[HN Gopher] More than 75% of Steam games tested are playable or ...
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More than 75% of Steam games tested are playable or verified on the
Steam Deck
Author : ekianjo
Score : 524 points
Date : 2023-07-04 13:27 UTC (9 hours ago)
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| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Has someone sold ther Steam Deck for a ROG Ally? Why? Has it the
| same compatibility?
| ekianjo wrote:
| No idea about such stats, but the ROG Ally has several
| problems:
|
| - Windows as the key interface
|
| - very poor battery life (even worse than the Deck!)
|
| - no trackpads so this limits what you can ever play with it to
| games made for gamepads
|
| - none of the SteamOS goodness
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| > no trackpads so this limits what you can ever play with it
| to games made for gamepads
|
| Personally I like the Ally's gamepad a bit more. The Steam
| Deck makes the buttons just a bit too small to make room for
| the trackpads. When I compared them they were about the same
| size as a Joycon's buttons.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Compared with deck, no suspend continue.
|
| And I read that the button can stuck and it can get hot.
| smileybarry wrote:
| Stuck buttons were apparently a review model issue; The
| Verge reported on it originally and a month later, ASUS
| shipped a much-improved unit. (Hardware and software)
| nucleardog wrote:
| > Compared with deck, no suspend continue.
|
| And for anyone comparing the options... go upthread and
| read how many people are saying this is _the_ killer
| feature of the Steam Deck. Because it is.
|
| I'd been kind of on the fence how I felt about the ROG, but
| that makes it a solid "no" for me.
| calini wrote:
| Both consoles get about as hot, but yeah, no good Sleep
| option in Windows is a shame.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Both consoles get about as hot_
|
| The problem specific to the Ally right now is that it
| seems to get too hot where the SD card reader is, causing
| SD cards to fry for some users:
| https://www.dexerto.com/tech/asus-rog-ally-has-a-bizarre-
| ove... . I'm sure this will be fixed in a future hardware
| revision, but for now it seems worth waiting on the Ally
| for them to hammer out the first-generation kinks.
|
| Still, I'm happy that the Ally exists, both as
| competition for Valve and to help prove that this PC form
| factor has legs.
| calini wrote:
| Disclaimer: I ordered both a Steam Deck and an ROG Ally at
| the same time, and ended up returning the Ally, mostly
| because of the reports of the SD card reader frying up cards.
| If in 2 months it turns out it was all a software issue, I
| might rethink my option.
|
| That being said, I think the Ally has great potential and
| some of the problems listed can be solved/mitigated;
|
| > - Windows as the key interface
|
| You can boot straight into Steam Big Picture. It will show
| you the desktop for a second, for now, but surely there will
| be solutions to make it boot almost instantaneously. And then
| Windows remains as your Desktop Mode.
|
| > - very poor battery life (even worse than the Deck!)
|
| There's a tool called Handheld Companion (FOSS) that tries to
| do a lot of what the right hand side menu in SteamOS does,
| FPS limits, power control, etc. It has a feature called
| AutoTDP which basically modulates power to target a certain
| FPS average, and it works surprisingly well, shaving off
| enough power to make the SD and the Ally battery comparable
| in situations over 9W. Below 9W I agree, the ROG Ally chip
| just eats more power for sometimes lower performance. It even
| emulates a DualShock 4 controller so you can stream PS4/PS5
| games to it via Sony's app. (that also enables gyro in Steam
| games, which Asus didn't care much to add, even though the
| hardware is there)
|
| > - no trackpads so this limits what you can ever play with
| it to games made for gamepads
|
| Nothing that can be done about that, except maybe yet another
| Handheld Companion tweak which adds virtual gamepads on the
| edges of the touchscreen. Very customizable, not perfect,
| hard to reach with smaller hands, but hey, it's an option.
|
| > - none of the SteamOS goodness See Handheld Companion above
|
| PS: how do I add quotes in here?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Surely the lack of SteamOS could be compensated by launching
| Steam in big picture mode? Or even installing HoloISO if they
| support the device?
| zhynn wrote:
| The steam controller customizability is an incredible feature
| that I doubt any other manufacturer will be able to compete
| on. It is bananas how fully-featured it is. The flexibility
| of being able to pop open a radial/grid menu with any input
| and map the items to hotkeys or other actions... just that
| alone is kind of nuts, but then you can have buttons that
| change "modes" and all of the inputs can have secondary
| effects.... you can toggle between "flight" and "ground"
| setups...
|
| I have myself barely scratched the surface of the steam input
| features, but there is nothing that I have been unable to do
| with it. And that is so important when you are emulating
| games.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| There's no way I would ever do this. The Steam controller
| overlay is my killer feature! The Deck controller is brilliant.
| If they issued a v2 controller that copied the deck I would buy
| it in a heartbeat.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| FWIW you can use the Steam UI to configure any controller if
| you launch big picture mode on desktop. I've used it to remap
| my Stadia controller and an Xbox controller and it works
| almost as good as the Deck configuration.
|
| I say almost as good, because the "Steam button + joystick"
| mouse controls don't work for very long; the Xbox button gets
| mapped to the Steam button, but holding that will turn off
| the controller...
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Oh awesome. I suppose you can also do the menu overlays?
| Obviously there's no track pad to put them on but I imagine
| could work well mapped to eg a left joystick.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Sure can! I'm not sure how the touch menu is supposed to
| be operated, but radial and hotbar menus are available
| for sure.
|
| The UI is quite clearly designed for use with a touchpad,
| so your mileage may vary, but it works okay in my tests.
| crims0n wrote:
| I have both, I default to the Steam Deck for most things - but
| use the Ally for incompatible games, alternative launchers, and
| Gamepass.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| To my knowledge the ROG Ally is more of a gaming laptop
| replacement. Only get it if you want to play online shooters
| where anti-cheats don't work reliably on Linux/Proton. Or if
| you want the absolute best resolution and graphics in portable
| format.
|
| For single player games and people who don't expect their
| portable gaming device to be 4k/240FPS SD is better in every
| way.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Purchased a rog ally yesterday. The setup isn't for the faint,
| as it's basically a fresh windows install. Tinkered with it and
| got Diablo 4 running real nice.
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| The only lingering issue I've found while playing on the steam
| deck is that a lot of DX8-9 games are somewhat missing a few
| shaders and lighting effects, I guess due to the way wine
| approximates them. Usually the dgvoodoo2 dll wrapper is good
| enough to restore them.
|
| It's quite hard to find a game that doesn't work at all, the most
| common cause usually being an external launcher trying to mess
| with the system in ways that wine doesn't agree with.
| kojiromike wrote:
| The steam deck is great, but I still think it's lacking in
| support for peripherals. For example, racing wheels, yokes and
| rudder pedals are inconsistent. My Saitek yoke works, but the
| rudder pedals cannot be detected. I wouldn't be that bothered if
| neither one worked, but the inconsistency makes it a lot worse. A
| "no maintenance" sign on a dirt road is far superior to a well-
| paved road leading to a sheer cliff.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Which also means they are running on Linux. This is mind-blowing.
| ekianjo wrote:
| According to other sources (ProtonDB), about 80% of a much
| larger subset of Steam games run on Linux (some worse than
| others) - next milestone is 90% I guess, a couple of years down
| the road.
| mjevans wrote:
| Some of those games 'require' an unofficial version of
| Steam's Proton which includes support for features in the
| underlying components that the official version can't ship.
|
| Mostly it's an issue for video codecs in games (patents are
| the issue here), or games that use a less popular API. (From
| windows! Which has ~3 decades of APIs from multiple vendors.
| Let alone 10s (10-100 IDK) different ways of playing back
| audio or a video, or both at the same time.)
|
| Some of the changes are simply more bleeding edge patches or
| game specific tweaks that are included faster than official
| releases include them.
| kibwen wrote:
| From a user's perspective they're running on Linux, though from
| the games' perspective they're running on Windows, thanks to
| Proton (based on Wine).
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Having written even basic tools in native code for Linux and
| run into compatibility issues (glibc versions, ugh), I'm not
| surprised.
|
| Wine is probably the best cross-distro Linux platform,
| especially for closed source products that don't get compiled
| for every specific repo. Flatpak/AppImage would also work but
| that lacks the raw system access that many games depend on
| (even if that system access is secretly emulated by Wine).
| haunter wrote:
| See the famous "Win32 Is The Only Stable ABI on Linux"
| article https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-stable-abi/
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32471624
| xyproto wrote:
| Arch Linux, btw
| npteljes wrote:
| Indeed!
|
| https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech
| stefandesu wrote:
| Does this make a difference? If I were to build a gaming PC
| based on Linux and Proton, would I need an Arch based distro
| to get that ~80% coverage?
| the8472 wrote:
| You get a recent kernel + mesa + vulkan which means a
| recent proton shipped with steam can use all the extensions
| it wants for efficiency. Recent kernels also contain a few
| features specifically designed to aid wine.
|
| Also, it's probably a joke.
| [deleted]
| ddtaylor wrote:
| In theory it doesn't matter, but in practice there are
| issues. On other distros like stock Ubuntu you won't have
| Flatpak out of the box and would need to set that up.
| Likewise on some distros you would have to worry about
| alternative repos or package architectures.
| nani8ot wrote:
| No, Steam comes with everything you need for games. Other
| launcher work great using Lutris.
|
| Apps like Lutris, Spotify Yuzu are on the Discover app
| store which uses flatpak. Flatpak is on many distros
| already installed or can be installed manually.
|
| (PS: The Steam Deck's OS isn't even Arch Linux. It's based
| on it and uses Arch packages, but updates come from Valve
| through their own update mechanism with a read only file
| system. It's like calling Ubuntu Debian just because Ubuntu
| pulls packages from Debian Testing.)
| Maken wrote:
| Which makes me both happy and concerned. On one hand, I am
| finally able to use my main computer for gaming without having
| to deal with dual booting nor emulation (in the VW sense). On
| the other, Proton completely kills native Linux porting.
| Amnesia The Bunker being released _only_ in Windows despite the
| developers ' long story supporting Linux was likely influenced
| by this.
| itsboring wrote:
| I've grown comfortable with the idea that the win32 API is
| simply a gaming runtime now. I'm okay with this situation
| because A) I don't have to give up any performance (or at
| least none that I've been able to measure) and B) the
| Proton/WINE stack is still open source all the way down.
|
| It could certainly be argued that I'm doing some mental
| gymnastics here, but I look at Proton/WINE as simply being
| part of the game engine. Traditional engines like
| Unity/Unreal have all kinds of translation layers and
| indirection.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| If it works, it works. Proton isn't going anywhere; even if
| development is abandoned old versions of Proton will still
| exist, so games that forewent native Linux support in favor
| of Proton will still work.
| ekianjo wrote:
| If you like this graph, there's a lot more here about the state
| of the Steam Deck right now:
|
| https://boilingsteam.com/valve-is-accelerating-the-validatio...
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| I game on linux so that's good for me
|
| I wish Steam Deck wasn't this poorly designed, I'd have bought
| one
|
| Hopefully their 2nd gen will look better, smaller and with a
| better battery
|
| Unless they release a 2nd gen of this baby:
| https://gpd.hk/gpdwin4
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| I got downvoted for telling what I like lol
|
| This is exactly why karma based voting system is flawed
| mateo- wrote:
| what's wrong with the design? That link looks sketchy, btw.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Too big, weird button placement, and I'm not a fan of the
| overall aesthetic
|
| > That link looks sketchy, btw.
|
| Yeah, it kinda is weird, but that's your typical Chinese
| website.. lol
|
| GPD is the company that pioneered the handheld gaming PC form
| factor
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbFPXLB7GI4
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K9ByWPqYtc
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpjrbHFv_dA
|
| And this one, 6 years ago already!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lslcH-T1E0o
|
| Makes you realize Microsoft could have owned the handheld
| market if they weren't this incompetent
|
| https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/status/164838536603307622.
| ..
| devinprater wrote:
| This is really cool for Linux! Hopefully as people figure out the
| SteamDeck is a PC running Arch and KDE, the Steamdeck will become
| some folks' computer. Of course, the Steamdeck doesn't have a
| screen reader, so I'd have to put Windows on it, which kinda
| defeats the purpose, but I'm glad other people can enjoy a
| mainstream Linux machine.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Proton is god-tier. I can open pretty much any game and it just
| runs. You aren't stuck in Windows anymore.
| zhynn wrote:
| I have yet to not be able to run a game. I have had a couple
| that didn't launch, but when I configured them to use Proton
| Experimenal, they started right up. This includes demos for new
| games that are not at all intended to be run on a deck. I have
| been so impressed.
| miga wrote:
| If more and more games are tested and verified on Steam Deck, why
| less and less games are playable under most recent version of
| Ubuntu?
|
| Since I upgraded to 23.04, most of Paradox and many others refuse
| to play.
|
| Is it something that Ubuntu broke, or a different Linux kernel
| that breaks OpenGL?
