Valve recently announced a new portable gaming device that they claim can play games from your entire Steam library. While I had heard rumours, or perhaps wishes, about a Steam device I really didn't think that they would release one after they abandoned further development on the Steam Link some time ago.
That same technology has enabled streaming from PC to a mobile/tablet for some time, but only within the LAN so it will be interesting to see if there is enough appeal for portable gaming based on access to Steam's considerable catalogue. While it certainly outspecs the Switch (including the updated version), the cost is much higher, and it's hard to imagine playing it with the position of the controls.
I was an early adopter of the Steam Link and quite liked it; their novel controller, not so much, but it was innovative and had some useful features. I'm going to play wait and see on this one.
https://kotaku.com/steam-deck-is-val...cem-1847299762
https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech
One thing that's worth looking at is the storage capacity, while they say that models start at US$399 (or 419€) that version only has 64GB worth of onboard storage. A lot of AAA games the device could play won't fit on that.
While you can use a micro-SD card, the tech specs specify "high-speed" which is 25MB/s or about 1/16th of the speed of the small version's internal eMMC storage.
It looks cool, but I've ended up being disappointed with every piece of Valve hardware I've bought(yeah, all 3 of them), I wrote a twitter thread about it here. I think I've finally learned my lesson and won't be buying this.
My love for gadgets has me drooling, but I can't see many scenarios where I would use this.
Yet....still...portable Thief player....hmmm....
Same. Though I just bought controller and link.Originally Posted by henke
I'm most interested in the fact that this is a SteamOS / Linux-based device.
If it becomes popular, the other big game companies (like Epic, GOG, etc.) might finally consider adding a bit more Linux support.
I like the idea of Linux, but am always held back from actually using it by the fact that so many things I want don't run there.
All these pictures need a human for scale. Just looking at it, I'd assume it's three feet wide and weighs 10 pounds.
If it's NOT that big, then get ready to bust out your opera glasses to read monitor-sized text on a tablet-sized screen.
Supposedly it comes with a good version of Wine to run Windows games with.
Somehow this makes me think it'll actually be good.
FYI, less than 15% of Steam games run on Linux. But you can apparently load Windows onto your Steam Deck if you so choose, so problem solved.
Realistically though, another limitation is controls. It's not going to play nicely with pre-controller-support games, I suspect.
Wine Proton lets you play some games, but there are limitations - such as the Windows version of Easy Anti-Cheat (used by a lot of multiplayer games) won't verify on Linux with Wine Proton, so you can't play online.
(e.g. Vermintide 2 works fine on Linux through Wine Proton, but you can't play it on the official realm because of the anti-cheat.)
Anyway, I wasn't referring to games so much as the lack of the Epic Launcher on Linux, meaning no UE4 editor (you can compile it yourself, but urgh), no access to Marketplace content... oh, and and no Epic Games, either.
The specs say that the screen is 7 inches, so the screen is smaller than a tablet's, but larger than a phone's.
I dunno, would consider this with the dock, be cool to play my steam catalog on the couch in front of a big screen led.
Hopefully it comes with its own control remapping like most emulators.
I don't have the most confidence in this specific device, going by the responses here, but there really should be some mobile device optimized to play PC games.
Edit: Oh, it's not licensed for Japan so I couldn't buy it here even if I wanted to.
Last edited by demagogue; 17th Jul 2021 at 06:17.
I can't speak to the implementation, but it does seem like a solid idea.
I saw some discussion of this being a reference design, so they'll be throwing it open for other manufacturers to make different interpretations of the device - so perhaps those will solve any flaws with the Valve version.
Steam already has a built-in controller remapping function that lets you rebind any gamepad/keyboard key, accessible in any game by Shift+Tab, then clicking a button in the upper right corner. Pretty handy, I've used it a few times for games that don't have built-in remapping.
This looks prototypical to me -- uncomfortable, heavy, and ugly. That said, I've barely played any PC games all year because I've gotten so used to the Switch and being able to play away from the TV. It's a good idea, but I'd want to see a nicer design.
Looks like there's one fairly useful feature of the Steam Deck: You can technically replace the SSD (even if Valve doesn't want end-users doing so) and all versions use a m.2 slot for it.
https://www.neowin.net/news/valve-co...-you-to-do-it/
I'm cautiously stoked about this. I plopped my $5 down to get in on the queue.
I would, if only to thwart a single scalper, if it was possible in France.
