Valve Won't Follow Yearly Release Cadence with Steam Deck, Holds Until "Generational Leap in Compute"

[SOAREVERSOR]

I dont get the recent push to abandon x86 for arm. x86 has backwards compatibility, arms instruction set completely changes every few years. arm seems like a step backwards for everything but mobile devices that get replaced on a contract.
id rather have x86 where i can still open documents made in windows 3 and retrieve data if needed or where my 15 year old phenom ii can still boot windows and linux and run some modern games.
ARM on desktop seems like one of those corporations manufacturing consent situations to get you to buy into a locked in platform where you are forced to buy new hardware.

We are talking about a portable gaming device here and not a desktop. So hence get rid of it. x86 also has it's share of problems and is a dinosaur.

 

[Tripwired]

I don't either, but I blame consumers, not the companies. No one forces anyone to "upgrade" every year (although I fail to see how taking out a new phone contract every year constitutes an "upgrade").

Personally, I only buy a new phone when the current one's battery has given up.

I agree no one is forced too. The power of advertising and marketing however affects us all in some manner.

 

[AusWolf]

I agree no one is forced too. The power of advertising and marketing however affects us all in some manner.

It tends to affect me by triggering a laugh these days.

For example, when the new iPhone 16 Pro advert talked about the thing having a dedicated camera button, I just thought "hey, my £120 Sony Ericsson button phone had that 15 years ago".

The point is, advertising doesn't affect you in any way if you apply a little bit of critical thinking.

 

[StimpsonJCat]

Good luck playing 2026 games on that junk.

 

[AusWolf]

Good luck playing 2026 games on that junk.

You must be mad to expect to be playing AAA games for two more years on a £350 handheld console with a 15 W APU in it.

 

[Raiden85]

You must be mad to expect to be playing AAA games for two more years on a £350 handheld console with a 15 W APU in it.

And even the current Ally would struggle as well by 2026.

Good luck playing 2026 games on that junk.

The deck isn't just about running the latest AAA games which is a nice bonus if it can run them, it's more for playing much older titles or even AAA games that would be a couple of years old now.

 

[colossusrageblack]

Steam Deck lacks RAM and the chip is showing its age, especially compared to Z1 Extreme devices that can crank out more performance just by increasing the power. It was an excellent start for portable PC gaming, but the Steam Deck has fallen well behind the competition at this point.

 

[AusWolf]

Steam Deck lacks RAM and the chip is showing its age, especially compared to Z1 Extreme devices that can crank out more performance just by increasing the power. It was an excellent start for portable PC gaming, but the Steam Deck has fallen well behind the competition at this point.

Not on price, though. I'd still choose the Steam Deck over anything else because it's more than enough for what a handheld device should be used for, imo. AAA games are meant for the big screen.

 

[Craptacular]

I dont get the recent push to abandon x86 for arm. x86 has backwards compatibility, arms instruction set completely changes every few years. arm seems like a step backwards for everything but mobile devices that get replaced on a contract.
id rather have x86 where i can still open documents made in windows 3 and retrieve data if needed or where my 15 year old phenom ii can still boot windows and linux and run some modern games.
ARM on desktop seems like one of those corporations manufacturing consent situations to get you to buy into a locked in platform where you are forced to buy new hardware.

Because it is a portable device, ARM has much better power efficiency in lower wattage use cases.

ARM CPUs today run software designed for ARM CPUs 10 years ago just fine.

 

[cal5582]

Because it is a portable device, ARM has much better power efficiency in lower wattage use cases.

ARM CPUs today run software designed for ARM CPUs 10 years ago just fine.

how much of that efficiency goes out the window when you have to emulate legacy software? if we are going to be running 3 emulation layers on top of each other to get games working then i doubt the ISA is making that much of a difference.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

how much of that efficiency goes out the window when you have to emulate legacy software? if we are going to be running 3 emulation layers on top of each other to get games working then i doubt the ISA is making that much of a difference.

Doesn't matter. None of these portables are able to properly run AAA games to make it worth it for that purpose. They run past gen and indie games just fine though. They fail as portables though as their battery life is trash and they are bulky. x86 is the Achilles Heel of these devices and having your PC games on a portable device with respectable battery life in a reasonable form factor is doomed as long as it is attached to the dumpster fire that is x86. Furthermore modern or current AAA gaming is never going to work on any sort of portable PC device. Anybody who thinks that's going to happen was dropped on their head and is smoking crack. The reality is the games are designed and tuned for consoles and x86 (especially with Windows) is such dumpster fire of fail and bad that the only way it does work on the PC is by setting money on fire and brute forcing it on a full size desktop which will never be able to fully or even properly use the hardware because of the utter shit show that is Windows + x86.

It's not a Valve problem, it's a PC gaming problem that is simply not going to go away. The PC is a crippled hot mess of a platform. If you are serious about your Steam Library On The Go than you're going to have to write off modern AAA games and Valve is going to have to get it going over ARM.

 

[chrcoluk]

Why do 202X AAA games matter? they only are a tiny part of the steam library.

