Gotta admit, I never saw that coming. I thought SteamOS was dead after the failure of Steam Machines and Valve was only continuing with their Linux efforts because it's still a useful hedge against Microsoft locking everyone in the App Store. I totally did not expect them to copy the Switch use-case with it.
I'm anxious to see how this turns out. Valve's history with hardware is not so great, so it could go nowhere like Steam Machines, Steam Link, and the Steam Controller did. On the other hand, it could end up all but killing off PC gaming if it is super successful. If it lands somewhere in the middle it will at least be yet another boon for Linux gaming brought to you by Valve as more developers will port or ensure compatibility with Proton.
I love Valve but it seems like they create these hardware projects to occasionally remind platform owners like microsoft/playstation/nintendo that they can't completely abuse their users and software devs (Win10 store lock-in, etc) and retain all of them. Valve just wants to protect steam and credible hardware platform competition is how they do it. I don't think they have any real plans to produce and support hardware long term.
The thing about Valve's record with hardware is that the products aren't bad, just extremely niche. If this thing really can play most of most people's Steam games in a Switch-like form factor with a standard gamepad layout, I think it stands to be a hit in a way their past hardware attempts weren't.
It's also an interesting counterpoint to all the streaming services popping up these days. PC game streaming to mobile has major downsides, even more so when you're away from stable and fast internet. Until 5G is everywhere and mobile bandwidth [soft] caps aren't a thing anymore, a mobile device that can play games locally will be a much more attractive option for a lot of people.
I'm going to buy this just to support Valve for their continued support in making Linux desktop a viable gaming platform. Their reasons may not be entirely altruistic, but there's no doubt that they had a tremendous impact on the Linux gaming ecosystem.
And it's not just the Linux gamers that are benefiting from their work. They also seem to be doing good work on lower-level parts of the stack (e.g.: graphic drivers, Flatpak, etc) that are improving the Linux desktop in general.
I'm going to use it as a (mobile NUC with screen + battery) and use it for programming etc.. not going to buy it for gaming at all. Having an amd machine with 16Gb ram + nvme storage + linux - perfect setup for day to day coding!
And will buy it as a thank you to Valve for supporting us all these years. I think this will pay off for them in the long run.
Same. I already have $1,100 saved for a gaming PC, but since that might only buy a GPU right now I’ll just jump into this and hopefully wait out the GPU crunch.
Apparently they are working with anti-cheat makers to get those games working on Linux before release? This honestly seems like the best news for Linux gaming... ever.
Similar: I have a Hades Canyon GH Nuc because I want a very low profile rig that can run older games on high and new games on low and throw it in a bag w/ power adapter & go. Not only does this accomplish the same thing, it runs Linux and means that if I'm just bringing something along for gaming it's completely self contained.
The joystick layout looks funky to me, but apparently it works?
> However, as soon as I held it myself, the layout felt completely natural: the intuitive hand orientation when you grab the Steam Deck is more straight up and down, like holding the sides of a steering wheel, whereas with a controller your hands are at more of an angle. As a result, it’s easy and natural for your thumbs to reach the Steam Deck’s face buttons, D-pad, and thumbsticks.
And as a Mac user who has to load up Boot Camp to play most of my Steam library, a portable dockable PC is extremely appealing:
> As a result, in desktop mode the Steam Deck honestly just feels like a PC. The OS is Linux-based, but it feels largely familiar to Windows and is capable of running everything I threw at it from either platform. I played a bit of Factorio and Death Stranding with mouse and keyboard on a 32” monitor, and if it weren’t for the Steam Deck sitting docked next to me on the desk I would have forgotten it wasn’t running off a traditional desktop PC.
> Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days?
Almost certainly has to do with cost and PCI-E bandwidth. Mobile chips like this only have so much bandwidth, and USB3 requires more dedicated bandwidth than USB2, not to mention more complicated circuitry that drives up price. And when your expected use case is attaching keyboards and mice, which generally are USB2 only anyways, it reduces the cost and bandwidth needed to support that many ports.