| barney54 wrote:
| For people that own a Steam Deck, how do you like it? And how do
| you use it? I would like to talk myself into buying one, but I
| can't think of a decent use case.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Do you want to game away from your computer? That's the use
| case. Think of it like a big Sega game gear that runs steam and
| plays most steam games. You could do other things with it but
| it's literally purpose built to run steam, it's form factor is
| set up for gaming, and it's big and chunky not throw it in a
| bag and forget it sized.
|
| It doesn't replace a gaming desktop or even an ipad. It's a
| mobile gaming console that plays steam games for the most part.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Similarly, I ended up using mine docked a lot of the time.
| Performance when docked, and outputting more than 720p is
| pretty lacking. I really liked having a second input on my
| monitor to switch to for my games, so I ended up getting a
| 2nd PC with ChimeraOS (basically SteamOS) installed on it. I
| played through the entirety of Diablo 4 with that.
|
| I like the hardware, but yeah I've had a harder time
| recommending it to some of my friends because my first
| question is "do you go anywhere?". Plenty of them say no.
| sersi wrote:
| It's been great, as a new dad with a young kid, I no longer had
| time to boot up my gaming pc. Now that I have a steam deck, I
| play a lot more games. It's also by far the game console I
| fight the most over with my wife. She loves playing with it.
|
| I don't mind the ergonomics. I find it comfortable to hold.
| Battery life is not great but I mostly play at home and I don't
| mind.
|
| We also have a switch but don't play it that much. The steam
| deck is just more convenient because of the steam integration
| and the fact that games on steam are much cheaper and there are
| a lot more games.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Screen is kinda small for newer, high res games but still
| enjoyable. More suitable to PS2 1024x968 era so perfect for
| emulator PS2 and earlier. For indies or 2d like stardew it'll
| be no problem.
|
| Form factor is good, no problem so far with controller
| position. Rather big and rather heavy, not as portable as psp
| or nds but definitely portable.
|
| Battery lasts only 2 hours-ish for AAA games though, much
| longer for lower specs.
|
| Suspend and continue works wonder, though anticipate for hang
| or freeze that you'll need to save before if can.
|
| Controls can be mapped freely for each game which is amazing, 4
| back buttons works wonder to add more functionality to already
| limited buttons. Moreover the radial menu with trackpad is
| superb.
|
| If you don't have gaming pc or laptop, you'll definitely like
| this, though maybe you'll need usb hub, keyboard and mouse if
| you want to enjoy games that doesn't support controller (sim
| city). If that's the case, slap an external monitor too since
| you'll need a bigger screen to play those games.
|
| Otherwise you can lie sideways on couch, or I read you can lie
| on the back with pillow to rest your hand to play deck. Perfect
| for open world and action games.
|
| Haven't really tried sd card so I don't know how flexible it is
| to play from it, but I guess it'll works wonder for less than
| latest AAA games.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Screen is kinda small for newer, high res games but still
| enjoyable.
|
| Agree. When rewriting an older game for Steam I ended up in-
| biggening the artwork a touch to look good on the Steam Deck.
| Of course the game now looks positively Duplo on a normal PC
| monitor now.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Can't really blame anyone, nowadays monitor really ranged
| from small, deck sized to big, dual monitors sized with
| resolution ranged from 1200-ish for older or smaller
| monitor to 4k.
|
| Without adjustable ui size the text will undoubtedly be
| small in some instances.
| cevn wrote:
| Best gaming device ever. I find it funny that some are
| complaining about the heat. When I am cold I fire up Dune Spice
| Wars and now I have a portable heater for 2 hours.
| ekianjo wrote:
| really liking it myself. I used to not have much time to boot
| my PC to game anymore and the Steam Deck made it easier to get
| back into gaming with short sessions - the sleep mode is
| perfect to leave a game paused and start again whenever you are
| ready.
| andybak wrote:
| This is the best feature by far and it didn't really occur to
| me in advance what a game changer it is.
|
| You can instantly jump into a game that usually takes 5
| minutes to start up while waiting for the kettle to boil or
| during an ad break.
|
| I wouldn't ever buy a handheld that didn't have this.
| lawn wrote:
| As a parent of three kids (youngest is 6 months, got the
| Deck when she was 1 month) this is the standout feature
| that allows me to game at all.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I love my deck. It's my preferred way to play games these days.
| For better or for worse, it's also been the reason I've spent
| more time playing games this year than the years before.
|
| The console like quality gives it a different feel compared to
| a controller hooked up to a gaming PC in my opinion. The fast
| sleep/resume also makes it super easy to pick up and play for a
| short while without having to worry about not making it to the
| next save point in time.
|
| SteamOS/HoloISO is so good that I seriously consider installing
| it on my next gaming computer when the time to upgrade
| eventually comes. It has tons of issues with Nvidia hardware
| (as with any kind of Linux distro) but other than that it's one
| of the first times I've seen Linux for the mainstream done
| right. Read only system images, all software installed in the
| user directory makes for a very stable hassle free update
| experience. You can unlock the system partition if you want,
| but I intend to keep it read only for as long as I can.
|
| It's not some kind of magical machine that will make you
| experience fun, though. If you're already happy with the amount
| of game time you're getting and you don't think you'll use it,
| don't get one. It is what it is, a handheld console. I bought
| mine knowing I'd probably spend a significant amount of time on
| it playing games in bed and on the go, and that's where it has
| really shined for me, especially when I was too sick to sleep
| for a few days.
|
| If you've already got a gaming PC or console and a tablet/large
| smartphone, consider getting a comfortable controller grip for
| that instead and stream the games over your network. I've got
| pretty good experiences streaming games over WiFi and even over
| the internet this way. It's fiddly to set up, but it'll work
| for significantly less money than a separate game console.
|
| If you've got money to throw at your gaming hobby, also
| consider more powerful alternatives. I think the 1200x800
| screen is fine for the Deck screen size, but some people don't
| like it. The machine is also clearly optimized to play games at
| that resolution, hooking it up to a monitor can quickly show
| the limitations of a 15W chip. There are more powerful gaming
| handhelds out there, often running Windows and some kind of
| homebrew console environment, for a significantly higher price.
|
| If you know anyone with a Deck, ask them to try it out for a
| few minutes.
| smileybarry wrote:
| Even if you have zero mobile use cases, it's a comfy way to lay
| back on the couch and stream games from your PC. The controls
| are very nice and some games feel nicer in a small form factor
| embedded thing than desktop/TV gaming.
| wez470 wrote:
| I love mine. I use it both in handheld mode and docked to a TV.
| It's great for playing games anywhere around the house if you
| have a few spare minutes. Also great for travel. The openness
| is really cool. I've added several non steam games to mine
| (e.g. Plex). It's not perfect though. I find I get a decent
| amount of lag using bluetooth controllers while docked and some
| games don't play super well (even "verified" ones).
| Occasionally I'll use it as a linux desktop too, but not often.
| I like that it has the option though.
| Theofrastus wrote:
| As a parent working a full time job - I can finally play games
| again. As weird as it sounds, there was always a pychological
| hurdle to go and sit at my desk, boot my pc, select a game and
| play it.
|
| With the deck, I just sit on the couch and play games - the
| sleep/standby function is amazing.
| dagmx wrote:
| I'll go against the grain and say I don't actually like mine
| very much and here's why. I'll caveat it with saying I got it
| for trips.
|
| - it's underpowered. I knew that going in but so many games
| have to be played at either a really low setting or you chew
| through battery life quicker than i can manage.
|
| - battery life is pretty poor. Most games give me an hour or
| two of use. While I rarely game that long in a stretch, it
| means that on a trip I'm always thinking about battery. The
| charging port is in a location that shifts the ballance in an
| unfortunate way.
|
| - you can't download while it's asleep or in the background. So
| if a game needs to be downloaded or updated, you have to leave
| it lying there, turned on and doing nothing. You can opt to
| have it download while you play but it stutters a ton if you do
| so.
|
| - screen is mediocre. I knew that going in but it's really hard
| to appreciate how dim and dull it looks compared to my phone
| screen for example.
|
| - it's loud and hot. It's not something I can play silently
| therefore. The fans are really working overtime to relieve that
| poor SoC
|
| - the ergonomics are so so. This one is really subjective. It
| starts out feeling pretty good, but I find the weight
| distribution makes it really uncomfortable for me after a
| whole. I feel a lot more cramping in my fingers and wrists.
|
| Now, it was relatively cheap so I don't mind, but I find myself
| not wanting to use it unless I'm on a solo trip or my partner
| is using the TV.
| VanTodi wrote:
| Maybe you were one of the unlucky ones and got the loud fan.
| They switched to a much quieter fan in the newer machines.
|
| You can try to replace it with some parts from ifixit or
| somewhere else.
|
| I refunded my first too because it was just too loud and I
| didn't had the right situation for it.
|
| Now one kid later and a newer deck with a silent fan, I'm
| very happy with the deck again.
| dagmx wrote:
| I just checked and I have the newer fan. My deck is only a
| few months old as well.
|
| It's not that it's making an unpleasant whining sound like
| what the older fan was meant to be, it's that it's trying
| to push out so much heat all the time that it's perceptibly
| loud.
|
| It's the difference between tone and volume.
|
| All my other devices in the house are relatively quiet
| compared to it. My switch, my Macs, even my PS5. None of
| them are fanless but they're pushing out much less air at
| any point.
|
| The steamdeck is fine for some games, but once it hits the
| thermal ceiling it gets so loud.
| deelowe wrote:
| Just to add some context here. Some of this doesn't line up
| with my experience.
|
| - my battery life is roughly 2-4 hours depending on the game.
| I'm playing Yakuza like a dragon right now and the battery
| lasts close to 3 hours
|
| - my screen is plenty bright. I don't play in direct
| sunlight, but I do sit out on my porch during the day and
| it's fine.
|
| - I've not had an issue with it being underpowered. I played
| Harry Potter on it which is a pretty demanding game and it
| seemed comparable to the performance my daughter had on the
| PS5 with her copy.
|
| - I've never noticed an issue with downloads and stuttering
| while playing.
|
| - Loudness is about the same as a laptop or console while
| gaming. Same for temp.
|
| - Ergo is a small issue for me as well. The size and bulk of
| the deck can make my wrists hurt after some time.
| dagmx wrote:
| I'm glad your experience is better but I'd just point out a
| few things.
|
| Battery life is heavily dependant on the games being
| played. Yakuza isn't typically that demanding so I'm not
| surprised you're getting more. Playing something like Forza
| kills my battery pretty quickly.
|
| The screen is 400nits. It's also not got great gamut
| coverage. That's what I mean by it being dull and dim. It's
| usable but it's really dependent on the content and context
| what clarity is like.
|
| Yes it can play Harry Potter but at what settings and frame
| rate? The capability to play a game isn't an issue, it can
| play most things. But it's essentially a mobile PS4. Which
| is great, but it's also only capable of playing games at
| settings comparable to a downclocked PS4. Again, something
| I knew going in but I figured they'd have better thermal
| management if I was giving up more contemporary
| performance.
| deelowe wrote:
| I played Harry Potter on medium-high settings. If you
| keep the resolution at the native screen resolution and
| turn off things that aren't needed on a smaller screen
| (eg AA or super sampling), the performance is better than
| PS4 and roughly the same as a PS5. Performance isn't
| really a concern for me unless I'm plugged into an
| external display.
| dagmx wrote:
| But that's exactly it. You're playing at a lower setting
| by turning off AA and playing at low resolutions
|
| I'm glad performance is fine enough for you though. I
| still find it quite underpowered, where every game I play
| requires both feature and resolution compromises. Playing
| without AA is just not acceptable to me in this decade.
| At least not unless I'm getting significant battery life
| or thermal freedom to compensate.
| deelowe wrote:
| It's not needed on smaller screens. The switch does
| similar things. It's a common tactic on handhelds to
| disable those sort of features as they add no noticeable
| improvement.
| dagmx wrote:
| The switch does it for *some* games when running portably
| and then enables most things when docked. A lot of that
| is battery management.
|
| The steamdeck does not really have a concept of dual
| modes, per your own statements about playing on a bigger
| screen.
|
| And I completely disagree that AA isn't needed on smaller
| screens. You can see aliasing at any screen size.
|
| Again, perhaps it meets your threshold of quality. That
| does not mean it meets mine nor does it mean that the
| form factor somehow obviates it. It just means that we
| have subjectively different preferences.
|
| But again, I disagree that "it's not needed". That's not
| why games will disable AA in handheld mode. AA is
| expensive and a cost they try and mitigate with art
| direction that tries to avoid much of the losses.
|
| The steamdeck is not just playing games designed for a
| small screen. Many games suffer from shimmering and
| shifting. Whether that's an issue for you or not is
| independent of whether they exist and might be issues for
| others.
| gcoakes wrote:
| > - you can't download while it's asleep or in the
| background.
|
| Are you saying this is something unique to the Steam Deck? If
| my Linux desktop is anything to judge by, you should be able
| to enable background downloads in Steam settings. I'm also
| fairly sure there should be a way to get logind to inhibit
| sleep during the download.
| dagmx wrote:
| It's unique to the primary non-desktop mode of the
| steamdeck.
|
| If you put it to sleep, it pauses downloads. Out of the
| box, it pauses downloads when you play games unless you
| enable a checkbox that says it will degrade performance.