I didnt get my steam deck to play wukong, thats a big screen game.

Great for indie platformers, turn based games, strategy games, board games, card games,, those sort of games

 

[StimpsonJCat]

Why do 202X AAA games matter? they only are a tiny part of the steam library.

I didnt get my steam deck to play wukong, thats a big screen game.

Great for indie platformers, turn based games, strategy games, board games, card games,, those sort of games

Then Valve should market it as a "way back machine" then...

 

[chrcoluk]

Then Valve should market it as a "way back machine" then...

These other types of games are still developed and released.

 

[StimpsonJCat]

These other types of games are still developed and released.

And that's great. But where on the box does it say that is all the Steam Deck can do?

 

[chrcoluk]

And that's great. But where on the box does it say that is all the Steam Deck can do?

It doesnt, but neither does any other gaming product.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

Why do 202X AAA games matter? they only are a tiny part of the steam library.

I didnt get my steam deck to play wukong, thats a big screen game.

Great for indie platformers, turn based games, strategy games, board games, card games,, those sort of games

They don't. There is no way in hell that is ever going to happen on a portable gaming PC until PC gaming leads the transition to the cloud. Eventually that will happen, till then it won't.

But since it's not going to happen there is no sense being stuck with the crappy form factor and battery life that x86 is forcing on it along with all the other x86 baggage.

 

[chrcoluk]

They don't. There is no way in hell that is ever going to happen on a portable gaming PC until PC gaming leads the transition to the cloud. Eventually that will happen, till then it won't.

But since it's not going to happen there is no sense being stuck with the crappy form factor and battery life that x86 is forcing on it along with all the other x86 baggage.

I personally think devices like the steam deck and switch are bigger marvels than a GPU the size of about 4 bricks.

Both devices also I think have pretty impressive battery life for what they do (tegra vs AMD), as an example my steam deck has better on screen time than my sister's iphone. Take into account it is a far bigger screen and actually running a game.

When we talk about ARM it has to be done in a apple to apple way, how long does a phone stay powered up for on battery when you run a 3d game on it and keep it in the foreground with the screen on?

x86 can be efficient, its just we are used to desktop SKUs going right up to the top of the efficiency curve.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

I personally think devices like the steam deck and switch are bigger marvels than a GPU the size of about 4 bricks.

Both devices also I think have pretty impressive battery life for what they do (tegra vs AMD), as an example my steam deck has better on screen time than my sister's iphone. Take into account it is a far bigger screen and actually running a game.

When we talk about ARM it has to be done in a apple to apple way, how long does a phone stay powered up for on battery when you run a 3d game on it and keep it in the foreground with the screen on?

x86 can be efficient, its just we are used to desktop SKUs going right up to the top of the efficiency curve.

My iPhone, iPad, and Switch all get better battery life than the Steam Deck regardless of what I am doing with any of them. Though TBH I don't even use the SD much anymore as it's really a silly device so my niece who's in elementary school has it and she doesn't use it really either. It's one of those things like the Oculus where it's cool for a couple hours and then you realize it's an idiotic device with no real purpose and it sucks.

Switch on the other hand got so much use that we got an OLED Switch just to have two. Same with the iPad.

 

[iuliug]

True, but the performance overall was pretty much identical to the original. The OLED one had a more consistent frame rate and in some games better lows, but other than that, the performance was the same. Yes, it had faster Wi-Fi and plenty of other changes, but if a game developer was targeting a certain performance with the original deck, the OLED would be the same.

It’s as if it's like a PS5 vs a PS5 Pro.

I know but i bet the ones that bought the LCD version b4 OLED came out virtually un-announced at the same price as the Oled were not too happy.
I actually did not know about the other changes (because handhelds are not my interest), but that makes it more disingenuous.

 

[AnotherReader]

Nvidia doesn't below lumped into this really. Their generations have been 2-3 years apart, always using new designs and lithography to move the bar significantly each gen, around +30% per gen is solid enough. Meanwhile their cost on pricing tiers have jumped too so we are certainly paying for it.

Intel and AMD on the other hand have been a joke the last few gens at more like 5-10%. I'm actually glad they focused more on power effiency so at least there is something interesting happening for CPUs. X3D was another jump but mainly just because Ryzen was so cache starved beforehand. We're at the point with 8c/16t CPUs that no average end user can possibly use more threads than this (that isn't doing workstation compute tasks), they have nowhere to go with clock speeds either, so they are a stalemate since it seems very difficult to make large IPC gains.

It's also much easier to get a large performance increase out of GPUs; the class of problems that runs well on them is embarrassingly parallel. After all, even the RDNA3 flagship is 50% faster than the RDNA2 equivalent.

They don't. There is no way in hell that is ever going to happen on a portable gaming PC until PC gaming leads the transition to the cloud. Eventually that will happen, till then it won't.

But since it's not going to happen there is no sense being stuck with the crappy form factor and battery life that x86 is forcing on it along with all the other x86 baggage.

The difference in battery life isn't about x86 vs ARM. It has to do with the immense difference in experience designing for very low idle power.