One negative: With all that hardware it’s almost 3 times heavier than the Nintendo Switch, which is already near the upper limit for holding comfortable for longer play sessions.
edit: On closer look that's comparing the Switch without controllers (297g) to the Steam Deck with controllers (669g). The Switch with controllers is 398g, so the Steam Deck is only ~1.7x times as heavy - though that's still a lot of extra weight to hold in your hands.
> Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days?
I think it's not a case of "having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 slots", I think it's instead a case of "having precisely two USB-2 slots", no matter how many USB-3 slots there are. The reason for exactly two USB-2 slots is obvious: one of them is for the keyboard, the other one is for the mouse. Neither the keyboard nor the mouse need more than USB-2, so there's no reason to have the more complex USB-3 hardware for these two ports.
Other than those two ports, it makes sense to have the rest of the USB ports be USB 3, which seems to be the case here, even though there's only one (the USB-C port seems to be meant to be always plugged into a charger, so it might also be USB-2 only).
>They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base.
I'm a little surprised they didn't go with something like Fedora. The kernel / drivers are kept just as up-to-date as Arch but the rest of the system is a little more stable.
Regarding that storage thing: in the hardware section, they specified that the storage could be expanded with a microSD [1] card which should already improve storage capacity by a lot if you wish.
I really wonder what it means to be based on Arch Linux. Are users supposed to run packman to grab the latest security fixes? Are users going to be installing apps from the AUR or whatever? Why does this thing even need a package manager at all? Or is there more to a Linux distro that I'm not getting? It seems like a distro is mostly defined by it's package manager and repository paradigm or philosophy, with Debian being the slow stodgy stable distro and Arch being bleeding-edge. Everything else they have in common (wayland, systemd, standard components that don't know or care thst they're running on Debian or Arch).
Arch is a surprising choice because of their rolling release schedule. How will software updates for Steam Deck work? Will Valve just snapshot Arch at a random time, and then stabilize it?
In my experience USB-3 generates interference that messes with wireless gaming device dongles. I use a Logitech wireless headset and gamepad and they work far worse in USB-3 ports.
There’s obviously a lot of people who like playing games in a more mobile format, as evidenced by the huge popularity of the Switch Lite / mobile gaming.
Giving the PC games market access to that form factor seems, on its face, like an extremely good move.
But we’ve seen products like this before — the NVIDIA Shield, for one. Pretty cool piece of tech, but didn’t exactly start a revolution.
I guess the question becomes “what percentage of current PC gamers are motivated to shell out $400 to play on the train?”
Frankly, I feel like it’s probably a decent number of people? Enough for this product to do okay, if not change the whole market. But people have been very confidently incorrect about almost every iteration of mobile gaming in the past. I guess we’ll see.
> The default Steam Deck experience requires a Steam account (it's free!). Games are purchased and downloaded using the Steam Store. That said, Steam Deck is a PC so you can install third party software and operating systems.
I like their middle finger against other console and smartphone manufacturers.
Many people I know have bought more games on Steam than they could ever play (a behaviour encouraged by seasonal Steam sales). This strikes me as a great chance for people to discover and play titles that have sat in their collections for years.
Halfway down the page on https://www.steamdeck.com/en/ they have a graphic of a user logging in with the username 'gordon' and an obscured password, which conveniently has the same number of letters as halflife3, haha.
I have always said that they are sitting on HL3 until they release a proper console they felt they could throw their weight behind. The Steam Box sure wasn't. This could indeed be it...
I might be the target audience for this. I have a steam account for years but I barely touch it. I don't feel like building a PC, and games for MacOS were limited last time I checked. I've been happy playing my Switch and PS4.
My first thought when I saw this was that it better be able to connect to an external screen, and it does! An added bonus would be if I could hook up external controllers to it as well.
I've heard of Valve's Proton[1] but not sure how stable it is and if it can support any Windows game on their platform. If so, then that would be pretty amazing to have access to some Windows-only games without building a PC.
I'm definitely interested but I'm in no rush. I'd rather upgrade to a PS5 first but I'm gonna keep my eye on this. If the reviews in the long term are good maybe I'll get the 2nd generation of it.
Wonder if they'll release a Oculus-Quest-like all-in-one VR system next.
