I remember one of my first thoughts on the Deck was “even if this fails commercially or can’t play any new games, I want it for old games and emulation. Even if it goes nowhere else, it would be worth it for me.”
It ended up being more powerful than I thought it would be. I thought I’d just be playing some retro 2d games and really old 3d games, but it ended up running some new titles better than expected to be able to play them on the Deck.
Running games at 800p targeting 40fps is a lot more viable than I would have expected just looking at the numbers. It looks great for a display that size and 40fps feels like it’s a lot closer to 60fps than it really is.
I get why people using it as their primary gaming device would want more power but as a secondary device for me it’s stellar.
I think that perceived smoothness from 40 fps comes from the LCD screen they chose, and using a controller. Docking the deck to a monitor and using a mouse makes it much more noticeable; but running games at 720p makes it much easier to hit 60 fps.
The way I see it, is because of the controls. You have a much stronger reaction with a mouse than a joystick. Anytime you play with a mouse, the reaction time is expected to be lower because you I dictate where you want to be looking (like in am fps). The mouse acts as a view positioning device. It is not forgiving. A joystick however is a rotation device. It tells how fast you want to be moving around when looking, not where it should be looking. It is much more forgiving because you only dictate the speed of rotation. If you plugged in a mouse in your deck and played it on the deck you would immediately notice the difference I imagine. I think the trackpads do bring some aspects of the mouse to the deck too in that regard.
But yeah, my takeaway is, with a joystick you don’t need that tight of a latency as with a mouse.
That’s me. Also it was based on Linux, so its not a waste of hardware, because I know a Linux operating system works well with it. I wasn’t even expecting it to play new AAA games developed for the newest console generations.
This is so important, especially as we live in an age where tech being churned out that ends up as paperweight is the norm. Being solidified in the Linux kernel we know this thing will live on for decades until in 2080 they will pull the plug on the x86 architecture and you’ll be one of the 3 people still around to remember it
I don’t think I make it to 2080, but otherwise agreed. :D
Funny thing is, now that I have it I keep finding uses for it. Sure, some of it is “well I’ve got it now so why not?” but I didn’t expect a handheld pc of this configuration to be so handy to have around.
I love this so much. It reminds me of how AMD Threadripper came to be.
Apparently Threadripper was a skunkworks project by some of the engineers at AMD that they worked on in their spare time. They wanted to see if they could basically slap together a bunch of normal CPU dyes into on mega chip with a high speed/bandwidth interposer connecting them together.
It was almost abandoned and they had to fight to get it taken seriously. But it proved to be a viable product, and singlehandedly was responsible for decimating what was left of Intel’s place in the HEDT market so badly, that after several years of failed attempts to keep up, Intel officially announced that they wouldn’t be competing in that space anymore.
It’s such a cool thing when talented and passionate people come together without having to be subject to strict marketability and just try to create something awesome and revolutionary.
The Steam Deck kicked off an entire new market for handheld gaming devices that had real power to play modern PC games. And despite a bunch of competing and copycat products, the Steam Deck is still king.
I love mine, have close to 200 hours on it, which for me is a ton. I’ve barely gamed on my main PC in the last year, it’s just so much more comfortable to play on the couch or in my bed.
It’s just too bad that AMD is also not competing in the HEDT space now, leaving no reasonable options whatsoever
It’s also what got me to finally go linux full-time.
I had tried to a couple times before, but always ran into one too many snags.
When the deck was announced I thought to myself “that can’t work with every game, can it?” as I’d attempted that myself.
But I had to see for myself, and the improvements in proton were staggering. And it’s gotten even better since! Who would have though Apex Legends, Hunt Showdown, and a bunch of other holdouts and anti-cheat games would be running on linux within a year of the deck releasing?
It really shows, because it’s just a well thought out, no compromises device. I’m still crossing my fingers hoping that they’re getting somewhere with the steam controller 2 prototypes that I’m sure they’re playing with if only for shits and giggles
deleted by creator
When I heard of it, I was wondering who that was for and what was even the point. Since I got mine, I barely play on my desktop PC anymore. I really didn’t expect to live it this much.
This is a shared experience.
Every single person in my circle gave the biggest wtf to it and when they finally got it, talk about how they rarely use their gaming PC.
deleted by creator
The more I learn about Valve culture the more I realize they definitely have teams just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. I bet there are some really wild prototypes that we never get to see.
deleted by creator
Seems highly unlikely Valve was dedicating valuable dev/engineer time and money to make a toy they had no intention of ever producing…
This actually is basically how Valve works.
They have a pretty small team, and Steam is a fucking money printer.
They are a private company, not public.
That means no shareholders. No need to jam out a product to keep stock prices up, no boards of directors that also sit on 12 other boards that are all scheming to figure out how to push the whole industry toward stupid bullshit like NFT game items or ‘replace all our employees with AI’ or ‘every game is actually just a marketing tool for MTX or battlepasses.’