|
| If you switch to the desktop mode instead, you can download
| things as you would on a Linux desktop with all the other
| requisite performance state management caveats, and it's
| very much now how the device is designed to be used.
| starwatch wrote:
| I bought one about a month ago. It's portable around home which
| is handy. It's quite big so it's less portable outside of home
| - but I've got books to entertain me there!
|
| I agree with the standby / sleep modes. Super useful if you
| need to stop gaming and run for whatever reason.
|
| I think there's a big sale on them right now (I do wish I'd
| waited a month!).
| ekianjo wrote:
| a 10% sale on the cheaper model, and 20% on the more
| expensive one
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| I like it. I use it fairly frequently too. The killer feature:
| instant on/off AKA 'Pause'.
|
| I've had a single-player game of CIV5 going for MONTHS now. The
| Steam Deck is PERFECT for pick it up, play for 5 minutes (or a
| couple of hours), pause it, and resume later.
|
| I have 2 main use-cases:
|
| -couch-playing. When the Wife-unit is watching her shows, or I
| get bored but still want to be in the same area as her; I can
| play this on the couch without it being intrusive.
|
| -kids playground. When the kids are at a playground I'll start
| playing as a way to pass my time until it's time to leave
| and/or I need to play with the kids too.
|
| Both situations can have frequent interruptions, IMHO the Steam
| Decks' ability to suspend the game and then let me resume
| without a problem is incredibly helpful.
|
| I also LOVE that because it's a "real PC", I don't need to
| fight with config oddities with linux on a laptop. Plug in an
| external monitor/keyboard/mouse and you have everything you
| need.
| metamet wrote:
| I've been on the fence about getting one. The one thing
| that's slowing down my decision making is whether or not the
| matte anti-glare screen is worth the premium price, or if the
| regular screen glare is fine enough inside. Also seen some
| people say a screen protector works, but can bubble with the
| heat.
|
| Happen to have any insight on this? $360 vs $540 on sale
| right now is tempting. Upgrading the storage to a larger NVMe
| is likely to happen either way, so the premium price would
| just be for the screen.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I have the 256GB version which has regular screen. Glare
| hasn't bothered me inside at all in the year and a half
| I've owned it. However, I have not played it outside - in
| the shade / twilight it may be OK depending on your
| personal threshold. In sunlight, forget about it :)
|
| FWIW I've added a microSD card and it's fine. Updating the
| internal nVME is not on my radar, because the whole point
| of SteamDeck, for me and my personal use, is for it to be
| "play and forget", as opposed to a hobby in and of itself
| :). YMMV :-)
| ranger207 wrote:
| The screen on the 512GB model is glossy, not matte, but I
| haven't had any issues with glare on it. IDK about the 64GB
| and 256GB screens though
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| I'm about to disagree with another user. The 512GB version
| (The one I own) is best described as 'semi-matte'. You can
| use it inside and not worry about 90% of potential glare.
| Outside use: depends/sometimes able to use.
|
| Based on videos I have seen online, the 'glossy' version is
| almost mirror-like. So ANYTHING would be an improvement
| over that.
| thih9 wrote:
| CIV 5 is also on Switch, that handheld also got praise for
| good on/off UX.
|
| Curious, does anyone own both devices? Is there any
| noticeable difference in device sleep support between Steam
| Deck and Switch?
| robrtsql wrote:
| Switch's sleep is probably a little better. I think waking
| up is slightly faster, and it discharges less battery while
| it's asleep.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| The main feature I notice to be lacking on Deck in this
| regard is that you can't download updates while the device
| is "off." This doesn't really affect me personally because
| I can do background downloads with the kind of games I play
| without issue, but if I played AAA FPS type games I would
| probably find this quite annoying, since those games
| generally have large downloads and also require as much
| disk performance as you can muster.
| elxx wrote:
| One underrated use case that hasn't been mentioned here is that
| you also have the option to install Windows on it and then it's
| just like any other gaming PC but portable. No need to faff
| about with Proton and Steam or worry about compatibility, every
| game on every storefront just simply works.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > every game on every storefront just simply works.
|
| And you lose all the important aspect of the Steam Deck,
| which is hardware/software integration.
| birracerveza wrote:
| It's a (kind of) portable PC. A much clunkier version of the
| Switch, which for some that might be a good thing as the Switch
| is mostly a toy.
|
| It's not for everyone for sure, but it's an excellent way to
| have every PC game, including emulators, on the go... Which is
| basically 90% of all games ever created.
|
| Personally I wouldn't take it outside my house, but I could see
| myself bringing it with me if I were to travel a lot.
| BizarreByte wrote:
| I use mine as a desktop replacement since I don't want a full
| PC sitting around. I dock it via USBC, use desktop mode, and
| it's pretty good. It has more than enough power for me, and
| it's nice to be able to undock it and just take it somewhere
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I do wish the desktop mode was slightly better when portable.
| It was a little inconvenient issuing CLI commands from my bed
| last night. Still better than doing it on a phone screen
| though for sure.
| esjeon wrote:
| I really love it. Though I barely play outside, it's still
| fantastic as a portable console. Amazing compatibility backed
| by (almost) butter smooth UI. Some people pick SteamOS as the
| number one reason to buy Steam Deck.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Some people pick SteamOS as the number one reason to buy
| Steam Deck.
|
| much better than Windows on the ROG Ally for sure
| drewrv wrote:
| People (rightly) talk about how great it is at playing steam
| games. One thing that's often overlooked is that it is
| excellent at emulation too.
|
| I've played with emulators in the past but they're always a
| little laggy, or the controls aren't quite right, or there is
| some other nagging issue. EmuDeck isn't perfect but it handles
| a lot of the hassle and is the only setup where I have 100%
| completed the old mario and zelda games of my childhood.
| https://www.emudeck.com/
| christefano wrote:
| Great point about emulation! I thought of a few Retro Games
| Corps videos I've seen when I saw your comment. Is that you?
| braymundo wrote:
| I absolutely love it. It even runs Diablo IV incredibly well,
| so I alternate between my gaming laptop and the Deck.
| jrm4 wrote:
| It's _literally_ the best piece of hardware since the iPhone;
| and unlike the iPhone it proves that you can have your cake and
| eat it too when it comes to "usability for regular people" AND
| "hackability for geeks."
| [deleted]
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Love it.
|
| One feature that doesn't get mentioned or appreciated enough is
| the perfect sleep capability. I have 2 young kids and busy
| work/family life so I struggle to dedicate gaming time. I might
| get 20min or I might get interrupted in 30s after I sit down.
| No problem! You hit the power button and it sleeps instantly,
| and whenever you have time next you seamlessly and perfectly
| pick up where you were. This removal of overhead for booting
| and loading the game makes a massive difference for people like
| myself.
|
| Otherwise, its interface is great and gets out of the way.
| There is any number of awesome games available and I've found
| I've played games I might not have on pc anyway. And a lot of
| games have seamless cloud saves too - for example I'm playing
| witcher 3 now and I can play here and there during the day on
| steam deck and then if I have time for a bigger session I pick
| it up on pc.
|
| Games I've enjoyed on it include outer wilds (CANNOT recommend
| that one enough!), steam world dig 2, Dex, into the breach,
| backbone, and a lot of others.
|
| Edit / p.s.: for me it's size is a plus btw. With Kishi+phone,
| Nintendo ds and even Nintendo switch, my fingers tingle and
| wrists hurt after a while. The wider and more natural spacing /
| angle of the larger steam deck means I can play with no such
| ergonomic issues.
| bufo wrote:
| I also love that feature for the exact same reason!
|
| Somewhat disappointed with Outer Wilds though ;)
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Interesting; I found the baseline Outer Wilds one of the
| most original and fascinating adventures of last few years.
| I can't wait for my kids to get older so we can (re)play it
| together - I want to see them make the same connections and
| their eyes light up and feel all clever! :->
|
| (It is a bit of a slow burn; but if you've invested time
| and it doesn't quite meet the hype, fair enough :)
| dontwearitout wrote:
| Outer Wilds was an incredible, absolutely unforgettable
| experience for me. What didn't you like about it?
| bentley wrote:
| _Outer Wilds_ gave me plenty of enjoyment, but isn't a
| favorite. I got through nearly the entire game on my own.
| Near the end there were two sequences (the collapsing
| ground area and the sandy /thorny area) where I knew
| roughly where I wanted to go, but making a single mistake
| meant restarting from scratch, then sitting and waiting
| about _eight minutes_ for the stars to align so I could
| try again. I finally resorted to a guide to navigate
| those two paths.
|
| Later, I found the final sequence so frustrating that I
| gave up and watched the rest on YouTube--and was glad I
| did, because that ending would not have landed for me, at
| all. It reminded me (to its detriment) of _Majora's Mask_
| , a game that actually did a good job of convincing me to
| care about the NPCs and their situations over the course
| of the story.
|
| Funnily enough, _Outer Wilds_ has been on my mind lately,
| because I just played through _Tunic_ , a different (and
| for me, much more enjoyable) take on the "play the game
| blind" concept.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You can nap at any campfire to fast forward time, by the
| way.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Fair Enough! I agree with you there, and I did drop the
| game once for a week or three because I couldn't nail
| platforming sequences. My memory just erased those bits
| and focused on fun parts :->
|
| Can you let me know about Tunic? I first heard of it
| literally yesterday when I googled for "Zelda but on
| Steam Deck"...
| RegularOpossum wrote:
| Absolutely love it. Between work travel, doctor's appointments,
| and just not being locked to the desk or couch, the portable
| nature has completely changed how I play and think about
| playing videogames.
| izacus wrote:
| > For people that own a Steam Deck, how do you like it?
|
| It's one of the best hardware purchases I've done in years.
| It's surprising how well it managed to balance "It just works"
| with "You can still customize/modify/install things you need.".
| It's not perfect (screen could be better, battery life could be
| better, it's a bit chunky).
|
| > And how do you use it?
|
| I use it as a "secondary" gaming device. I have a gaming PC
| where I play games with a Steam library. Since Deck shares that
| library and seamlessly syncs save games, I can sneak in some
| game time before sleep, when travelling or when commuting with
| a lot of game time. When I have more time, I usually move back
| to my PC where the games and saves are waiting for me.
|
| The fact that it goes instantly to sleep and suspends games is
| amazing - it really reduces a lot of friction for short gaming
| sessions because you don't need to wait for games to load.
|
| If you don't play games though... it's probably pointless to
| get one.
| darreninthenet wrote:
| If I had a game say on GOG instead of Steam, how seamless or
| usable would that be please?
| goosedragons wrote:
| Mildly annoying to setup sometimes, use Lutris or Heroic as
| others said but once it's done it's more or less the same
| as the Steam version. Lutris and Heroic let you easily
| setup shortcuts to Steam so it will appear in the game UI,
| you can use all the same features as you would for a Steam
| game, framerate limit etc.,. Occasionally you can run into
| issues with the GOG version that don't crop up with the
| Steam version but usually the Lutris installer does a good
| job. Heroic is a bit hit or miss IME. Epic and EA games
| work too but sometimes DRM adds an extra layer. It's about
| as complicated as getting a game from say 2005 working on a
| modern PC.
| izacus wrote:
| Installing them can be annoying (switch to desktop mode,
| run Heroic Launcher, find the right Proton version that
| works), but after initial setup they run seamlessly. Heroic
| Launcher also now supports GoG Cloud Savegame sync so it
| hasn't been seriously problematic.
|
| (About half the games I play on Deck are from GoG.)
| [deleted]
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You can install GOG games the same way you do on any Linux
| desktop from the Deck's handheld mode (usually through
| Lutris or Heroic). After that, you add the games to Steam
| as a "non-Steam game" and it'll show up in handheld mode
| just like any Steam game.
|
| Installing new GOG games from the GOG library isn't quite
| as easy as installing Steam games is, and you don't get the
| extra testing and verification for running games on Linux
| that you get on the Deck.
|
| You do get all of the benefits from the Steam UI, though,
| like controller remapping and game specific performance
| profiles.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| Like others mentioned, it's totally possible to use another
| launcher. I have Cyberpunk on GOG for example and a couple
| games installed I bought on Epic.
|
| But, the Deck absolutely 100% works the way Valve intended:
| I find myself preferring to purchase games on Steam because
| it's easy, even if it's a couple bucks more or I have to
| wait for the Steam sale. It's just a better experience.
|
| My Steam account is possibly most oldest active account
| anyways and I have always preferred it, but if you
| primarily use another store it might be a bit annoying to
| have to do all the manual steps for the majority of your
| games
| iuafhiuah wrote:
| Seconding Lutris. Just install Lutris from the Flatpak
| store and login to your GOG account.[0] I have played a
| couple of games this one. The only one that wouldn't
| install was the first Jazz Jackrabbit which I didn't debug.
| I have a feeling it was because by default it used the
| Linux installer rather than just running the Windows
| executable via WINE/proton.
|
| [0] https://github.com/lutris/lutris/wiki
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Love it. It's replaced my gaming rig.
|
| Caveat: I'm not a frame rate chaser and I'm not obsessed with
| graphics quality, so a lower end GPU running at 40hz is
| perfectly fine by me.