This is a pretty amazing. Given the ports on the back, will this support the Valve Index? I love my index, but having to boot up a PC and keep myself tethered to the desktop is a bit of an effort that I'd love to skip.
EDIT: Found a half-answer to this: "Pierre-Loup Griffais: I mean, it has all the connectivity. You would need [a lot] to do that, but that's not really what we're optimizing the performance for." [1]
Typo in the title. It’s “Steam Deck”, not “Steam Desk”.
Interesting that Valve is diving deeper into hardware. Remember when they still made video games? Remember when there was still a hope they would some day release Half-Life 3?
I really hope that this market picks up steam (heh) and we get to see even more bigger names coming up with devices. The Aya Neo [1], OneXPlayer [2], and GPD Win3 [3] have all come out relatively close to each other with different ideas of what people want in a handheld gaming PC.
Valve seems to want to get in on a price that is more competitive with the Nintendo Switch, so its hardware specs are a bit worse it seems than the others in the market. The plus side to this is that the base model comes in at just $399, though that is with eMMC storage, while the next bump up uses NVME. The other specs seem to be identical across the 3 SKUs, though.
The trackpads a la the steam controller seem appropriate for the types of games that require a mouse on PC, which is unique in this product market. Gyroscopes are also built in, which I'd presume would work similar to the Wii U and Nintendo Switch for aiming. I don't think it'll be as good as a mouse, but I've found that aiming with gyroscope on the Wii U was much easier than using just the analog stick, so hopefully it makes FPS games with a controller more pleasant for me.
I also think it's interesting that it is using SteamOS, which had been kind of abandoned by Valve for quite some time. This also means that it is depending on Proton for game compatibility, which in itself is a huge statement on their confidence in the maturity of it. Without it, this would be a complete failure like "Steam Machines" were. If it works out well, maybe we'll finally see a real product instead of a tech demo from Dell and other PC manufacturers. Exciting.
Most online gaming is currently borked on Linux because the anticheat software doesn't work. Does this get around that somehow? Will I be able to use the same method on my Linux machine?
EDIT: Otherwise 'runs the latest AAA games - and runs them really well' seems like oversell.
EDIT2: From their 'software' page: 'For Deck, we're vastly improving Proton's game compatibility and support for anti-cheat solutions by working directly with the vendors.' Yes!
Everyone is talking about gaming, but do you guys think this could be a laptop replacement? I've been intrigued by docking tablets for years now, but haven't found one I like yet (that can run linux well, so no Surface). I like the tablet form factor for web browsing and watching videos, but nearly all the tablets are too phone-like to get real work done.
I don't actually play games much anymore, but do people actually want a portable gaming device in addition to their phone? They always felt like gimmicks to me.
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27846969&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27846969&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27846969&p=4
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27846969&p=5
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27846969&p=6
[+] [-] css|4 years ago|reply
- What OS is Steam Deck running?
SteamOS 3.0, a new version of SteamOS based on Arch Linux.
- Will people be able to install Windows, or other 3rd party content?
Yes. Steam Deck is a PC, and players will be able to install whatever they like, including other OSes.
[0]: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq
[+] [-] AnIdiotOnTheNet|4 years ago|reply
I'm anxious to see how this turns out. Valve's history with hardware is not so great, so it could go nowhere like Steam Machines, Steam Link, and the Steam Controller did. On the other hand, it could end up all but killing off PC gaming if it is super successful. If it lands somewhere in the middle it will at least be yet another boon for Linux gaming brought to you by Valve as more developers will port or ensure compatibility with Proton.
[+] [-] superkuh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caconym_|4 years ago|reply
It's also an interesting counterpoint to all the streaming services popping up these days. PC game streaming to mobile has major downsides, even more so when you're away from stable and fast internet. Until 5G is everywhere and mobile bandwidth [soft] caps aren't a thing anymore, a mobile device that can play games locally will be a much more attractive option for a lot of people.
[+] [-] vially|4 years ago|reply
And it's not just the Linux gamers that are benefiting from their work. They also seem to be doing good work on lower-level parts of the stack (e.g.: graphic drivers, Flatpak, etc) that are improving the Linux desktop in general.