(The entire idea of loot boxes and in game microtransactions was basically just another ‘i wonder what would happen if, or if it would even be possible to…’ and then the steam marketplace of ingame items was born, and then basically every one else copied them, poorly.)
(Fuck, its basically the same with modern in game achievements as well.)
…
They could do nothing other than maintain their existing products and basically just coast on that forever, remaining profitable.
Because they have essentially no hard deadlines to put out some new product… this enables them to have a very loose, very voluntary, workplace culture which emphasizes quality over quantity, creativity over ‘its the same game in a new setting’, as well as not rushing anything.
A whole lot of their projects in the last decade are just people saying ‘I’m gonna do this’ and then if anyone else thinks its cool or neat, they work on it too.
People are allowed and encouraged to contribute to any project, at any time, as opposed to basically all other corporate software studios that have very rigid and defined roles.
deleted by creator
Some projects will end up being a waste of resources, but others end up printing a ton of money.
deleted by creator
Found the Buisness major
That user legitimately spends all day posting pedantic BS lmao, this is hilarious.
Literally the archetype of le Reddit neckbeard to a tee, Christ what a loser
… and they’ve now deleted all their posts.
I do have to say this has been amusing… haven’t seen this caliber of very obviously wrong but actually no you’re wrong in a while.
EDIT: Wow, no, holy shit, their entire account is gone now.
deleted by creator
this is how I know you’ve never created anything, lol. lots of times, you fail at making something, but you learn from those failures.
who knows what other projects they threw money at and failed, the only one I can think of rn were the steam machines.
I’m sure they learned from those mistakes, tried again, and here we are with the steam deck
deleted by creator
thats called R&D. I don’t personally spend millions of dollars, but I do spend money on things that never pan out but teach me a lot of lessons I can apply to my next project
It’s not a waste of resources if you learn something. Think of this as research rather than product development. You can try many things (from VR, to miniaturised computers, to cloud gaming, controllers with wonky form factors…) to see what results in a good experience. You don’t need to get anywhere near a full fledged product to understand those things, so the waste of resources isn’t massive anyway.
I’d bet at the moment people decided “this is useful, I even want this for me, so let’s turn it into a product” the steam deck looked more like a screen, a gamepad and a raspberry pi all taped together or jammed into a 3d printed prototype chassis.
If people have spare capacity to work on these projects, the material cost at such a point can be under <5k which is peanuts for a company like Valve.
Do you really, truly believe that everything that’s never been done before is a 100% sure bet to invest time and money into?
Do you really have no idea of how complex, untested, but potentially viable ideas come to fruition, come to be found out as coherent and workable vs incoherent and non workable?
… You are aware that matchsticks were essentially invented by the scattershot approach of a man who just had the time, funding, and materials to just basically randomly test a whole bunch of chemical compounds, and he just happened to accidentally drag a stick covered in concoction #38 or whatever against a hearth, whereupon it burst into flame?
… Do you think the Wright Brothers, or any other early experiments of developing flying machines… or all those involved in early rocketry… do you think all of those people were 100% sure that each of their designs would work?
deleted by creator
When you have a stable business with a guaranteed source of huge amounts of revenue, that all you have to do is basically maintain at a very low cost…
Most other revenue can be thrown at whatever, in a how ever long it takes to do well and properly timeframe.
Actual innovation requires a series of creative ideas that are explored thoroughly, without overwhelming pressure or influence on decision making, or timetables.
Valve’s position allows them to do this.
Lots of those things go no where, but a good number of them work out, and basically revolutionize the industry, more than making up for the projects that do not work out.
As a certain wise old man once said:
“These things, they take time.”
You would be surprised how much companies experiment behind the scenes, that you never see. Prototypes aren’t actually the most expensive thing, so its totally doable, especially if you have lot of engineers hyped for that. Given that the teams at Valve produced hardware before, its only normal to get money for new experiments. Also the structure at Valve is a bit different than most companies.
deleted by creator
Plans change and evolve. After the experiments looked good, more and more people got interested. Maybe the one guy who was successfull with previous hardware got involved and they started to see something bigger than anticipated. Its an organic growth. I mean I don’t have any internal knowledge or anything, just trying to think how it could have went.
There’s another product that probably was this and ended up… somewhat badly. Valve index
It wasn’t bad in itself but the whole vr thing kinda missed the chance for whatever reason and now Zuckerberg took over it mercilessly. Maybe it was naive to think it will ever take hold outside of simming
Still the beginnings were real fun and that valve demo was so real I had panic attack from past me agoraphobia while in tutorial
Yeah, it’s really sad. VR is great for some experiences. There’s just two issues with it. The largest is the price. It’s pretty expensive for something that doesn’t have much content. The second smaller issue is that it’s too hard to swap into and out of. I can just sit down at my computer and instantly get into something, but switching to VR takes effort.
The price can probably be solved over time, assuming we keep making VR hardware. The convenience is harder. I don’t think there’s a solution to that, at least not in the near future.