|
| The huge win for me is sleep mode. The fact I can pick up my
| deck, play during some downtime, then put the thing to sleep
| and pick it up later, is huge. Couple that with the fact I can
| play anywhere and it allows me to play during those fragments
| of time when, previously, it was just too much of a pain to
| trundle off to my desk, fire up my rig, and get a game going.
|
| And the range of control options means short of a fast twitch
| FPSes, where I still prefer m&kb (tbf I was never that good,
| and a lot of folks do just fine with stick+touchpad+gyro or a
| flick stick setup), there's little I can't play on the deck
| after some tweaking to get the controls the way I like.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Just to pile on with everyone else, it's my main gaming device.
|
| The only times I pick up my Switch is for Tears of the Kingdom.
| I put my old gaming PC to storage because I hadn't turned it on
| for 6 months (too shitty to bother selling).
|
| I own an Xbox Series X, but the times I can hog the only big TV
| in the house are rare. The Deck I can just pick up and start
| playing where I left off. I also take it with me on commutes
| and sometimes play it at the office to wind down or keep the
| front of my brain occupied so the rest can think in peace =)
|
| Even if new games became too resource intensive for it to run
| starting tomorrow, I'd still have literal hundreds of games I
| can play with it. And that's not including emulation. Combine
| that with the readily available spare parts and upgrades, I'll
| be keeping this for years.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| I love it. In fact I haven't turned on my PC with the intent to
| play games since I bought the deck. I highly recommend it
| particularly if you have a busy schedule and want to be able to
| jump in and out of a game once in a while.
| zecg wrote:
| It's absolutely amazing. The screen is the only weak point and
| I don't mean the resolution, as I'd rather have 1280*800 native
| for that size than FHD and the associated performance hit, but
| it's a bit uneven in lighting, especially in a place near the
| top where it seems to be affixed and I have a hot (permagreen)
| pixel. Of the rest, the form factor is brilliant, it's very
| ergonomic and nice to hold. Scaling of battery drain with
| performance demands will seem like magic to someone used to
| Windows laptops. The software stack and the amount of control
| it affords the end user is easily the best part, nothing is
| locked down.
| gavinsyancey wrote:
| You could probably RMA it for the hot pixel to get that fixed
| 127 wrote:
| It's much more ergonomic gaming from the couch or moving around
| the house, than hunching over a PC. Persona 4, Phoenix Wright,
| Tangle Tower, Halls of Torment, older action adventure games.
| Going through a lot of my backlog as it's easy to just pause
| and come back in small increments.
| nyir wrote:
| It's great, just not fantastic (yet). I'm kind of eager for
| further hardware revisions, but on the other hand, I've already
| used it a lot when I otherwise wouldn't have had the option to
| start up the big desktop for gaming (commuting, or even just to
| use some time in between things). And while I bought a Switch
| before, the main benefit here is of course the entire Steam
| library being available, so no buying the same title more than
| once.
|
| Biggest dislike is the on-screen keyboard. On the one hand it's
| usable with the two trackpads, but, I still take way to long to
| enter text, even compared to a phone screen. It's also very
| slow to appear and bugs out too often. I really hope that that
| can be improved so it can pop up and disappear without
| noticeable delay.
|
| I'm not sure about underpowered, I was actually quite happy to
| install some rather resource-intensive (Windows!) games and
| while it's getting quite warm, I never ran out of battery
| immediately, but yes, if you've got to save energy, better turn
| on all the options for that. And that's actually quite cool to
| be able to turn down energy consumption on a whim, or with per-
| game profiles, etc.
|
| As long as they're going to optimise the experience more and
| not just keep it as-is, because "it works fine", then it could
| be a really good platform going forward.
|
| Same question for the dock though, is it worth it?
| iuafhiuah wrote:
| I have had mine since April 2022 so I have ~14 months of usage
| on it.
|
| It has become the only way I play games now. The single USB-C
| is great, I plug it into the same dock [a Dell WD19TBS] I use
| for my work MBP and personal XPS which provides dual screen,
| keyboard, mouse, Ethernet, additional USB ports, power, etc
| over a single cable.
|
| I use it any time I'm travelling which can be anything from 20
| mins to 15 hours. Depending on which game I'm playing, I can
| still get ~6 hours of battery in a single charge and it still
| charges quick enough. It uses the USB Power Delivery 3.0
| standard so any >=45 W charger from a phone or battery pack
| will work.
|
| This is a bit like the original Switch adverts when it first
| came out. Where people are playing a game on their sofa at
| home, then take the console with them to a party on a roof
| somewhere.
|
| I thought I would never use the trackpads but they are probably
| the killer input. I use them extensively, they've very
| sensitive which makes them perfect for fine input controls, and
| they have rumble motors in them so it feels like you're
| physically moving something.
|
| The suspend-resume is fantastic, it's very quick and works even
| though games were not designed for this usecase like they are
| on consoles.
|
| One complaint I've heard a few times if from people who have
| already spent a lot on a powerful PC to play games, and are
| then disappointed that games are less impressive on a device
| optimised to run at 10W. I was already used to running AAA
| games on low->medium graphics so in some cases the Steam Deck
| was actually an upgrade for me.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I've clocked over 100 hours of playtime on mine since buying
| one in January. It's great. I've especially used it for reading
| visual novels.
|
| (Unfortunately Valve broke the per-platform playtime reporting
| that SteamDB had, so I can only say that I've played for at
| least 105 hours.)
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Have you done any ie- PC-98 emulation? I've been debating
| whether to just host a VM dedicated to that and remote in or
| try running natively on the deck.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Nope, sorry.
| sersi wrote:
| oh if you try, can you report back as a reply to this? I'm
| very curious myself...
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| I REALLY like it. It feels great for a lot of reasons.
|
| I like being able to detach from my gaming computer but still
| make progress on my RPG games. The device is very hacker
| friendly--- valve has done an amazing job creating something
| that is user friendly (versus user hostile e.g. Windows). The
| device is able to render good graphics without (much) slowdown.
| I like connecting it to my TV and using it like a console. I
| like knowing the games I buy for it are accessible on my PC.
| It's great.
| LocutusOfBorges wrote:
| As a counterpoint to the other comments here - I've been quite
| disappointed with mine.
|
| It's a wonderfully flexible device, and extremely fun to tinker
| with - but the ergonomics are shockingly bad. I don't know if
| it's the size, weight or shape to blame, but it quite reliably
| gives me the worst hand/wrist pain I've ever experienced from a
| device like it. I've tried plenty of purported solutions -
| adjusting my grip to various positions, attaching grip tape to
| the handles, etc - and none of them have made any difference.
|
| I played it for two hours last week and it gave me such severe
| hand cramp that I wasn't able to fully close my fingers without
| pain for three days. The only way to fix the pain is to simply
| not use the console.
|
| There are scattered accounts along these lines on places like
| /r/SteamDeck - I gather I'm not really unique in this respect.
|
| It's tremendously unfortunate, really - it's excellent at what
| it does, but I expect I'll have to just sell mine and hope that
| a future revision to the hardware makes it a little less
| painful to use.
| gpderetta wrote:
| I have the same issue if I try to hold it suspended
| unfortunately. It gets very painful very quickly. If I lay my
| wrist on something, like a cushion on my lap for example,
| then it is fine.
| likeclockwork wrote:
| Maybe you need to do some strength training.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Not the answer you're looking for? But I would say other than
| selling it, drop it into a dock and then use whatever
| controller you're happy with.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > hand/wrist pain I've ever experienced from a device like
| it.
|
| It could be the weight? it's heavier than most handhelds
| lawn wrote:
| It's incredible.
|
| I've barely played games the last 5 years or so, but the Steam
| Deck has been much better than I ever thought it would be and
| it has brought back gaming for me.
|
| The instant standby/resume from inside any game, from anywhere,
| is a true game changer. If I have 5-10 min somewhere I can jump
| into a game and be back in a second.
|
| Another use-case is playing some mouse/keyboard games in the
| bed or sofa. I've been playing tons of FTL and the trackpads
| work exceptionality well (for slower games or games you can
| pause).
|
| Or just emulate almost any older game (and many newer switch
| games).
| edude03 wrote:
| I guess I'm a naysayer but I hate mine. It's so big in its case
| that's it's impractical to take on trips with me. The games I
| happen to want to play don't work on it without hacks and I
| find it pretty uncomfortable to hold.
|
| I recently got both a GPD Win 3 and 4 and I've found they're
| much better in all the areas I care about. They're more
| expensive of course but better to spend more on something that
| you use than spend less for something you don't.
| hugocbp wrote:
| I love it and ended up using it a lot more than I expected (and
| a lot more than I used the Xbox Series X and PS5 that I bought
| a little bit before).
|
| Something about how quickly you can turn the device on and off
| and just start playing really makes me want to play more.
|
| I've been playing different kind of games I play on console
| (Hades, Vampire Survivors, Hollow Knight, Brotato), just
| because they also help with the quick sessions.
|
| I find myself picking it up several times a day when I need a
| break, and even when I'm stuck in some task at work.
|
| As others have said, it is truly an outstanding achievement by
| Valve. Most things just work.
|
| Of all my electronic purchases in the last 5 years or so, the
| Deck is by far the one that had the best cost/benefit. And the
| one that surpassed my expectations.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Bought a switched, but eventually gave it away.
|
| But the deck stays.
| sylware wrote:
| Do you know: titles with a native elf/linux build which does not
| run in the official steam runtime won't be validated.
|
| Some titles are getting c++ ABI/glibc issues because if they
| build "outside" the steam official steam runtime they will be hit
| full frontal by c++ and glibc planned obsolescence (they would
| have to control in a fine grained way the symbols/versions they
| link their binaries with... feature not provided by the
| sourceware binutils...).
| mariusor wrote:
| I mean, Steam/linux32 is the "platform" to release games on for
| linux. As much as I'd like to compile random game binaries on
| my own machine with my own glibc that's probably never going to
| happen.
| sylware wrote:
| Some devs do link their elf/linux binaries on arch elf/linux,
| and then have symbol version issues once running in the steam
| runtime. They have to link with the steam runtime and not
| with the arch elf/linux binaries.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Proton is such a huge achievement.
|
| The SteamDeck isn't for me (don't care for mobile form factor).
| But this work also benefits me on a Chromebook using its
| experimental Steam support. It runs Steam and games in a
| container that works well with Proton.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| The company that's really behind Proton [1] sells ,,CrossOver"
| as a commercial product to run Windows applications on MacOS,
| Linux and ChromeOS with enhanced compatibility compared to free
| Wine. IIRC they started out to selling ,,CrossOver Office"
| running MS Office seamlessly on a Linux desktop. If you want to
| support their effort you could buy a license for under $100 and
| run many Windows titles and games w/o emulation or the Steam
| client.
|
| [1] https://www.codeweavers.com/
| afruitpie wrote:
| For those on macOS, there is an excellent new project called
| Whisky [0] built around CrossOver and Apple's Game Porting
| Toolkit.
|
| [0] https://github.com/IsaacMarovitz/Whisky
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I bought a license two years ago and the experience was not
| good. I admire their work quite a bit, but that little tiny
| extra bit of glue really makes a all the difference.
| hoten wrote:
| I only have a single usecase under my belt, which was to
| play Age of Empires 2 DE - and I was pleasantly surprised
| that it was just a matter of searching for it and
| installing a single "bottle". It felt like magic software.
| parabyl wrote:
| Proton is really quite incredible as a compatibility layer,
| I've not seen any performance drops (if anything, only small
| performance gains, which I assume is due to fewer background
| processes in the OS), but most incredible is the frequency with
| which Proton is updated and worked on.
|
| I'd tried gaming on linux before and gave up after a week or
| two of configuration attempts. I had put it off for ages and
| tried with proton on a dual boot system earlier this year, and
| instantly had access to everything installed on windows. It
| also means I can actually recommend linux to people with older
| machines trying to squeeze a little extra out of their
| lifespan, without having to tell them it's an uphill battle to
| get gaming working as expected.
| NovaDudely wrote:
| The one very specific oddity depending on how old the system
| is, at make sure the GPU supports Vulkan. Yes, you can force
| it down to OpenGL but compatibility is low and buggy. Not the
| fault.of proton as they are just focusing on the path
| forward.
| m00dy wrote:
| oh finally, we see linux gaming rising.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ha ha. In fact I started out building my game for three
| platforms (MacOS, Windows, Linux). I have a CMake file and all
| was good.
|
| But after CLion's free period ended and they wanted to charge
| me, I started just testing my Windows build on the Steam Deck
| and was surprised at how seamless their Proton layer was. I
| ended up not shipping a Linux-only version of the game.
|
| Honestly too, even supporting the _two_ platforms is a bit of a
| pain -- a third would be unwelcome.
| esjeon wrote:
| ... but is this _the_ year of linux desktop...?
