I think they sold 1M in ~6 months, with a lot of supply side constraint. That being said, I they're nowhere near the tens of millions of Switches sold last year. But I don't think Valve was trying to. They've done very little advertising, you can only buy it through the Steam store, and (I own one by the way) it feels a bit like it's still aimed mainly at the enthusiast crowd right now. Then again, it was the top selling item in the Steam store for most weeks since launch.
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.
I'm convinced that value has a few directions they want to go down:
1. They are still very excited by VR, additionally, there is no real breakout int he VR gaming space. Yes the Quest 2 is massively popular but Meta is doing their best to run from games on it. Valve is all about games and HL:Alyx is obviously the best VR game ever made. The next Value hardware will be a standalone VR headset. I would guess it has a seperate console portion that hooks onto a waist belt.
2. I wouldn't be surprised to see them do a laptop. The software is ready. Building an affordable SteamOS gaming laptop of their own design would be a successful product. (e.g. under $500)
3. The Steam Deck will absolutely get a successor of sorts. Likely a more mass-market take. That will tie in with Brick and Mortar launch plans.
4. Bonus points: SteamOS is designed around AMD hardware. AMD makes the hardware in the PS5 and XSX. It is not a stretch to consider Valve just diving deep into a $499 non-portable console/PC hybrid with custom silicon by AMD. Hell, even Tesla did it.
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 further.
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.
Sony will have to prepare for the cloud gaming revolution once network infrastructure will match the grid network infrastructure
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
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 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.
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.
The rise of phone gaming was probably the reason why 3DS and Vita sold so much worse than DS and PSP. There is no big market for small handheld consoles anymore. The Switch sold well, but probably just because it is a bigger system which is more similar to a stationary console than to a phone. Which makes it unlikely that a company would release both a mobile and a stationary system again.
Microsoft is definitely pivoting towards making most of their money from their subscription game pass, with the idea that even if their consoles do sub-par they can also gain money from PC users and try and eat into Steam’s market share. Given how many game studios they’ve been buying, I don’t know whether it’s smart to bet against them (even considering their spotty history with studio acquisition).
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.
> Microsoft is definitely pivoting towards making most of their money from their subscription game pass
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.
You’re right, actually even the PS Vita sold more than 10 million which is better than I expected (It was a WiiU, not a Sega CD/Virtual Boy) . I’ll have to remember that in the future.
Look at the Xbox Series S. Microsoft has already fragmented the target hardware for consoles. Sony or Microsoft could conceivably make something akin to a portable Series S in four to five years. The delta between the TV console and the portable one would be greater however.
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 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 :/
Steam doesn't require DRM, some games purchased on steam can be run without steam running.
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.
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).
When you're catching up on all the games you couldn't even consider before, a bonus side effect is all the chaff has gone through the sift of time ;) So there are many games that got struck off my list as time went on.
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.
I love mine. It's rekindled my interest in PC gaming. Previously I was buying games I had on Steam to play on Switch and now I've started to do the opposite. The fact that suspend works is amazing. Often just alt-tabbing or accidentally hitting the Windows key would cause a game to be unrecoverable in Windows, let alone sleep but it just works. It's really easy to customize controls PER GAME which is awesome when the devs do something dumb and only let you A&B to jump and attack and not A&X.
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.
I like mine as well I’ve used it a quite a bit and it works great after my first one had some battery life issues. I contacted support tried a bunch of things to no avail. But they got me a working one in short order.
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..
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.
it makes a lot of sense actually, the problem with desktop linux is the GUI. and windows compatibility/similarity, exchange of data (word, etc), user preferences.
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.
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.
I'll be the minority here and say for me it is the current ultimate gaming machine. I love that it runs Linux. It's convenient, runs my already purchased library of games and is consumer friendly for modding. On the other hand my PS5 is gathering dust.
I know a few people who have the Deck and enjoy it, but "ultimate gaming platform" seems like a stretch. I look forward to Valve continuing to improve and iterate on the platform, though I haven't owned a device exclusively or even predominantly for gaming in about 10 years, so I probably won't ever buy one. Still, the knock-on effects for the rest of the Linux ecosystem are positive.
I used to play games on: a Windows desktop, a Mac laptop, a PS2, a Wii U, a Switch, a GameCube. Now I play all the same games and more on just the Steam Deck. If that isn't ultimate idk what is. Every single other gaming device in my house is toast now.
It's still not a target platform (either native Arch Linux or Proton) for very many games, so updates have broken a number of games that were previously rated "playable" or "verified", rendering them unplayable. TBF in every case I've heard of this happening, Valve has been quick to address it, so you may or may not consider that an issue. I don't game much these days, but when I do it's exclusively on my Linux desktop, so I have a high tolerance for troubleshooting occasional issues, but I definitely think it's a stretch to call that "ultimate."
