Valve Announces the Steam Deck Game Console

[Fourstaff]

Do they have a dock to play "desktop style"?

 

[Space Lynx]

Do they have a dock to play "desktop style"?

basically yes. steam is making a USB C type hub that will be released at a later date. but in mean time you can just use any usb-c hub. for keyboard/mouse/monitor

 

[Nordic]

I honestly really like this. It is an open source hand held gaming device pre loaded with my entire steam library. A lot of the indie games I like playing will work great with the controls and also have a small foot print. This will be amazing for emulating games too.

I don't think anyone should expect to play more performance intensive games like Cyberpunk. Be reasonable with your expectations and it will be a fantastic mobile platform.

I like the idea. The death of the Sony PSP left a pretty big gap in the market but hot diggity damn. that MSRP. Its gonna be tough

They probably are selling the hardware at cost too. I doubt they are making much if any profit of of the hardware sales.

I wouldn't be surprised if the storage is soldered to the board.

It is confirmed that the ssd is soldered and not upgradable.

Pretty powerful handheld, but I don't think they'll sell a lot of them for that much $$$. Also I predict Sega GabeGame Gear tier battery life.

Battery life is about 2-8 hours, depending on what you're doing. You can play Portal 2 for four hours on this thing. If you limit it to 30 FPS, you're going to be playing for 5-6 hours.

Do they have a dock to play "desktop style"?

They are supposedly going to release one but you can use any USB C dock. You don't need to pay for the official valve dock if you don't want to.

 

[wolf]

Halo MCC on the go? sign me up. Looks like one hell of a gadget to play with.

 

[Space Lynx]

Halo MCC on the go? sign me up. Looks like one hell of a gadget to play with.

really is going to depend on that battery life though... and keep in mind, just like a phone, if your charging it every couple days... the battery will be almost useless within two years.

 

[wolf]

really is going to depend on that battery life though... and keep in mind, just like a phone, if your charging it every couple days... the battery will be almost useless within two years.

Definitely a consideration, however, if I got one I'd likely use it in places with power available anyway, and have a battery bank too.

 

[AsRock]

HAHAHAHAHA

 

[R0H1T]

if your charging it every couple days... the battery will be almost useless within two years.

Which phone is that? I've got one that I charge daily, slight more in a single day these days, with less than 30% battery degradation over 3+ years now. If I'd charged it for 80% (level) in that time the degradation would be probably 15~20% at most. And I'm a pretty heavy user with that phone!

 

[sam_86314]

This seems too good to be true.

I want it.

 

[Fourstaff]

basically yes. steam is making a USB C type hub that will be released at a later date. but in mean time you can just use any usb-c hub. for keyboard/mouse/monitor

Nice. Its essentially a PC Switch with steam library. Not sure if I will buy it though, I love my KB+M.

 

[RoutedScripter]

This may explain why Nintendo's Switch Pro or the next Swith being nowhere to be seen, because it may got delayed for adjustments in response to Valve's competition. I think it's a good thing because Nintendo is perhaps busy beefing up the specs and building up other improvements and features to differentiate from Steam Deck.

 

[kayjay010101]

Nice. Its essentially a PC Switch with steam library. Not sure if I will buy it though, I love my KB+M.

You can use it with KB+M USB-c port can be used with any USB-C dock.

So, uh, what about Windows license?
Or can it run only non-windoz games?

You can install Windows on it if you want, it's literally just a PC.

As an aside, I am really quite excited for this. I could definitely see myself using this often, and with the dock functionality it can even act as a thin-client for general PC usage which is awesome. I could then use it for general desktop usage then remote into my actual computer for gaming/heavier workloads.
At the very least this means EAC will be supported in Proton which means MCC on Linux, finally. I might ditch my Windows parititon entirely at that point, it's really only there so I can play MCC

Although, the base model should just be axed. eMMC is completely unusable and will die very quickly as it has very limited write endurance. What they need to do is remove the base model and only sell the 256GB or 512GB NVMe models, or introduce a 128GB model that is at least SATA if NVMe is too expensive. But no eMMC. Just no. I feel bad for the tech-illiterate that will go ahead and buy the cheapest model then wonder why their storage is bricked within the year, and why their games take so long to load when it did work. For the sake of those people I would hope Valve reconsiders using eMMC.

 

[Nordic]

As far as I have seen, some people think it is too expensive, doesn't have enough performance, and has too little battery life.

This device is more than likely being sold at or near cost. To achieve a lower cost you would have to decrease performance and quality.

To achieve more performance you would increase costs and decrease battery life, and there isn't a lot of room to increase performance in this form factor.

To achieve better battery life you would have to increase costs and decrease performance, and there isn't a lot of room for a bigger battery in this form factor.

Somr people are suggesting that a gaming laptop is a better buy, but they don't recognize the appeal of a handheld device. Just look at the popularity of the Nintendo switch. This is a popular form factor.