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Year of Serenity OS
|
| I gave up on Linux desktop long time ago.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Don't know about desktop [1], but it could be the year of the
| Linux handheld.
|
| [1] my personal YotLD was '99.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >the year of the Linux handheld.
|
| Android achieved that many years ago.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Android is based on Linux but it's still not open source,
| got a lot of closed source stuff on top of it. I wouldn't
| exactly call it "Linux" which generally means GNU/Linux
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Android is as much Linux as it is SpongeBob SquarePants
| Battle for Bikini bottom. It runs Linux, but Linux is not
| its OS.
| pdntspa wrote:
| It's the year of the linux palmtop
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Honestly, if Valve gives their Steam Machines concept another
| go with their much improved compatibility and operating
| system, I think they may have an actual chance. They'll need
| to come up with a replacement for their terrible Steam
| controller that tried and failed to be a mouse, but if they
| just stick the two sides of the Deck together I think they're
| already almost there.
|
| They'd also need to keep costs down like they do with the
| Deck and that's going to be a real challenge, but if they can
| get a controller + desktop out for about the price of the
| Deck but without the handheld performance restrictions, I
| think they can gain popularity.
| bjord wrote:
| Out of curiosity, did you personally actually use the steam
| controller? From what I've read/heard, it was a bit tough
| to get used to, but appreciated by many. My impression was
| also that the steam deck touch pads were just the next step
| in [the steam controller]'s evolution, rather than
| something else altogether.
|
| All of that being said, I've unfortunately never had the
| opportunity to try it myself, so I don't really know.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I have one. I wanted to like it, but it just lacked. The
| feedback on the large directional buttons is limited, the
| controller isn't terribly comfortable to hold, and the
| ABXY buttons are at quite an awkward position. The
| trackpad to play PC games was an interesting idea, but it
| just didn't work for me because it lacked precision or
| range.
|
| My biggest issue is that the touchpad lack precision that
| a normal joystick would provide, and you need quite some
| force to push the directional buttons underneath the
| DPAD.
|
| It wasn't a complete design failure. I do miss the button
| on the end of the triggers, that was a smart choice. I
| find the Deck paddles a lot harder to press than the ones
| on the Steam controller.
|
| The deck took everything the Steam controller tried to do
| and just did it better. The trackpads is still there,
| including the force feedback, but it's no longer used in
| place of usual controls.
|
| With these lessons learned, I think Valve will be able to
| design an awesome controller!
| becquerel wrote:
| It is for me, personally. I moved over in 2022 to PopOS and
| haven't looked back once. Gaming is good (even better than
| Windows for some titles, like Elden Ring). Coding is better.
| Web-browsing is identical. OS annoyances are vastly better. I
| can stream myself playing Cyberpunk on Twitch, I can edit
| images in Krita.
|
| There's nothing I want to do on desktop Linux that I can't
| anymore. That's really kind of insane for me to accept, but
| it's real. Well done guys, it took like thirty years but you
| made a good OS.
|
| The caveat is I don't do anything highly specialised like
| high-end video-editing, which is where I hear the big gaps
| still are.
| sylens wrote:
| what GPU do you have in your desktop? I have a Nvidia 3070
| and have been hesitant to switch over as I heard the
| support isn't as good as AMD
| ZekeSulastin wrote:
| The easiest thing to do would be to just try it as long
| as your distro packages or otherwise manages the nvidia
| driver (which PopOS does). I don't use desktop Linux
| anymore, but when I had a 2060 I dual-booted it with Arch
| (btw) and it worked fine except for the whole EGLStreams-
| instead-of-GBM-for-Wayland thing - and that's since been
| resolved.
| ekianjo wrote:
| nobody cares about the year of the Linux desktop anymore.
| Linux is already everywhere.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Linux is only on servers/routers.
|
| And locked in Android's attic, in a padded cell.
| shaggie76 wrote:
| It's an impressive technical achievement, no question, but we're
| bedeviled by elusive crashes that seem to be exposed by some
| nuance of the Proton (WINE) emulation layer (at least 2% of our
| game crashes and at least 25% of our launcher crashes which is
| disproportionate given that only half a percent of our players
| are using some version of WINE).
|
| So I wonder about the metric for "playable" -- is a 4x greater
| chance of crashing when using your Steam Deck vs your PC still
| "playable"? And I wonder if players, who can't tell if a crash is
| related to emulation or a bug in the game, will blame the game
| developer when it isn't really fair to hold them accountable.
| Uvix wrote:
| Depends on how much it's crashing in the first place. The
| difference between a 1/2500 event and a 1/10000 event is
| probably not going to be noticed, but the difference between a
| 1/2 and a 1/8 event probably is.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > but we're bedeviled by elusive crashes that seem to be
| exposed by some nuance of the Proton (WINE) emulation layer (at
| least 2% of our game crashes and at least 25% of our launcher
| crashes which is disproportionate given that only half a
| percent of our players are using some version of WINE).
|
| Do Windows games work on Linux? No, there's little Valve can do
| to change that, bless their hearts. But it's a very Reddit
| Social Media friendly statistic. It doesn't square with the
| reality from people like you, who actually make games with an
| audience.
|
| And anyway, if you want to build for Linux, use Unity, so
| Proton is kind of a moot point, and also, you'll be doing that
| to sell on Switch anyway, porting your game like Vampire
| Survivor, Slay the Spire, etc. did, if you care about that
| audience. Vulkan will be fully deprecated before Proton can
| substantively reimplement enough Windows for non-middleware
| games. And anyway, Vulkan is awful, it's poorly supported by
| all the vendors, including Valve's own, but again, it doesn't
| matter.
|
| The bigger picture: Steam already sells so many copies of games
| to so many people who spend 0 minutes playing those games. The
| idea of playing a game is enough to sell it. So in a sense,
| does it matter if your game doesn't work for the people who
| bought it? Like in the sense of objective reality?
|
| RGB? People buy that stuff. It wouldn't be on everything if it
| didn't sell.
|
| The Steam Deck is a cozy idea of gaming people like to buy.
| They could also blow $300 on a video card overpowered for
| playing Overwatch and League. These trends don't make sense in
| an objective reality, but the product is already psychological
| for so many people.
|
| Brad Wardell, pariah and guy who was, ultimately, totally
| utterly right, figured this out ages ago:
|
| > You focus on people who buy your stuff... One of the jokes...
| is how "ugly" WindowBlinds skins are (though there are plenty
| of awesome ones too). But the thing is, the people who buy
| WindowBlinds tend to like a different style of skin than the
| people who would never buy it in the first
| place.(https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/303512/piracy-pc-
| gamin... 2008)
|
| And anyway, who cares? At the end of the day, you go and buy
| Windows on your handheld. Would people spend $15 on an OEM
| license of Windows for the Deck to have their games not have
| this problem? Probably. It is good for the planet that Valve is
| trying to make WINE emulation work, but it's not doing anything
| for the consumer - Unity is, middlewares are - and it's not
| doing anything for the game developer - more games would sell
| if it was just Windows - so really, pass your judgement in an
| objective reality. I really don't see the point of DXVK.
| dcchambers wrote:
| It's an astonishing achievement from Valve. The plug-and-play
| nature is truly miraculous...I expected to have to do a ton of
| hackery to make games work but the vast majority of things I want
| to play work great out of the box. I'm a very happy Deck owner
| from day one, despite having a relatively powerful gaming PC and
| a Switch.
|
| As a dad with two very young kids I don't get much time for
| gaming, but the Deck helps me find that time and I am loving
| playing through some of my backlog of controller-friendly games.
|
| Also a plug for https://www.protondb.com/ which has thousands of
| user-submitted reviews and optimization fixes/tweaks for playing
| games on the Steam Deck.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| I think they're to be commended on focusing in areas that
| aren't obvious, but have a lot of benefit.
|
| My immediate example for this is _' gamescope'_. It's like a
| mini compositor that really improves the edges between
| X/Wayland
|
| For those using Linux outside of a Deck, look into setting it
| up!
| gotlou wrote:
| This is amazing news, and I've found that thanks to Proton
| patches being upstreamed by Valve and CodeWeavers, not to mention
| the Wine community, that games that run on Proton tend to run
| using vanilla Wine as well, thus improving compatibility for Wine
| in general!
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I have the 'higher' version and I was frankly astonished at how
| well it handled Kingdom Come. Absolutely ridiculous. Yes, it does
| get hot when I do that. Normally, I use it to play path of exile
| when I am down.
| metaphor wrote:
| I suspect the metrics are actually better than reported.
|
| For example, _Skul: The Hero Slayer_ [1][2] is a relatively
| popular indie game whose Steam Deck compatibility is officially
| "Unsupported" because "graphics settings cannot be configured to
| run well", but if you ignored the warning and installed it
| anyways, you'd be scratching your head in confusion trying to
| find anything broken compared to PC. Imagining NEOWIZ/SouthPAW
| Games is liable to have lost quite a bit of revenue because of
| this seemingly incorrect compatibility listing alone.
|
| [1]
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1147560/Skul_The_Hero_Sla...
|
| [2] https://steamdb.info/app/1147560/charts/
| lohit244 wrote:
| Still waiting to get wider availability in other countries.
| Probably should just wait till Steam Deck 2 at this point
| taink wrote:
| I think they were planning to support the first generation
| fairly long-term, so you probably don't want to wait for a
| Steam Deck 2.
|
| I think I've seen people that can't get their hands on it
| through "official" means get their own by arranging a delivery
| through someone else on Reddit for instance. I don't know if
| you'd be comfortable with that solution though.
|
| EDIT: they are planning to support the Steam Deck long-term,
| but they said nothing about the first generation -- my bad[1].
|
| [1]:
| https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamdeck/images/pres...
| smileybarry wrote:
| I cross-shipped mine via a US proxy address. Cost more but I
| don't regret it.
|
| Also -- check local resellers, some importers just set up a
| deal with Valve but don't appear on Steam.
| ekianjo wrote:
| You can probably ask someone on HN to send it over to you.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Is the "% Verified" going down just because the number of games
| that are either "Playable" (or "Unsupported" is going up?
| cloverich wrote:
| Though I've long since given up on my gaming days, I purchased a
| Steam deck last month, mostly out of impulse. I'm frankly
| astonished at the amount of playable games, and also the amount
| of quality indie games out there. I spent $50 picking on-sale
| indies and quickly had a backlog. Its been more enjoyable (and
| surprisingly comfortable) than I expected too. I'm definitely in
| the very casual crowd at this point, gaming an hour or two a week
| on the couch, and its hit that sweet spot.
|
| Purchased the base model; overall impressed with the quality of
| the device too. So much more comfortable than I was expecting, I
| just rest it on my lap. Its great.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| You are discovering indie games?
|
| You are in for a treat!
|
| I essentially play only indie games, with rare exceptions once
| or twice per year.
| yayitswei wrote:
| How do you discover good indie games to play?
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Here and there usually, browsing steam by rating works
| decently.
|
| I'll throw out a recommendation for _Dave The Diver_ , fun
| little oddball game.
| lb4r wrote:
| I've found many good ones just from looking at games with
| high review score on MetaCritic. This is how I found Hollow
| Knight and Chained Echoes, for example.
|
| On a side note, it's quite astounding what just a handful
| of people, sometimes a single individual, can accomplish.
| It becomes quite clear that the main limiting factor when
| trying to create a good game is simply your own imagination
| and creativity. A large team with a huge budget seems to be
| just as much of a curse as it is a blessing.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Honestly, steam. I look at steam queue occasionally, I also
| look at "similar to this" section on a game I played (store
| page). I search for tags of things I like, I also use the
| steam experiments (although most of them are integrated)
| and I make a point of looking at all games on discounts
| when there are "festivals" in the dedicated festival page.
| Then world of mouth.
|
| I also make a point of grabbing stuff only when positive
| rating is 90% or more (recent) and of things that have at
| least ~5000 reviews or more. There are exceptions
| obviously, but this helps a lot to trim down the things I
| don't love, my backlog is already infinite.
|
| I can give you a list of my favorites if you want and you
| can trim down. As I said, world of mouth!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kabouseng wrote:
| Cannot recommend Adam Millard's youtube channel enough.
| Every year he reviews his top games, many of them make it
| to my wishlist. ex.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0Eo7fwGBJ4 You can have a
| look at other years as well.
| klik99 wrote:
| Sibling answers are good but if you want to go deep,
| twitter/game dev mastodon is a great place. I try to follow
| anything that looks or sounds interesting, though it often
| takes years before actual release.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Looking through Steam sales for sub-$10 titles with "Very
| Positive" or "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews is a good
| filter.
|
| Some of my favorites over the years include Slay the Spire,
| Celeste, Vampire Survivors, and FTL.
|
| Edit: How can I forget the "holy trinity" of mystery indie
| games? Return of the Obra Dinn, Outer Wilds, and Her Story.
| These are brilliant games that really make you feel like a
| detective.
| 33W wrote:
| The makers of FTL have another game, Into The Breach, and
| it is available on iOS for free with Netflix.
| esrauch wrote:
| It's also only $7.50 on Steam right now
| two_handfuls wrote:
| Can vouch for this game, it's super fun.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| So many hours spent playing FTL. I was against getting
| Netflix subscription (we already had 3 streaming apps)
| until one day I noticed Into the Breach is available on
| mobile if you have a Netflix subscription. Can't believe
| I'm subscribing to a streaming service to play an indie
| game (wife turns out enjoy Netflix though).
