Exactly we're talking about a platform with insignificant userbase and a high chance of getting abandoned like any other valve project. No developer should put serious effort on it.
*** The Official Steam Deck Thread ***
- Thread starter DrCrabHands
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Where does this idea of Valve 'abandoning' things come from? They're not Google. To my mind, the only thing they 'abandoned' was the original Steam Machines which were always going to be a tough sell anyway in that they were reliant on OEMs to actually make them (and in many ways the Steam Deck is a direct descendant of them since it'll be running SteamOS which Valve has continued to work on).
If you're talking about the Steam Controller, it was a niche product and clearly it didn't make sense to keep producing those (and again, the tech/lessons have gone into the Steam Deck) - if you bought one, it's still supported by Steam.
The Steam Link? It's still a part of the Steam ecosystem - not necessarily in hardware form but lots of people use it to this day.
The Valve Index is still supported by Valve both in terms of software updates and hardware replacements (and is still a good seller for Valve) - rumours have it that Deckard is going to be their follow-up - we'll have to wait and see.
And if you're talking about their games - well, I'd love to see Half Life 3, Portal 3 and L4D 3 as much as anyone but if the Valve devs don't have anything new to add to these series then I can't really blame them for not putting sequels out just for the sake of making sequels - I'd much rather be pleasantly surprised by truly innovative games like Half Life: Alyx from time-to-time.
The only other thing I can think of that they 'abandoned' was Artifact and well, they sure misjudged the market on that one.
Soldato
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Even with prior Steam machines, the OS was still being updated for years I’m pretty sure.
It’s a handheld PC with a gargantuan amount of hype around it. It wont be abandoned.
It’s a handheld PC with a gargantuan amount of hype around it. It wont be abandoned.
Very unlikely that they'll abandon this.
They been developing SteamOS for years, and with Microsoft looking to push everything through their store, having Linux as a backup is going to be incredibly important to their business.
The Steam Deck itself is very aggressively priced, especially in the current market. Getting users to buy into the device will encourage community development and more widespread adoption.
Even if you ignore the base use case, it's a great piece of kit for the price. It can play games locally, stream from other services (cloud or network), run all sorts of emulators if you're into retro gaming.
Microsoft puts everything on steam they got a decent relationship with valve. For steamdeck to make a difference it has to sell millions per quarter and I just can't see valve scaling up to achieve that. Gabe takes pride of having the most profitable company in the US with the least amount of employees.
Windows will always be king for gaming but Linux is great for everything else and that's how it should be.
Yea, not saying it's going to happen soon, but Microsoft stated that they want everything, every software download, every app install, every game, to go through their store, and Steam would have to adjust and comply (so would every other launcher).
Linux gaming has a long way to go but it's made massive leaps over the past 1-2 years. You also don't want to be running desktop Windows on console/handheld devices so this has huge potential for other device providers.
I'm bias though as I use Linux daily for work, and only boot Windows for gaming.
Microsoft can 'want' all they like, but this is never going to happen - SteamOS was created specifically as a hedge against that (in the Windows 8 UWP days) and Valve has continued to push Linux gaming (both native and via WINE/Proton) to give them an 'out' if MS goes all guns-blazing monopolistic again.
Valve aside, this couldn't happen anyway - there'll be no quicker way to drive users to alternatives than Microsoft mandating what software you can and can't install on Windows and I'm not sure it'd even be legal.
Gamepass is another thing altogether - Microsoft seems to want to be the 'Netflix' of gaming and I can't fault its value but if MS continues gobbling up studios and making their games exclusive to Gamepass, I can see a backlash at some point - after all, not everyone wants to rent their games.
Caporegime
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Or EPIC make their launcher, linux compatible
My guess is that it would act similar to the Play and App stores i.e. companies will need to publish their apps to the store. Windows is full of holes though so I'm sure people could get around it.
Windows will always be around as long as there is that "one app" that only works on Windows. For me, I'll happily remove my Windows partition once gaming is more stable.
Either way, with everyone trying to milk the subscription model, the development of SteamOS, and Linux gaming in general, is positive for gamers in terms of options and industry competition.
Caporegime
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i mean of course lol!
im really debating one of these as i love to game portable on my switch whilst commuting to work but i think this looks far too big to slug around on public transport but would be wicked playing all my PC games instead of just being limited to what Nintendo bring to there system. shame it looks like a big hefty game gear to me
And how much will this servicing cost? Personally I'd rather do the job myself, although I appreciate not everyone would have the desire or confidence to do so.
Having the battery glued in is unnecessary. OK, it needs to be secured as i'm sure people are going to end up dropping the unit which could cause major problems leading to fire hazards, but there are much neater ways to secure everything down. Apparently, on a single charge, we're only going to be getting typically around 1.5 - 3.5 hours out of the deck before it needs recharging (assuming we're talking more demanding gaming), and every charge/discharge cycle is going to cause battery wear over time meaning the battery will need replacing sooner rather than later. I'm personally hoping Valve don't glue down the battery for retail units.
If you have a bag, what's the problem? It is big because it is ergonomic and does not require third party addons like Hori Splitpad to be comfortable.
1.5 hour is if the player is dumb and plays with vsync disabled, effectively using the GPU at 100% all the time. I doubt most people will be this dumb, so the lower bound is at around 2 hours.
Phax managed to get over 8 hours from it, playing some 2D game at 30fps
Soldato
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This is PC gaming we're talking about, everyone needs extreme frame rates at all times...
I'd think there will be a bit of a learning curve, as most won't be optimising for battery life.
I'd think there will be a bit of a learning curve, as most won't be optimising for battery life.
Might be a bit of a daft question as you need a Steam account to buy one right.
However, is there a situation that say at the end of the year when I look to pick one up that there will be a scalper situation and inflated prices...
Or will I simply be able to buy one through my Steam account without any fuss etc.
Possible we won't know yet I guess.
However, is there a situation that say at the end of the year when I look to pick one up that there will be a scalper situation and inflated prices...
Or will I simply be able to buy one through my Steam account without any fuss etc.
Possible we won't know yet I guess.
The way steam is doing their pre-order queue thing they should be fairly scalper resistant, hopefully making it more effort to get than its worth for the scalpers. But it may also mean that there could be a long wait time for them. so who knows really
There will still be plenty on eBay for £LOL the day they start shipping.
I'd order one now if you want a chance to get one before Christmas, its only £1 to reserve a slot with no obligation to actually buy. You can always cancel it if you don't want it when your time comes up.
There will definitely be some. But I'm hoping that since their are no distributors and they can only be got 1 at a time direct from valve, it should be a relatively low percentage of them. And certainly none of this 1 scalper buying a pallet of the damn things that we've seen with the consoles.
So fingers crossed I guess
This is also a handheld. 30fps looks vastly more acceptable on handheld screen than it does on my 55" plasma.