You can now get refurbished for around $200. Mostly the meta quest 2. I’d be happier with something that isn’t meta affiliated, but it’s a solid headset. Considering how expensive most of the rest are, getting it down this far is pretty good. Maybe in a decade, there will be more entry headsets at this price point or lower.
Convenience: meta has hand tracking as controllers and can play games by itself so you only need to put the headset on, and theirs is much lighter than the old vives I cut my VR teeth on. The head strap isn’t great still for convenience, but there are third party straps that are much easier to put on and take off. The framework for convenient VR is there, but support is dwindling as there’s not much money in the VR market compared to the cost vs anything else in games.
I hate that most of this is about meta, but I haven’t seen anyone else really making great strides in VR. There’s a Chinese company I need to find again which apparently made super light headsets I was going to keep an eye on and forgot.
Yeah, I had a Vive. The lighthouses have failed now so it’s not currently usable, and I didn’t use it frequently and am now on Linux and haven’t looked into if VR will work for me now, so I haven’t gotten a replacement. I’ve thought about it though. It sucks that even I, who has used VR and enjoyed it, doesn’t currently feel the need to have a working headset.
Im going to look into a used headset and support on my device though. I might get back into it.
I get what you are saying but your entire post dances around the actual problem. All of this is fine if there was actually good software. Ive yet to see any killer app or must have software. If there were really good games it would make the hardware short comings less important. Even apple with their typically polished experiences seems to have just dumped their headset on the market and hope for the best.
deleted by creator
Well said. Also, good suggestions. I haven’t tried a few of those.
deleted by creator
My comment they were replying to didn’t touch this, so they weren’t responding to that. However, I disagree we need some “killer app” to make adoption more likely. It’d be great, but I don’t see it happening. There’s nothing really that is done in VR that can’t also be on traditional displays. The advantage is immersion. It just has to be at a price that people find worth it.
People, especially companies, don’t like talking about this because it’s “obscene” or something, but, like so many things, I think porn is the way to sell VR. It gives an experience that, while still available in traditional formats, is quite different. It’s not a “killer app” but does provide distinct advantages not seen anywhere else.
Thank you. Also, kind of fair, but the library probably needs to be bigger before people are willing to adopt too.
I always kind of thought a good desktop system, where wearing the headset is cheaper than getting a new larger monitor or more monitors, but the long term comfort of wearing a headset instead kills that idea pretty strongly right now. Even just a theater experience is kinda meh.
Porn does tend to sell technological advances though.
still loving and using it. grabbed bf1942 from the archive.org, now playing in lan with friendo and 255 bots. epic joy.
I got one to replace the Xbox that I’ve had hooked up to my tv’s since gen 1… absolutely no regrets.
I have a 14+hr travel day coming up in the next couple months and it’s going to get it’s first work out as a portable, lol.
While you’re all here what controller do you use for your deck? Been thinking of getting one of the hall effect 8bitdo ones, but I’m open to trying anything.
deleted by creator
Some people like a lighter weight and different grips. Lots of cases have a kickstand where you can prop up the deck and use your favorite controller.
Can’t it also dock to a TV or monitor?
If you have a dock. Maybe I’ve been unlucky but I don’t recommend the official dock. Every time I want to use the deck in a docked mode I have to rewire everything in the correct order to get the dock to output a normal resolution. Wire it in the wrong order and you either get no output or you get low resolution output with weird artifacts.
deleted by creator
Actually I’ve grown more fond of my ultrawide monitor and I don’t really couch game anymore, so I haven’t bothered to troubleshoot why it does that.
I agree that my specific issue is an uncommon one as it took a bit of digging on the web to find a working solution, and that alone isn’t an indication that the official dock is bad. The purpose of my comment was to shed light on the fact that it’s not as plug and play as the Switch dock is. You can’t just buy the official dock and expect everything to work.
Maybe a third party dock works better. I don’t really know, but it’s something to look into when you plan to buy a dock for the deck.
deleted by creator
I use it in a dock most of the time.
OG steam controllers for me!
deleted by creator
Just got an Ultimate 2c. It doesn’t work well in some games. Specifically Sackboy, Moonstone Island
If I had another go I’d probably purchase the 8bitdo Pro 2 Hall edition as it can switch between xinput and direct input.
whatever controller is closest and convenient for me when i happen to sit down, or whichever one is charged lol.
I usually gravitate towards a wired xbox controller because its the one i have jurisdiction over in the household.
Strongly recommend a wireless mouse/kb with one of those couch cushions that is desk shaped. very good for playing some of the less controller-friendly games. I got a half-keyboard with a joystick on the thumbrest that i havent used yet.
I am impressed with how many games are now playable on Linux with Proton and how well they look and play, to think this game meanwhile has graphics glitches on the PS5. I might get one myself.
Isn’t that generally how Valve operates on the whole anyway? They don’t set out to make products; they just do what they want and if they actually finish it, they sell it.