| gabythenerd wrote:
| If you haven't tried it, play The Case of the Golden
| Idol. I liked it as much as Return of the Obra Dinn and
| it was one of my GOTY last year.
| freetanga wrote:
| This. And if you like detective games try Shadows of
| Doubt too. A persistent city with ongoing crimes and full
| relationships among all citizens.
| emptyfile wrote:
| [dead]
| tempest_ wrote:
| I loved playing Outer Wilds but boy did it make me car
| sick, had to give it up because I could only play 20
| minutes then feel sick.
| deng wrote:
| Take a look at Buried Treasure:
|
| https://buried-treasure.org/
|
| I have found some great recommendations there I would have
| never found otherwise.
| christophilus wrote:
| PSA: Two of my favorite games, Limbo and Inside, are on sale
| now for a bundle deal of $3. That's a great value.
| causality0 wrote:
| Nice to see at least _somebody_ is actually putting their
| games on sale. The last few Steam sales have been pretty sad.
| Back in the day you could look at your wishlist and the
| average game would be 50% off, with lots of 75%s and 90%s.
| These days they act like giving you 20% off a five year old
| game is some big sale.
| nouveaux wrote:
| It's probably a matter of tastes but the games I'm
| interested in are on deep discounts. I only picked up a few
| because I already have a big backlog. The sales are there
| but it depends on the game.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| That depends on what on your wishlist though. I just bought
| Halo collection (90% off, includes 6 games) and Sleeping
| Dogs (also 90% off) for a grand total of $5 (localized
| pricing).
| Falkon1313 wrote:
| I just opened my wishlist and everything is 50-90% off
| except for two items one of which is a relatively new DLC
| expansion (other DLCs for the same game are 50% off).
|
| I really shouldn't buy more games now though, when I have
| so many that I haven't even played yet or barely played.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I picked up Forza Horizon 5 for 50% off and Doom Eternal
| for 67% off. Cyberpunk is 50% off, Back 4 Blood is 80% off,
| Control is 75% off. It's not _everything_ that's on huge
| sales, but there's plenty of deals on big games.
| ekianjo wrote:
| amazing value indeed. You'll get a good 5 very high quality
| hours on each of them.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Every time I compare the values of video games to movies,
| even the small indie ones come out on top.
|
| Cinema is so expensive nowadays.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| That's why actors are celebrities spending millions on
| drugs while game developers constantly question whether
| they should get a real job
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Yet, cultural footprint aside, in economic terms the
| video game industry is significantly larger than film.
|
| (Sorry, citation needed, but I clearly recall reading
| this from a reputable source.)
| maroonblazer wrote:
| "Gaming is Five Times Bigger Than Movies Now"
|
| https://gameranx.com/updates/id/416500/article/gaming-is-
| fiv...
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Unfortunately a lot of that is ad filled P2W shovelware
| yCombLinks wrote:
| Not much different than Hallmark shovelware
| pinkcan wrote:
| Notch of Minecraft fame is arguably richer than any actor
| has ever been.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > game developers constantly question whether they should
| get a real job
|
| Same model. Most actors stay poor and barely make it. You
| just only know the most successful ones, which is a tiny
| minority of the acting pool.
| klik99 wrote:
| Yeah but B listers can make a very good living, often
| times with more steady work than A listers since they
| don't have to manage their reputation as much. They're
| the session musicians, or the AAA dev working on his
| indie project on the side of film/TV. Still they're also
| a minority but if you show up and do your work for enough
| years it's an achievable track.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Cinema is so expensive nowadays.
|
| and that's not even taking in account the overpriced pop-
| corn
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| I actually don't mind the popcorn price, as that goes
| directly to the theater. If you choose your theater
| wisely, you're helping a local business.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Nor the fact they still show ads before the movie you
| paid for.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| I kind of wouldn't mind too much, but they start the
| movie around 30 minutes late just to show ads and
| trailers.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Then also arrive at the cinema late so you can skip the
| ads. I always arrive about 10 min late to skip the ads.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Doesn't work at the drive-in, though thankfully ours only
| shows one preview before the feature.
|
| But the drive-in is an edge case.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> the drive-in_
|
| Tell me you live in the US :D
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Yup. Here's a site to find your nearest drive-in,
| anywhere in the world
|
| https://www.driveinmovie.com/mainmenu.htm
| jhbadger wrote:
| Even in the US drive-ins are a relic of another time and
| most of them have closed. They were most popular from the
| 1950s to the 1970s.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Everyone should make the effort to support the ones that
| are left. Going to them is an event, and affordable.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Yeah, but I'd have to learn the timing like it's a train
| that's regularly late roughly the same amount. It's
| easier to learn to watch movies home.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Inside was an amazing game. The feeling of the environments
| you go through is just indescribable, like a combination of
| megalophobia/submechanophobia and mystery.
| lgl wrote:
| Agreed, these are two brilliant games from Playdead.
| Apparently they've been hard at work and are hiring for their
| 3rd title, which I personally can't wait! Definitely worth a
| buy/play.
| hotcoffeebear wrote:
| I've bought it, even if i have them on Epic Store... and I
| don't even have a steamdeck yet.
| pmarreck wrote:
| About a year or 2 ago I started to mainly buy games on
| Steam (and even wait if they start out exclusive to
| something like Epic) just so I can get the "free" Steam
| Proton compatibility for my Linux machines (NixOS), my Mac,
| and my Steam Deck
| kelvinjps wrote:
| How they can offer games for so low?
| jonny_eh wrote:
| The cost per unit is 0. Once they've sold a game at full
| price to anyone that will pay, they can lower the price to
| near 0 to capture any remaining demand along the curve.
| 33W wrote:
| Yup! The term is marginal cost:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| yeah same experience for me, my wife bought me one kinda
| randomly as a gift and while I'm not a huge gamer I've kinda
| fallen in love with the Steam Deck. It works well with my
| lifestyle since I can just kinda pick it up wherever play for a
| bit and then do something else, also it runs emulators very
| well so I've had a chance to catch up on some classics as well.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Is the base model EMMC able to be removed to install NVMe? I
| was mulling over picking up either a Steam Deck or a Realforce
| R3 on Friday and still haven't decided.
|
| Edit: Looked it up. Yes, its storage is 100% upgradable.
|
| Edit edit: Ordered a base model + dock :)
| swdunlop wrote:
| Good microsd cards are cheap as dirt and easy to use with a
| Steam Deck. I do not regret getting the lowest storage model
| and just using a card.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Thanks, just bought a base model + dock. I've got a bunch
| of 128GB SDs, and my only current plans are to use it for
| PC-98 emulation, so load times shouldn't be a problem.
| izacus wrote:
| Just so you're forewarned - some things always get
| installed on internal storage and people regularly have
| problems with it filling up.
|
| IMO getting at least 256GB internal (or upgrading later)
| is a smarter decision.
| opan wrote:
| You can work around this somewhat by moving things to
| external storage and they symlinking it back to the
| original spot (or so I've heard, I have the top end model
| and haven't filled it up yet).
| ekianjo wrote:
| only issue with microsd is very slow writing speed. For
| games that are in the dozens of gigabytes you will wait a
| LOOOOONG time for the process to finish,
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Is the base model EMMC able to be removed to install NVMe
|
| Yes, guide here: https://boilingsteam.com/how-to-upgrade-
| your-64gb-steam-deck...
| theodric wrote:
| The only caution I would advise is that the fan loves to
| jam on mine post installation of the WD. The Steam Deck
| will run but throttle viciously. The problem disappears
| with reinsertion of the stock eMMC or a little 256GB
| module.
|
| The only solution I found was to simply not screw in the
| rear outer enclosure screws fully tight, or to replace the
| cover with the JSAUX unit that includes an additional heat
| spreader.
| lstamour wrote:
| Yep, that's the route I took. Bought cheapest steamdeck model
| on sale, took the chance on a 2TB stick from aliexpress and
| have been very satisfied so far. Link to the 2TB I bought,
| which is now roughly 15% off: WD SN740 2TB
| https://a.aliexpress.com/_ms4e8NQ Only concern I had was that
| this retailer did not ship it in antistatic wrap. Another one
| my brother got did ship in antistatic wrap though. It's
| aliexpress, what can you do.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _I spent $50 picking on-sale indies and quickly had a
| backlog._
|
| I've actually kept track how much money I've splurged on PC
| games this year. I've spent 420.10EUR directly on Steam and I
| have 56 direct Steam Store game acquisitions in my license
| history. Outside of Steam, I've spent 111.30EUR and I have 151
| "Retail" acquisitions (which aren't all games since "Forza
| Horizon 5 Oreo Zonda" is in there). So a total of 531.40EUR
| spent and 207 product activations.
|
| Feels pretty cheap considering previously I used to buy actual
| physical box copies of PlayStation games, and those were
| generally not cheap. Average game price for those is like close
| to $40.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| I mostly play managemen/city builder style games like Cities
| Skylines or Factorio. Have you tried any of those types of
| games and if so what's been your experience?
| byhemechi wrote:
| i doubt the steam deck has enough ram to handle cities
| skylines, i pretty frequently hit 20 gb on larger populations
| pbmonster wrote:
| That's with mods, right?
|
| If you play vanilla, the Deck's 16GByte should be plenty.
| Most cities will hit the asset limit long before needing
| this much RAM.
| byhemechi wrote:
| That's fair, but i'd argue that mods are a pretty
| essential part of the game for most people
| plucas wrote:
| That sounds like a bold statement. I would imagine the
| large majority of players of any mass-market title don't
| know about or use any non-built-in mods.
| somenameforme wrote:
| It's going to depend on the game. Games like Skyrim are
| essentially just modding sandboxes, and you can measure
| this at least reasonably objectively. SkyUI is a single
| extremely popular mod for Skyrim. It's been downloaded by
| 6.5 million unique users from a single site hosting it
| [1], another 1.5 million on the Steam workshop, and who
| knows how many others from everywhere else.
|
| That is almost certainly a vast majority of PC users
| using that single mod! This is also probably why Bethesda
| tried to make 'paid mods' a thing, and bring them over to
| consoles. Not only does PC seem to be their best selling
| platform, but people are largely buying Skyrim to mod it,
| and Bethesda wanted to try to start taking a cut of it.
|
| On the other hand I'd completely agree with you for games
| where modding isn't so well supported. That results in
| more technical issues, and less impressive mods. I mean
| in games like Skyrims you have literally entirely new and
| complete games built as 'mods.' Some even get their own
| independent releases, like Enderal [2], which many would
| claim is [vastly] better than Skyrim itself.
|
| [1] - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/3863
|
| [2] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/933480/Enderal_F
| orgotten_...
| bisby wrote:
| ~8 million downloads (and thats assuming duplicates don't
| get recounted?), vs 60 million copies sold [1] is still
| barely ~15%. This might mean that for PC, its more like 8
| million out of 16 million and 50% of PC players are
| modding.
|
| So in a best case, it's 50% of PC players (which may
| apply to steam deck), or worst case, less than 15% of all
| players (which may also apply to steam deck).
|
| [1] - https://www.gamesradar.com/skyrim-has-
| sold-60-million-copies...
| input_sh wrote:
| It really is not a bold statement when specifically
| talking about Cities Skylines. That game would be nothing
| without its community of modders, it's what kept the game
| alive. For example, you can only unlock 11% of a map
| without a mod and even "mod free" playthroughs you'll
| find on YouTube still have to use a couple of them that
| don't affect the gameplay.
|
| Sure, there are console players that have no means of
| installing a mod, but I'd be shocked if even 10% of PC
| players didn't use at least a couple.
| Aachen wrote:
| > It really is not a bold statement when specifically
| talking about Cities Skylines. That game would be nothing
| without its community of modders
|
| After being just about finished with the game, I decided
| to try some mods. Things that should address pain points,
| like indeed not actually being able to use most of the
| map, and traffic management.
|
| The traffic turned into so much micromanagement to get
| cars to pick the right lane, and every time you made a
| change anywhere it required updating half a dozen other
| intersections as well, it just wasn't fun to grow the
| city bigger than possible in vanilla.
|
| I remember one of the last games being an attempt at
| public transport only, where housing and shopping and
| such were accessible only by taking the subway. That
| worked super well in some aspects, and it's fun to design
| the mass transportation systems to underpin that city,
| but Skylines is so much geared towards vehicles that I
| didn't feel this was a proper city either. (From what I
| remember of a single game I played five years ago.)
|
| Anyway, what I'm trying to say: based on my own and my
| girlfriend's experience, not everyone plays with memory-
| hungry mods, or any mods at all
| morsch wrote:
| Ymmv. Personally, I find the trackpad too cumbersome and only
| ever play games that are suited to the gamepad.
| sofixa wrote:
| I haven't played Cities Skylines on the Deck, but other mouse
| + some keyboard management games (Victoria, Crusader Kings,
| Hearts of Iron 4 (to a lesser extent), Football Manager) are
| perfectly fine. It takes some adjustment to get the proper
| layout that makes sense with any shortcuts you might want
| (e.g. pause, adjust speed, open this or that menu) but they
| work perfectly fine.