I was in the first wave of deliveries of the Steam Deck, and have been enjoying mine every day since release. It's an impressively capable bit of kit for the size, and having access to my library of games on a portable is just... *chef's kiss*
The interesting thing is that combined with my experience of using Ubuntu as my operating system of choice on my personal work laptop, I am now confident enough in Linux as a platform that I'm going to be making the jump on my main home PC this weekend.
Windows 11 doesn't do what I want (yet), and I'm getting increasingly ticked off with MS and Apple moving more and more towards being "Walled Gardens".
I'm sure there'll be some teething problems, as well as programs that I forget about, but I'm actually looking forward to going full Linux.
Now it's just a case of settling on a distro; I would go for SteamOS, but Valve haven't updated the desktop version to be the same as the Deck version yet.
So it's a toss-up between vanilla Ubuntu or Pop_OS.
There's numerous distros out there that have been tailored for gaming, but they're usually made by enthusiasts, and don't have a big company/community behind them, so updates and support would be limited by comparison.
And the other big one is, do I take this opportunity to play with ZFS?
Sounds quite complicated to set up, but the inbuilt snap-shotting is REALLY appealing, as well as features that prevent against data corruption, even when a disk is failing.
Wish me luck!
Proton (Steam's compatibility program) really is fantastic nowadays. It handled every 2D game I've tried over the last couple years, though a few 3D ones still crashed.
The weirdest thing about Proton is just how random it can be with what it decides to run well with. I've been on Linux nearly exclusively for over a year now, and I'd say it's run probably 9 out of every 10 games I've thrown at it. The games that don't run, though, are the ones you'd expect would play just fine.
Like Prodeus? Runs just like native, no tweaking required.
Elden Ring? Once again, runs like it's a native application. The only thing I did was tweak it to use FSR, because my comp's a little too underpowered to run it at 1440p or even 1080p
Doom Eternal? No problems whatsoever.
Tunic? Like butter.
Forgive Me Father? 5 FPS slideshow, and no tweaks will fix it.
You'd think that if Proton can run games like Doom Eternal and Elden Ring, it wouldn't have any problems with Forgive Me Father. It's only slightly more demanding than some Doom source ports. But no. It's just not playable.
And the other game I couldn't get to run recently? The Quake rerelease. Wouldn't even boot it up for some reason. OlliOlli World worked great though.
Yeah, Proton is unreliable enough that you need to mind the two-hour refund window. But it's also reliable enough to finally make Linux a viable gaming platform. (How did your experiment turn out, Malf?)
...I'm glad to hear Tunic works well, for obvious reasons.
My current problem is that some part of my ancient gaming rig produces outright crashes, particularly (but not exclusively) during games, and I lack the Linux know-how to narrow down their source. My Disco Elysium playthrough is in limbo as a result. My PC is ten years old anyway, so I'm just going to replace it outright. I'll be a tad annoyed if the cause turns out to be my relatively new graphics card, since that's one of the pieces I'm keeping.
Last edited by Anarchic Fox; 20th May 2022 at 23:02.
It's going really well, albeit after an initial hiccough with Ubuntu and experimenting with ZFS.
I'm now running Pop!_OS, and it's been great so far.
I'm really impressed with Proton and how easy Valve have made it to run anything through it.
I've tried other dedicated apps, like Lutris and the Heroic Games Launcher, but I keep coming back to Steam.
Also, day-to-day desktop usage feels a lot faster and snappier than Windows or Mac OS.
I did have an issue with my USB soundcard initially (a Sennheiser GSX 1000), but after reading a few things, simply changed the sound subsystem I was using from Pulseaudio to Pipewire. Yes, that took a bit of command line wrangling, but was relatively easy thanks to extensive and helpful community guides.
And my Rift doesn't work as a "Plug and Play" device, and from what I've read, the community projects to get it working aren't great. But let's see what Valve do with the next iteration of Index.
I mean, I could pick up an Index right now, but it feels like there might be an announcement from Valve about the next version any day now.
Games I have played with no issues at all:
Guild Wars 2 (Proton)
Hitman 3 (Proton)
Vampire Survivors (Native)
Space Haven (Native)
WH40K Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters (Proton)
Weird West (Proton)
Oxygen Not Included (Native)
I have tried getting Sifu running through the Epic Store, but it doesn't recognise controller input, and there's really no point playing Sifu without one.
But in general, I'm massively surprised by how many of the games in my library are already Linux native.
Overall, I think I'm here to stay
Last edited by Malf; 21st May 2022 at 05:01.
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