That's unfortunate that updates will break games on Steam Deck that had previously been working fine through Proton. But unless we want Valve getting in the middle and requiring various validations like Microsoft and Sony do on their consoles, there's not much that can be done about it. A strong refund policy on Steam might help, but to have any impact it will require significant numbers of Steam Deck users to initiate refund requests when compatibility breaks.
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.
which updates break games? doesn't Steam have the ability to choose a different proton version per game? so if a proton/wine update breaks a game, you should be able to go back to a different version for that game. granted, it may be a UI issue to make this easy.
Your reply is conflating two different things: updates to games, and updates to Proton. IME Proton updates almost never result in regressions (I think I've heard of it happening once, maybe twice ever), and Valve has and uses the ability to prefer specific Proton versions for specific games.
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.
sorry, yes, i didn't realize you were talking about updates to games. yes, valve can only fix it with a patch to proton, but they can also encourage developers to test their games with proton.
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.
When Breath of the Wild 2 comes out, I'm definitely going to be playing it at launch on the system it was built for, rather than trying an initially buggy emulation experience for bragging rights.
I feel the same way - but its leading me to some different conclusions - my previous switch has been completely taken over by my kids at this point, so I had planned on buying a new one to play ToTK when it comes out in May. I played hundreds of hours of BoTW. But after having the steam deck for a few months, I cant really imagine playing on the switch much anymore. Theres no other games I can see coming that I really care about that are switch exclusives. To the point I might just skip out on the new game for a while till the emulators catch up.
It has one of the worst screens of any handheld gaming device I own. I prefer my Switch OLED, but will be very excited for a future version of the Steam Deck with a screen that isn’t utter garbage. I understand some people don’t mind, but I just can’t immerse myself into the games I play with that bad of a screen.
I know it's only a band-aid but have you tried vibrantDeck [0]?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Okay I've tried to use Moonlight today. It appears much more broken than Steam Link. There is no working autostart (but there is a broken service option), audio doesn't work, credentials sometimes just break to the point that a fresh start is needed, there is no way to elegantly exit the app, and it doesn't add the ability to unlock the PC (in fact, it even is so fragile that it requires a restart of the host program if the computer's primary display has turned off).
The options are nice and it sounds great on paper, but Steam Link is a better solution right now.
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.
Not GP, but I use virtualhere to forward my steam controller over LAN to my desktop. Moonlight handles controllers fine, but it's forwarding button presses, not forwarding the USB device. This rarely makes a difference unless you're using peripherals that need software.
I guess I'm the minority who's Steam Deck is gathering dust. It is a nice device but it failed to get me to game more (which is what I wanted out of it), mainly because it's rather fiddly, in a similar way to a VR device. It takes effort to get me to pick it up, I have to make sure it's charged, I have to make sure my key bindings are configured correctly, etc.
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.
I was annoyed by the key bindings/controllers at first as well. But once i found the section that shares community created controller mappings, i have only ran into one game that didn't have a controller config that worked well.
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.
Try some simple games that are easy to pick up and play and don't have complex controls. Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, Broforce. The battery lasts long with them as well.
> 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.
I hate saying anything negative about the Steam Deck at this point because no matter how well articulated a point, you get drowned out by fanatics who refuse to believe anyone would not love every single aspect of it...
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'm puzzled why Valve doesn't want to sell it in stores.
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 suspect the price of the base model might make it difficult, Valve has commented that hitting that price point was painful and so there may not be enough margin to sell it in stores without raising the price.
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.
I made a similar comment elsewhere, but yes, for now it seems Valve is purposefully not pushing it too hard, for now at least.
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.
I think it might have more to do with the ability for valve to produce the deck being bottlenecked, rather than a lack of demand since it was backordered for months despite a limited initial release.
And even today it's only available in 3 regions.
Nintendo is a household name with a widly successful portable history and an insane amount of IP. The Switch was day one buy for a lot of people and it's on the road to become the best sold console of all time.
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.
When the Switch was first presented, there was a lot of skepticism about whether Nintendo can turn things around with this thing. Many people called it gimmicky and suspected another failure like the Wii U. Is there a way to search for the old Hacker News discussion? In comparison, the Steam Deck was met with a lot of online hype. If anything, the Steam Deck looked more promising before launch than the Switch. Of course the Steam Deck has no big exclusive games, and there was hardly any marketing.