| gpderetta wrote:
| I have played Stellaris and Oxygen Not Included and they work
| surprisingly well.
|
| As noted elsethread, lot of pause-action-unpause though.
| ekianjo wrote:
| the trackpads work well with these kind of games. As long as
| you don't expect to act in urgency - typically building /
| management games work very well with this device.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I play a ton of these on Deck. Very satisfied with it. I am
| also a pause - command - unpause kind of player though. But
| the trackpads work better than you'd expect, and often have
| community layouts for the controller than add things that
| make it even nicer than playing with mouse and keyboard (the
| rotary menus for city overlays are awesome)
| klik99 wrote:
| "Better than you expect" but still not ideal. It's doable,
| but I just don't get the same enjoyment out of mouse heavy
| games. But with cloud save it can be great to dip in when
| not at the computer
| zhynn wrote:
| The dock is not too bad an experience either. I have
| played RTS/strategy games on the deck using the
| dock/mouse/keyboard/monitor. It's a bit fiddly getting
| the resolution to work well on the monitor, the deck has
| everything optimized for its own screen size, and
| anything bigger than 720 makes it sweat. But it does
| work, and especially for older titles, it's great.
|
| It does enough of what I wanted from my gaming PC, that I
| just gave my older PC to a relative.
| [deleted]
| djhope99 wrote:
| So pleased with my steam deck.
|
| So far I have played a bunch of old classics I brought 10 years
| or so ago which worked flawlessly, now playing "Return to Monkey
| Island".
|
| I cannot spend time sitting at a PC playing games these days with
| kids around, being able to pick it up and put it down on demand
| is frankly amazing. It is the best thing I've owned for years.
| elromulous wrote:
| This is the year of the Linux desktop!
|
| Somewhat tongue in cheek, but also not kidding. I realize the
| deck is not a desktop, but this is by far the most penetration
| Linux has had on something that is actually a consumer facing
| computer (vs an appliance).
| AltruisticGapHN wrote:
| The Linux desktop is still a subpar experience compared to
| Windows 10+ or macOS - that said, it is definitely now a viable
| platform for "PC gamers" who want to move away from Windows for
| whatever reason - or eg. devs like me who use Linux to code and
| who may be tired of dual booting.
|
| That said for me if it works 95% of the time, I still prefer
| dual booting. I spent a few months trying Steam on Ubuntu and
| it was great - I was surprised just how transparent the
| experience was since Steam handles Proton/Wine etc for you.
|
| But after seeing limitations like Oculus software to do some
| Quest + LInk PC VR, or Steam VR etc. I was like, I 'm just
| going to keep Ubuntu as my daily OS to surf and code etc, and I
| will reboot into Windows for gaming. Then I dont have to worry
| about any of the small print.
|
| But I am hopeful. Those are great developments and within a few
| years we might see all the VR as well supported with no hassle
| in Linux.
|
| BUT... interestingly with the recent developments on macOS, and
| their own "proton like" API - the macOS platform may also
| become a viable one... who knows.. if it works with external
| GPUs for example.
|
| Exciting times for gaming!
| kelvie wrote:
| This is probably not true due to Chromebooks running Linux.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Is this supposed to challenge the switch? Personally, as a
| lifelong PC gamer, I've never been able to get into
| handheld/mobile stuff, or even consoles - its not even the screen
| size, but the controls and overall experience. I want to be
| upright in a chair, with a full keyboard + mouse in front of me.
| I like to use my dual screens to research stuff in downtime or
| check on settings/optimizations. Is this primarily used on the
| couch, or in public whilst out and about?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You can play switch games on the Deck but I wouldn't call it a
| Switch competitor. The Switch is targeted at family gaming with
| colorful multiplayer games and inoffensive titles.
|
| The Deck is just a handheld console. It's a successor to the
| PSP more than it's a competitor to anything else. The fact it's
| implemented as a laptop with a weird keyboard makes it very
| flexible, so things like emulation become easily available
| without having to resort to hacking your console or jumping
| through dev mode hoops.
|
| The Deck is great for use in circumstances where you can't get
| behind a full desktop, like in public transport, or when you
| just want a quick session without having to boot/update/log
| in/load/save/quit/shut down. The sleep/resume functionality is
| very good, so quick five minute bursts in games that would
| otherwise take half an hour to load are suddenly a possibility.
|
| It works for gaming on the couch, in bed, in public, anywhere
| but at your desk, really. I suppose you could also use it as a
| desktop computer if you attach it to a USB C dock, but I don't
| think that's the primary intention of the device.
|
| If you're content with your desktop gaming experience and don't
| see yourself gaming anywhere else, the Deck is probably just
| not for you.
| Eumenes wrote:
| I see, appreciate the breakdown. I could see this being
| popular with upcoming CS2 and similar games. The price tag
| seems a bit steep though. But I guess they need to make money
| on the hardware.
| schmorptron wrote:
| It's very likely that at least at launch they weren't
| making much if any profit on the 64gig model, instead
| looking to sales on the steam store later on as a sort of
| loss leader. You're really underestimating the amount of
| hardware they packed into a comparatively small space for
| 400 bucks.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| You can drop the Steam Deck into a dock (Steam Dock?) and have
| your desktop monitor, keyboard, mouse, desk-chair.... But at
| that point what is the point, I guess.
| nucleardog wrote:
| As someone that has probably used my deck docked at my desk
| more than anything...
|
| 1. Suspend and resume. If I've got a quick 20 minutes I can
| hit the button, change the input on a monitor, pick up my
| controller and play. No need to shut a bunch of stuff down to
| free up RAM, wait for the game to start, wait for a save to
| load, etc. And no need to worry about getting to a save
| point, finish a cut scene... just suspend. 2. It doesn't heat
| my office up a bazillion degrees like my desktop.
| smileybarry wrote:
| Maybe in the "port machine for PC gamers" slot. You don't have
| to repurchase a bunch of ports and you get cloud save syncs
| with your PC.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| A friend gave me a Switch as a gift and I really-really
| struggle finding games for it that I would actually like.
|
| There is one game that I had played elsewhere that I enjoy
| (Sniper Elite) but other than that I really wish it would have
| a more AAA catalogue. Most of the games are childish and/or
| arcade, just not for me unfortunately.
| thih9 wrote:
| As someone who doesn't use Steam and Steam Deck, what's the
| difference between "playable" and "verified"? I.e. what kind of
| bugs or unsupported features am I likely to encounter when I play
| one vs the other?
| robrtsql wrote:
| The difference is not huge. The big one is that, to be
| "Verified", there are some usability criteria that need to be
| met (the game's text needs to be legible on the Steam Deck
| screen, you need to be able to launch the game without any
| hacky tweaks like clicking around in a launcher using the
| touch-screen or something, the game needs to basically work
| out-of-the-box with the Steam Deck's sticks and buttons, etc)
| and if those aren't met then they will provide a 'blurb' which
| explains which ones are missing.
|
| Other than that, I have found that lots of games which aren't
| "Verified" play perfectly, and some games which are "Verified"
| don't launch at all (because Valve said 'hey! it works!', gave
| it the Verified badge, and then a month later the developers
| pushed out an update for the game which broke something for
| Steam Deck users).
| Derbasti wrote:
| Playable most of the time means "this game requires a keyboard,
| so remember to press Steam+X for the on-screen keyboard when
| you're asked to enter your character name", or "fonts are a bit
| small on the small screen", or "there's no built-in performance
| preset, so you'll have to set it to medium manually".
|
| Essentially, complete non-issues most of the time.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| There's usually some description of why a game is marked
| playable, I think by clicking on the yellow symbol you'll get
| the lost of reasons.
|
| The most common reasons are requires using the on-screen
| keyboard and small fonts. Some playable games are completely
| fine: Occasionally I find a game that only requires using the
| keyboard once or twice but is still marked 'playable'.
| wafflemaker wrote:
| Cannot speak for Steam Deck, but now in July '23, pretty much
| all games work with Proton out of the box, (with between -10%
| and 15% performance loss) unless the game maker purposefully
| made the game unplayable on Linux (some AAA titles anti cheats
| for example).
|
| And then, as a Linux user, you can just return any game you
| like, past the return window, by marking 'doesn't work on my
| system ' in the return wizard.
|
| Sad thing that often the games that have the 15% performance
| hit are the ones most demanding of your hardware. It's also
| wierd playing some games on Linux, because clicking both left
| and right mouse button causes a middle click.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Verified Just Works.
|
| Playable usually means some text is too small or you need to
| enable the SteamOS virtual keyboard for some bits.
| aquova wrote:
| It varies quite a bit, and there are some items that are pretty
| minor that will cause a game to not be officially verified. For
| example, some of the 2D Final Fantasy games run very well
| without any issues on the Steam Deck, but are only listed as
| playable because they require the use of the on-screen keyboard
| to enter in character names.
| madelyn wrote:
| It honestly varies by game, but in my experience "Playable" is
| usually a great to okay experience but has small text, a
| launcher you need to use a touch screen for, or maybe only
| partial controller support.
|
| Game breaking bugs are rare in playable titles from what I've
| seen.
|
| The majority of games I play on SD are "only" playable and it's
| still a great experience.
| htk wrote:
| The Steam Deck makes my daily ride on the stationary bike a very
| fun activity.
| dimgl wrote:
| I'm currently using a Steam Deck to play through Diablo IV and
| it's absolutely amazing how well Diablo IV runs. Once you get it
| working, it works great.
|
| That being said it did take me an unbelievable amount of
| tinkering to get it to work. And unfortunately SteamOS comes with
| all of the typical bugginess you would expect from a Linux OS
| baked into a handheld device (keyboard disappears, trackpads stop
| working randomly, UI elements overlap with no way of removing
| them, etc.)
|
| Still, the Steam Deck is a freaking achievement. The battery life
| is unbelievably good for a device of this kind. If a new Steam
| Deck comes out with an OLED screen it's a day 1 purchase for me.
| belmarca wrote:
| Maybe you didn't know what you were doing? There are some
| tutorials to follow online which makes it easy.
|
| For non-SD users reading this: you can get D4 running in about
| the time it takes to download Battle.net and the game itself.
| You basically install Battle.net on the deck, and then create a
| launcher from within Steam. That's it.
| CardenB wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you have to install the launcher through wine
| and then install it. Then you have to configure the right
| capability layer through the steam launcher IIRC
| belmarca wrote:
| I did everything from within Steam. Set up the installer as
| a Steam app, then set up the BNet launcher as a steam app,
| and done. It took a few minutes, basically waiting for the
| installation and download.
| dimgl wrote:
| > Maybe you didn't know what you were doing?
|
| Okay, I'm on Hacker News, what are the odds I don't know what
| I'm doing?
|
| You don't "just install" Diablo IV on the Deck. You have to
| add the Battle.net Setup binary as a non-Steam app, or go
| through Lutris. I chose to not use Lutris and instead go
| through Steam which requires you to go to desktop mode,
| install it, and then change the paths from the setup binary
| to the Battle.net Launcher binary, which means going through
| the file system to look for it, and the paths could differ
| depending on whether you installed it on an SD card or the
| SSD.
|
| Apologies for being defensive. I want to make sure people who
| read this thread take the positive reception with a grain of
| salt. I had to do all of this as a brand new Steam Deck user.
| All of this was made more complicated by a couple of UI bugs
| in the Steam UI and the fact that desktop mode has a bug
| where the keyboards and trackpads stop working randomly
| unless Steam big picture is enabled. I had to discover all of
| this through Google searches.
|
| A couple more problems: one of the tutorials online forgot to
| mention you have to change the launch directory as well. That
| was about an hour wasted trying to figure out why Battle.net
| was not launching. Additionally, you can't download games
| with the screen off. That's because pressing the power button
| behaves like a computer, in that it makes the entire OS go to
| sleep. You have to literally keep your Steam Deck on in order
| for it to download the game.
| irusensei wrote:
| Sometimes I find the Proton version of a game working better than
| native. For example Pathfinder Kingmaker which has some kind of
| interface bug that makes it difficulty to progress after a
| certain point because the kingdom management interface doesn't
| work correctly. Loaded proton version, no bug and the performance
| is waaaaay better. Smooth gameplay.
|
| I'm guessing here that native games are often linked to some SDL
| version or something similar and might not work well with a
| considerable newer system.
| porcc wrote:
| https://www.techradar.com/news/steam-deck-plays-elden-ring-b...
| lysecret wrote:
| I can only join the praise for the Steam Deck. For the launch of
| Diablo4 I bought a 3k gaming laptop which I returned because the
| Steam Deck was the superior experience for me.
| lom wrote:
| Why has the ratio of verified dropped?
| Zekio wrote:
| considering the amount of new games each day on steam, it
| doesn't surprise me
| izacus wrote:
| The long tail of Steam (PC) games aren't really made for small
| screens and controllers. For a game to be "verified", it needs
| to fully support controllers, have readable text on a 8"
| 1280x800 screen and run well on Deck's hardware using Proton.
|
| As more older Steam games went through the process, less % of
| games actually fulfill those conditions (main reason I'm
| personally seeing is either "small text" or a launcher that
| requires use of mouse to click "Play" before the game starts).