 

[Colddecked]

This device is amazing. A "Steam Book" with this hw would be equally amazing.

 

[The red spirit]

I bet it's going to be DOA. There's absolutely no way it's going to run full PC games well or be actually cheap or have any adequate battery life. It will only be relevant for some kind of game streaming. And knowing that it will have to run PC software, seals the deal altogether. That means there won't be any handheld optimizations and plenty of games won't support integrated gamepad. Also weak handheld hardware will be overburdened with software loads. So basically it's going to be e-waste version of Switch.

 

[Colddecked]

I bet it's going to be DOA. There's absolutely no way it's going to run full PC games well or be actually cheap or have any adequate battery life. It will only be relevant for some kind of game streaming. And knowing that it will have to run PC software, seals the deal altogether. That means there won't be any handheld optimizations and plenty of games won't support integrated gamepad. Also weak handheld hardware will be overburdened with software loads. So basically it's going to be e-waste version of Switch.

Think of it this way, this thing has like a quarter of the power of a PS5, but its target resolution is about a quarter of the pixels of PS5's target of 4k...

 

[f22a4bandit]

A more powerful version of the Switch with all of the flexibility of a PC. Can install basically anything you want on it (including other storefronts/launchers) as you're not pigeonholed into a specific environment. Play your Steam games, or use it as an emulator. Pretty impressive for the price point, I'm intrigued.

 

[newtekie1]

It is confirmed that the ssd is soldered and not upgradable.

Where was this confirmed? I couldn't find anything on it.

You can use it with KB+M USB-c port can be used with any USB-C dock.

Except then you can't charge it at the same time. You need Steams yet to be seen dock to charge and use the USB at the same time.

This thing needs a built in HDMI port and an extra USB C port and I'd consider it. And you can't say they didn't have room for the extra ports, the thing is the size of a skateboard.

 

[The red spirit]

Think of it this way, this thing has like a quarter of the power of a PS5, but its target resolution is about a quarter of the pixels of PS5's target of 4k...

I don't even want to see it that way. It's literally updated Vega 8. Weakest RDNA 1 GPU was RX 5500 XT and it had 22 CUs. 8 RDNA 2 CUs will be quite weak, much weaker than RX 5500 XT. And RX 5500 XT was no powerhouse, it's like RX 580, but with lower power consumption. If anything, I wouldn't expect anything more than RX 560 performance from this new iGPU. And that is really weak today. Sure, you can play most games at lowest settings at 1600x900 and get 40-50 fps. But forget it running Cyberpunk or Watch Dogs Legion at anything more than 720p lowest. And if device like this is already this weak already, does it have any future potential with even higher requirements? Absolutely no, unless you wanna run games at 640x480 lowest settings and say that 20 fps is playable. BTW PS5 runs PS5 OS, this APU handheld will run some linux distro, which will be heavier and it won't have any proper console optimizations. I'm pretty sure that this will be e-waste really quickly.

 

[newtekie1]

But forget it running Cyberpunk or Watch Dogs Legion at anything more than 720p lowest.

Hence the 720p screen. It's going to be like playing through a screen door.

 

[The red spirit]

Hence the 720p screen. It's going to be like playing through a screen door.

It will soon need mini CRT to stay relevant.

 

[Nordic]

A lot of people have unrealistic expectations of performance both too high and too low.

"Oh my god, it can run Cyperpunk! My 4 year old PC can't even run Cyberpunk." Yes, it can run even the most demanding games but like Cyberpunk, it won't run it well. What it can do that consoles do not do is give you access to graphics settings so you can turn down the visual quality to get better performance.

Despite having hardware that performs between the PS4 and Xbox One, a lot of people think it won't be able to run any games at all. Any game that runs well on a PS4 or Xbox One should run as well or better with the Steam Deck because it has a lower resolution. With some graphical tweaking, you should be able to get all but the most demanding games working very well.

Where this will really shine is Steams vast library of small indie games and emulation. Dozens of these kinds of games will fit fine on the 64gb version and last 8+ hours on the battery.

Get real guys.

 

[ShiBDiB]

The price point is what makes this intriguing. It opens up PC gaming at a presently less than console price point. I think if you look at the target audience as entry level PC gamers or people who want something portable to supplement their at home systems, it's not a bad concept..

But that's also not a terribly large target audience so I could see support disappearing quickly.

 

[sam_86314]

Been trying to reserve one for a while now. Anyone else having issues? My guess is their servers are getting hammered right now.

EDIT: Finally completed the reservation. Only took three billion tries.

 

[The red spirit]

Get real guys.

That stuff doesn't matter. It will be very underwhelming device and if 400 Euros means nothing to you, then feel free to flush it down the toilet. I don't see any reason for such half assed product to exist.