I find the killer feature to be the ability to pause games. Sure, I could do that on my PC, but since this whole Deck is dedicated to just running the game, and I can set it aside, do the thing I need to do (maybe on my PC) and come back and start right where I left off, it feels different, more integrated, because for a little while, the game state and the deck state are the same. It is less like the Deck is running the game and more like the Deck is the embodiment of the game.
My Deck is pretty much never not running a game. It's the complete opposite of what most PCs do, in that sense. It's only out of a game if I left it to restart for a system upgrade.
The only way one could improve from that would be instant swap between different games, and that's just technologically impossible at this time.
I like my Deck. I wish more games could adjust to the small screen better.
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.
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.
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).
Many games have a console-like experience where it just works, no settings, just go into the game. The resolution, and all other settings will have been preselected for best experience on the deck. Steam exposes that in the UI with a "Verified for steam deck" logo. Other games have a "partial compatibility logo". Steam further automatically exposes a "great on deck" collection of my existing steam library, which is approximately a quarter of my library of games going back to 2003.
This and all the other similar responses are awesome. Valve clearly learnt a lot - Steam Controller had no support in the actual store (no 'made for steam controller' program) and half the time you'd be staring at 'press z' holding a controller in your hand trying to remember that x was z right now.
One of the criteria for the "verified" badge seems to be that the game UI has correct button labels for actions, and everything needed for a normal game experience is available on the controller.
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.
My experience has been very console like, in that every game I've downloaded just works. 99% of the time there is no fiddling with graphic or control settings, no nothing. Just hit download, launch the game, have fun.
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).
I was able to install Elden Ring and play without any changes. It carried over my save from my PC. It just worked. Same with Vampire Survivors. I use these two as examples because they are opposites of one another in terms of resources. If ER and VS can both provide games that work out of the box with the Steam Deck, then it really falls on the games developer, and really, do they support controllers?
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.
For the most part it just works, especially if the game can autodetect your hardware and adjust graphics accordingly. But of course you can always tinker with settings in game and out to get more optimized performance. Also, you might have to mess with Steam Input to translate the Deck's controls to what the game expects, and although the built-in community sharing system makes that usually pretty easy I still have to pause and reference my controls every once in a while. It's not quite console-levels of plug-and-play due to the flexibility of games in the PC market, but it's about the closest you can get
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.
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.
more like a console, except for games that don't support gamepads at all - but then you will probably have someone who created a specific configuration for them, that's available for the game in question
First anniversary of Valve refusing to sell Australians like me a Steam Deck. Such a shame too, the device seems excellent, but I’m not going to take the risk on imports when I know Valve won’t honour Australian consumer law (which is probably at least partly why they don’t sell it here).
I am super happy with mine, after having it for a couple months now.
There are many games I would not have played otherwise, not to mention emulation.
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.
I really love my Steam Deck, until it suddenly died a few days ago. Couldn't even get to BIOS menu and just a black screen with CPU fan and haptic on, tried everything from reseating battery, putting in battery storage mode, replacing the NVME or even running fsck on another linux machine, nothing works. It seems to be a common issue with the Deck :( Now I have to find a way to RMA it, which will take months as they don't sell it where I live.
Nice to see so many mentions of the PS Vita here. I gotta use this opportunity to start a Vita appreciation thread :)
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.
Mine mostly stays docked and is used for couch coop games with my kids. They absolutely loved "It Takes Two."
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.
Getting new hardware+software used to be so exciting- consoles, TVs, phones, the works- anything before ~2015 felt like an upgrade. Mostly that feeling has completely evaporated. New hardware+software instills dread, frustration, mistrust and fatigue.
The Steam Deck feels like what it used to be: joyful and fun, a total lack of cynicism.
Having used one a lot, I can say that the ergonomics of the Steam Deck aren't there.
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.
> 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.
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'm very happy with my Deck, I even use it for doing my development job, using the dock + monitor + keyboard, and have had the need to use my laptop very rarely.
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.
Ultimate? umm.. I almost purchased one as a Christmas gift for myself, but after doing some research I decided to spend the money on PS5 games instead:
• 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.
>• Valve is almost as infamous as Google for abandoning their hardware and projects.
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.
- OLED would be nice to have (though it has no impact in comparison with ps5) (same for HDR)
- 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.
> If you install Windows, apparently Microsoft doesn't allow you to get updates (on W11) because of the Deck's lack of a "TPM".
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.
"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."
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.
Sort-of, a Galaxy S8 in our family had solitaire (and the software buttons) burned into the pixels. Of course, they had the screen brightness to high/max and I think screen off time was very high, so it's definitely an edge case.
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.
"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."
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.