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I believe too they don't even waste time verifying indie
| games that have too few sales. My game was written _for_ the
| Steam Deck but I don 't hope to ever get my title "verified".
| I inly sold maybe 200 copies, ha ha.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| What is the dev experience like? Did you do your
| development on the Steam Deck itself?
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Even witcher 3 that's verified have small text. Not too bad
| but I prefer it to be slightly larger.
| kibwen wrote:
| It seems like a lot of games that would be green/verified
| are classed as yellow/playable solely because of small
| text, which is equivalent to being verified if you use your
| docked Steam Deck as a cheap gaming PC first and a handheld
| second.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Yeah but the situation isn't limited to deck, though deck
| makes it worse since the screen is smaller than average
| monitor.
|
| Modern games without a big ass high res monitor will have
| text that's too small to be enjoyable.
| esjeon wrote:
| My theories: (1) Steam got a lot of new games. (2)
| Compatibility issues found deep inside games. (3) No compat
| issues, but issues with Steam Deck specifically.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Because the ratio of verified was too optimistic in the
| beginning - and potentially the current ratio is closer to the
| reality, with a minority of games released on PC actually made
| to work well on a smaller screen.
|
| Note that requiring a launcher, or keyboard input also make the
| games land in playable territory even though it works perfectly
| otherwise.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| They probably have put the most effort into making popular
| games work, but as time as gone one, they've tried to "verify"
| more and more less popular games. I'm assuming here that there
| is a missing "not previously reviewed" segment in the graph,
| i.e. there are less games at the start than at the end.
| blamazon wrote:
| There's a finite amount of validation effort available and
| presumably in the early days there was a focus on highlighting
| the games that best demonstrated the Deck's selling points. It
| stands to reason that as time goes by and the low hanging fruit
| has been picked, validation effort instead goes into more and
| more obscure or less obviously Deck friendly games.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| 1. Hardware requirements increase with time while the platform
| being verified against remains the same. They may run... just
| not well due to hardware limitations
|
| 2. Varies depending on how many games implement incompatible
| things like _certain_ anti-cheats. Admittedly, this may only
| account for a small amount. They come /go in waves -- eg:
| looter/shooter trend
|
| 3. Steam Deck verified is a more strict qualification than
| Linux in general; tiny screen/resolution, gamepads, etc.
|
| 4. Finally, inconsistency between the rate-of-verification and
| rate-of-addition - these are not locked
|
| Probably more, these are what immediately come to mind
| dolmen wrote:
| Cool misleading stat.
|
| Games not tested are out of the 100%. This is NOT 75% of Steam
| catalog.
| ekianjo wrote:
| "Games Tested" != "All Games"
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| I cannot sing high enough praises for the Steam Deck. I am
| someone who virtually never plays computer games.
|
| One exception is Flatout 2 which is a game I really like and
| would sit down to play for an hour or two every year or so in the
| past ten years. But in that decade I have switched to macOS and
| even though there is a Flatout 2 port in the App Store, it is 32
| bit and thus not playable anymore either. I bought the game on
| GOG so I can get the installer any time and it doesn't require
| online functionality (it has a multiplayer mode but I doubt it
| works anymore) but in recent years it was a real pain to get it
| to work so I could play for a while.
|
| CrossOver is a legend but this year I felt it was too much effort
| to even download it and set up FO2 in it so I bought the
| SteamDeck and tried the game on it. It works flawlessly! I have
| spent more time playing the game this year than I have ever
| before except maybe the year it came out (2006 I think) when I
| played it a lot.
|
| Since that experience I have installed Blood: Fresh Supply and I
| have been enjoying replaying that classic a lot. It has been like
| two decades since I last played that.
|
| If it wasn't for the Steam Deck and its specific-purposeness and
| how easy it is to just pick up and go, I would probably give up
| on gaming altogether. So if you're on a fence and you are someone
| who likes older games, go for the Steam Deck! It is a joy.
| Falkon1313 wrote:
| Ah, I'd forgotten how much fun Flatout was! Used to have a
| blast playing that, Burnout, and Carmageddon. Lately I've been
| playing Redout Enhanced Edition which was free on Epic awhile
| back. Bought a new controller to play it.
|
| I considered getting a Steam Deck, but I just don't see myself
| carrying it around to play it somewhere else. And if I'm going
| to be here in my comfy chair at my computer with a big screen
| anyway, it doesn't make sense.
| COGlory wrote:
| Did you buy a Steam Deck specifically for Flatout 2?
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| Yes. I know it sounds a bit weird, but I figured I would just
| sell it if I didn't like it.
| unhammer wrote:
| Still not available in Norway :(
| iodbh wrote:
| I live in Norway and got one - you just need a delivery
| address. I used a friend's; but there are forwarding services
| as well
| RMPR wrote:
| Even if it is was available in Norway, it'd probably be cheaper
| to order it from abroad anyway. I was baffled by how expensive
| "niche" gadgets are here. For example the Kinesis advantage 360
| is 8k NOK[0] compared to $479 in the US, so it was actually
| less expensive to order from there and pay the customs than to
| get in locally. This was last December, before the NOK value
| fell off a cliff.
|
| 0: https://www.sono.no/kontormobler/ergonomisk-
| kontortilbehor/e...
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Now do Office, and I'd say goodbye.
| LeSaucy wrote:
| I love seeing mastodon links on the front of hackernews.
| currymj wrote:
| Valve had a sequence of strange failed experiments -- the Steam
| Controller, Steam Machines/SteamOS, Steam Link.
|
| But somehow these all came together to make the Steam Deck which
| is an astounding success. I don't know if Valve are geniuses or
| just incredibly lucky.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| But were they failed experiments if they led to this?
|
| Apple did the same thing with random features like LIDAR
| scanners in phones that you have no reason to use. Everyone
| questioned their thinking. Turned out they were doing that in
| order to make the best VR headset ever made.
| loeg wrote:
| As individual commercial products, they were failures, yes.
| They weren't kept in-house or released only as dev-kits; they
| attempted to commercialize them and failed badly. I'm glad
| they learned from the experience!
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| Steam Machines never really launched. Index is still sold
| and hasn't even had a price cut after half a decade. Steam
| Link hardware was discontinued not because Steam Link was a
| failure, but because they moved it to an entirely
| software/app solution which continues to see active
| support.
|
| Steam Controller was a bit of a bust, but it sold ~2
| million units so not entirely. They probably made their
| money back.
| ccity88 wrote:
| Kind of wild that Apple have built up so much of a reputation
| that you're calling it the 'best VR headset ever made'
| without it even being released yet. This just proves that
| good products are like 70% perception, and its why we
| continuously drink Coke even though there's so many better
| healthier, tastier drinks
| jckahn wrote:
| It's an overnight success that was years in the making!
| TillE wrote:
| Exactly. It's a really big leap for a pure software/services
| company to start making hardware, and there's no way you get
| the Steam Deck - at least not a _good_ Steam Deck - without
| the experience that comes from making those earlier products.
| Ruq wrote:
| >Failed Experiments
|
| Lessons Learned. The Steam Deck is the culmination of previous
| iterations. Even with the flop of the Steam Machines, The Steam
| Controller and Steam Link have ended up as Cult Classics, and
| there is the possibility they'll get revisions down the line,
| even if they end up minor niche releases.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I'm still beating myself for not ordering a half dozen Steam
| Controllers when they were selling them at crazy low prices
| to get rid of their stock.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Oh don't beat yourself up about that. They ran out of stock
| right away and lots of people that ordered one got a refund
| instead.
| zhynn wrote:
| I LOVE the steam controller, and the deck is essentially a
| steam controller with a computer+screen embedded into it. But
| the software for customizing the inputs are extremely
| sophisticated and deeply integrated into Steam. I don't think
| the deck would have been as good without the steam
| controller.
| nani8ot wrote:
| Yes. They might be a financial failure, but my Steam Link works
| great for me and still receives updates. The Steam Controller
| also has a loyal fanbase with them being more expensive now
| then what Valve wanted to clear inventory.
|
| I don't think it's luck. After the Steam Machines Valve worked
| for years on proton (wine, dxvk, vkd3d) and AMD graphics
| drivers to fix game compatibility. Experience with selling
| hardware themselves had Valve with the Index already.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| To me it seems Valve correctly realised their Steam Machines
| failed due to software and too many different hardware
| combinations, and since then prioritized getting games to run
| better on Linux before trying again with a single device that's
| supported well and can run thousands of games at release.
| cubefox wrote:
| The Steam Deck is a success compared to previous attempts by
| Valve, but perhaps not as much as the initial excitement would
| have you believe. To put things into perspective, some
| source[1] estimates that a total of 3 million Steam Deck units
| will have been sold by the end of 2023. The Nintendo Switch,
| which probably inspired the Steam Deck, has sold 125 million
| units by March[2]. This amounts to 20.8 million units per year.
|
| [1] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/omdia-steam-decks-total-
| consol...
|
| [2] https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_Switch
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| You're comparing sales of a product in a nascent category (PC
| gaming handhelds) produced by a company with near zero retail
| presence with a marketing campaign almost entirely focused on
| their existing (Steam) user base to _Nintendo_ , a long
| standing retail giant that has dominated the market for
| decades who follow an entirely different business model.
| That's not to say they're _incomparable_ , particularly in
| how they provide value to consumers, but there's a whole lot
| of context that makes the business case more complicated.
|
| Valve might not directly profit from the sale of GPD, Aya or
| Asus PC gaming handhelds, but they still get their percentage
| from every Steam software sale made on them, other stores
| notwithstanding but lets face it, they continue to dominate
| that space. It highlights that it's not specific hardware
| that Valve care about as much as broadening access to their
| storefront.
|
| It's not the hardware itself you should be keeping an eye on,
| but rather how many platforms on which Steam is available.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| I think it's simpler than that. They looked at the Nintendo
| Switch and decided to copy it, but for the PC. Nintendo was the
| genius involved. What Valve did is why Microsoft is successful.
| They executed someone else's idea very well. Which isn't that
| easy to do.
| gfodor wrote:
| Don't forget the Steam Deck is a bridge to the standalone VR
| headset that will run games like Alyx.
| sspiff wrote:
| I bought a Steam Deck, I used it a bit but honestly not as much
| as I expected.
|
| I did however finally manage to dump Windows from all my
| machines, apart from my VR sim racing rig, and now play
| everything on my Linux desktop or laptop. If it doesn't run, at
| this point I just pick something else to play. Steam Deck has
| pushed the state of the art of Wine/Proton/DXVK/... so far it's
| mostly just a plug and play experience, I've not had any issues
| at all. Often runs more reliably than native Linux ports.
| dagmx wrote:
| Dropping Windows has been the biggest advantage of it for me.
|
| Though the irony isn't lost that pretty much nothing I use on
| it actually targets the OS it is running.
| djhope99 wrote:
| Ha!! Agreed. I had a little chuckle the other day playing a
| steam game that said "Windows Build" .
| pwpw wrote:
| Like you, I have completely switched over to Arch Linux on my
| desktop and laptop apart from Windows for my VR sim racing rig.
| Hopefully one day I'll be able to play iRacing from Linux, but
| that day is not today. Everything else has been extremely
| smooth.
| nicce wrote:
| They might be pushing even more...
|
| Apparently lead graphics developer of Asahi Linux works also
| for Valve now [1]. If you have followed her work, such a
| talent.
|
| [1]: https://rosenzweig.io/resume.pdf
| stefandesu wrote:
| I'm very curious about the Steam Deck (especially because it runs
| Linux), but it's just too big for my taste. There are other
| companies making very similar devices (which are often more
| powerful too) that are smaller (like Ayaneo [1]), but so far they
| are all running on Windows. (Seems like they are making their own
| Linux-based OS though.)
|
| [1]: https://www.ayaneo.com
| smileybarry wrote:
| If you have a friend with a Steam Deck, I _highly_ recommend
| just giving it a shot.
|
| I thought my Switch was too big and even got a Switch Lite,
| then when I got a Steam Deck ("worst case I'll just dock it")
| it was _so_ much nicer. The grips cancel some of the size out,
| and it's more comfortable (to me) than my (full size) Switch,
| despite the weight differences.
|
| I wish there was a Switch Lite-sized one capable enough,
| though. But so far it's all either: throttle, low battery life,
| no support, or extremely expensive (e.g.: the $1000+ ones).
| fendy3002 wrote:
| But it's big, and heavy though. I read that depending on the
| size of their hand, small weaker hands cannot handle deck
| that good and will get hurt.
| smileybarry wrote:
| It is, but it's not _too_ far from a Switch -- 422g vs
| 669g.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Did you realize that it's still ~50% increase in weight?
|
| Though agree that OP need to try it themselves, but still
| beware that some people with small hands get hurt playing
| deck due to the weight.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I have the body of a large 13 year old, and I'm so glad I
| got a switch instead. What Valve has accomplished is
| amazing, but my friend has a Steam Deck and it's just too
| heavy for me. 5 minutes in and I could feel the strain.
|
| The switch controllers, when decoupled, fit my hands
| perfectly without weighing anything. It works much better
| for me and my puny wrists.
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