It is, even "basic-quality" OLEDs nowadays are better than older panels, and TVs have a lot of burn-in mitigations like pixel shifting and the like. But that's also the kind of thing that I think would be more noticeable on a smaller screen, not to mention gaming's overall avoidance of display processing in general. (I wonder how much lag that would add, if at all?)
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?)
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.)
I currently use an eGPU with a Windows 11 PC and that's already with several caveats (and a couple specific games that really hate it). The 30-50% variable overhead absolutely sucks. But it's at least still much better than the throttling onboard GTX 1050 mobile (thanks to some questionable power circuitry from Lenovo).
> I've been a pretty hard-core gamer for 30 years.
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.
For most of these I don't disagree, but I take issue with a few:
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.
>We do not need exclusives on Steam Deck, that is a console marketshare corralling strategy.
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.
> 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.
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.
I did purchase one. Full access to my complete steam library on a device that can be carried around. Plays well. A little heavy at first compared to a switch, but I quickly got used to it. Gyroscopic aiming makes shooters playable. It has the flat mouse trackpad things from the steam controller that make using a mouse with games very nice. Valve will only continue improving wine over time, and if the steam deck is popular enough, you'll see titles account for it as well.
As a very happy Steam Deck owner, some of your points are valid, but frankly aren't so important (yes, not all games run, and if this was my only possible gaming hardware I would be upset - but I'm OK with only 70%ish of my catalogue being suitable for the Deck).
The native windows option is completely uninteresting to me, but it would largely address the remaining portion of incompatible games, leaving only the performance limitations to contend with - those are quite real and can indeed degrade your experience, depending on what you're trying to play. Given the immense backlog in my personal games library I don't care - it's the perfect excuse to pick up some 4..10 year old titles and enjoy them - but I could be an outlier here. I have racked quite a few hours of Skyrim though, and it's awesome.
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’m on the other side. Almost bought a PS5. Or to be more accurate, wanted to buy a PS5, but they were insanely behind with shipping and the little stocks there were got bought up by resellers. Then once Sony managed to get stocks up somewhat, they jacked up the prices (something I don’t recall any other console manufacturer ever doing).
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.
> I’ve been playing basically all I would’ve been playing on the PS5 I wanted to get
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.
The Vita was my favorite handheld for a while. The Steam Deck is better. OLED is a nice to have but it's not a deal breaker (I have a Vita first gen). The screen on the Steam Deck is solid although not amaze-balls, I imagine it was chosen to keep the cost down. It's not an awful screen like the original 3DS. And hey, I can use a standard microSD card for $50 instead of importing a custom card from Japan for twice the price of the equivalent microSD!
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.
Most proton games work flawlessly on steamdeck. The only issues after almost a year I encoutnered are related to anti-cheat and DRM.
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.
And ironically some games work better on Proton, partly because Wine shipped fixes for them (like RollerCoaster Tycoon 2) or Valve fixing game bugs on the Proton side (Elden Ring shader compilation stutters come to mind).
> • 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??
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.
> If you install Windows, apparently Microsoft doesn't allow you to get updates (on W11) because of the Deck's lack of a "TPM".
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.
Small technical nitpick, Proton (Wine) is not an emulator.
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.
I am loving my Steam Deck. I use it way more than I thought I would (it's a godsend if you want to play games but a wife + toddler prefer you don't hide in your office for hours on end).
I would HAPPILY spend money on a more premium version that had a better screen and hopefully a bit more RAM.
I will admit that I used it a lot less than I expected ( my buddies play it all the time instead of playing on their dedicated gaming machine ). I am glad I purchased it, because I am planning some fun mini projects for it this year ( and I want to support open hardware like this ). I love what it represents, but it seems to be gathering dust for me atm.
All that said, it is ridiculously impressive.
Edit: Kingdom come was a very different experience from PC.
One of the best purchases I've made. It's so much fun being able to squeeze a few gaming sessions here and there, without having to be in front of a TV.
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 love my Steam Deck. It’s one of the few purchases I’ve made in the last year that is all positives. I still take my Switch with me sometimes, but the Deck is now a constant travel companion. It really is the ultimate portable gaming system.
Has anyone used their Steam Deck with a projector and/or as home media machine (HTPC)? We bought a Chromecast while traveling abroad and took hours to setup Wi-Fi, login with various streaming accounts with arrow keys, then finally hit with regional lockouts (HBO not being available and Netflix having different catalogue). In the end, we just gave up and went to the movie theaters. It’d be great if we had a portable content streaming device that’s a proper computer and where we can have a VPN setup, possibly even with a offline catalogue while we’re on a plane.
Nvidia Shield is pretty good for this IMO. EUR 160/EUR 220 depending on if you want the pro version or not. Runs Android, can have a VPN, can run a {Netflix, Plex, etc} client. Comes with a remote. If you have the Pro version, you can also plug in an external HDD (which I imagine you can use for downloading content onto, although I've not done this myself), and/or wireless keyboard and mouse. Also does 4K out.
Its awesome. Get it. I thought the 7 inch screen would be annoying but it isnt (its close to your face, so it seems bigger). You can also dock it and use a larger one and enjoy a linux operating system to boot.
I finally picked on up second hand in anticipation of a lot of travel this year and a LAN party in a few weeks. I've used it so much just while sitting on the couch or at my desk, it's great!
I didn't think I'd use it a load when I pre-ordered mine, but I figured it would be great for use when I went to my girlfriend's home, or to visit my own family, and not lug a laptop or PC.
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.
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 a capable Linux gaming desktop, a decent enough Linux laptop, and a Deck. The Deck doesn't really compete with the desktop as much as it competes with the laptop. While I'm at home for the most part I prefer the much larger screen and multiple monitors of my desktop, especially for information-dense games like Factorio or Terra Invicta. Most of what I use my Deck for at home are lighter games that don't take as much brain power and I can play while in bed or whatever.
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?
I fall into that category - I have two 4k screens and a desktop that I do a good bit of gaming on, I also have a steam deck.
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.
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.
Would anyone recommend this for purely retro emulation via retroarch? I currently have an Anbernic RG353M which is nice but I'd prefer to have a fully customizable device that is developer friendly.
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?
I have a Deck and an RG351V for comparison. The Deck ergos are fine but it's noticeably larger than a Switch which is already too big to just slip in a pocket like the Anbernic. I love the flexibility of being able to play PC and it can run up to lighter PS3 games which is way beyond the RG351 but I would probably want something smaller like an Ayn Odin for purely retro gaming.
I've seen a bunch of retro gaming with EmulationStation and there a tone of tutorials on how to set it up, best practices. This is what pushed me over the top to consider buying one. Then Ps5's finally came back in stock... I'll be getting a steam deck in the future to try Emulation Station.
I was a little bit down on the steam deck compared to most glowing reviews but I'm still extremely impressed with what they've achieved. Gaming on Linux has been massively accelerated as a result.
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.
There are a few other devices, but they're all so expensive that they don't matter. Microsoft is probably not worried by the Steam Deck, since its sales numbers seem to be quite modest (1 to 2 million units, as they guess in the piece).
Well we recently got the Logitech G-Cloud and the Razer Edge. Although both are Android devices. There's plenty of Asian companies like Aya, GPD and Onexplayer putting out handheld gaming PCs.
Steam Deck has been a blessing.
I've always been a gamer and with children is harder to find time. Now I can play in bed as soon as they fall asleep.
I used to travel for many weeks back to Italy and bringing two laptops (one for gaming, one for work) was painful (since they both have to go in the carry on). I don't need anymore, I just need a steam deck with the dock.
I've had my eye on this for a bit. I'm incapable if deciding which version I want to buy (64GB/256GB/512GB). I'd be happy to hear from anyone who purchased either of these and what their thoughts are. Anyone regretting the 64GB and wishing they got a bigger one for example?
64gb will fill up with shader cache. But if you don't mind upgrading the SSD yourself, it's always an option down the road and is considerably cheaper than buying the higher end Decks. e.g. a 256gb 2230 m.2 is ~$20 where the 256gb model Deck is $100 more. Also, you can get 1tb and 2tb 2230 drives, which aren't an option for a factory configuration.
64 felt a bit too restrictive, so I've bought a 256GB one but ordered a replacement 512GB Samsung NVMe card later (1TB is also available for about $100 but I'm not sure about Deck compatibility and thermals). I'm glad that's an option. It's a peculiar form factor, though, so it took some figuring out.
I bought a 64 GB and replaced the SSD with a 256 GB ones myself almost immediately. From what I've heard reading from an SD card is fast enough anyway, but if you regret the skew you buy, upgrading is not much of a hassle.
That being said, if you are afraid of opening it up, maybe go for 256.
Valve has an input translation layer called Steam Input, originally mostly used with the Steam Controller, now well integrated with the Steam Deck. Keys can translate to buttons, mouse movements to analog sticks/touchpads, etc. Users can contribute Steam Input configs for a game that other users can try, download, and rate. I’ve used a community layout at length on the Steam Deck (for Subnautica) and was satisfied, though it’s a bit confusing when the game says “press T to do such‐and‐such” and I have to try all the Steam Deck buttons until I figure out what T got mapped to.
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.