[+] [-] BatteryMountain|4 years ago|reply
And will buy it as a thank you to Valve for supporting us all these years. I think this will pay off for them in the long run.
[+] [-] mrzimmerman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkulak|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ineedasername|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|4 years ago|reply
https://www.ign.com/articles/steam-deck-hands-on-impressions...
The joystick layout looks funky to me, but apparently it works?
> However, as soon as I held it myself, the layout felt completely natural: the intuitive hand orientation when you grab the Steam Deck is more straight up and down, like holding the sides of a steering wheel, whereas with a controller your hands are at more of an angle. As a result, it’s easy and natural for your thumbs to reach the Steam Deck’s face buttons, D-pad, and thumbsticks.
And as a Mac user who has to load up Boot Camp to play most of my Steam library, a portable dockable PC is extremely appealing:
> As a result, in desktop mode the Steam Deck honestly just feels like a PC. The OS is Linux-based, but it feels largely familiar to Windows and is capable of running everything I threw at it from either platform. I played a bit of Factorio and Death Stranding with mouse and keyboard on a 32” monitor, and if it weren’t for the Steam Deck sitting docked next to me on the desk I would have forgotten it wasn’t running off a traditional desktop PC.
[+] [-] caslon|4 years ago|reply
Really good hardware for the price.
They fixed the worst thing about SteamOS: It's now got an Arch base.
They're definitely overcharging for storage, but I imagine it'll be easy enough to modify one, so it probably doesn't matter much.
Why is any company having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 these days?
Going with a relatively low resolution compared to modern ones is actually a surprisingly smart move, given how small the display is.
[+] [-] amethyst|4 years ago|reply
Almost certainly has to do with cost and PCI-E bandwidth. Mobile chips like this only have so much bandwidth, and USB3 requires more dedicated bandwidth than USB2, not to mention more complicated circuitry that drives up price. And when your expected use case is attaching keyboards and mice, which generally are USB2 only anyways, it reduces the cost and bandwidth needed to support that many ports.
[+] [-] thorum|4 years ago|reply
edit: On closer look that's comparing the Switch without controllers (297g) to the Steam Deck with controllers (669g). The Switch with controllers is 398g, so the Steam Deck is only ~1.7x times as heavy - though that's still a lot of extra weight to hold in your hands.
[+] [-] cesarb|4 years ago|reply
I think it's not a case of "having more USB-2 slots than USB-3 slots", I think it's instead a case of "having precisely two USB-2 slots", no matter how many USB-3 slots there are. The reason for exactly two USB-2 slots is obvious: one of them is for the keyboard, the other one is for the mouse. Neither the keyboard nor the mouse need more than USB-2, so there's no reason to have the more complex USB-3 hardware for these two ports.
Other than those two ports, it makes sense to have the rest of the USB ports be USB 3, which seems to be the case here, even though there's only one (the USB-C port seems to be meant to be always plugged into a charger, so it might also be USB-2 only).
[+] [-] opheliate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostromo|4 years ago|reply
This makes buying the model with limited storage a bit of a no-brainer. I'm glad Valve supports external storage.
[+] [-] dralley|4 years ago|reply
I'm a little surprised they didn't go with something like Fedora. The kernel / drivers are kept just as up-to-date as Arch but the rest of the system is a little more stable.
[+] [-] cptskippy|4 years ago|reply
Because it's cheaper to produce and easier to design for USB 2. The cpu and chipset are limiting factors as well.
https://www.amd.com/en/products/chipsets-am4
Scroll down to the table at the bottom of the page to see what AMD's chipsets can support.
[+] [-] Gadiguibou|4 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.steamdeck.com/en/hardware
[+] [-] systemvoltage|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phendrenad2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ridiculous_fish|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mehlmao|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pxtl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NegativeLatency|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benatkin|4 years ago|reply
Most of the prospective users don't need more USB-3 ports than they have.
[+] [-] CyberShadow|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ketzo|4 years ago|reply
Giving the PC games market access to that form factor seems, on its face, like an extremely good move.
But we’ve seen products like this before — the NVIDIA Shield, for one. Pretty cool piece of tech, but didn’t exactly start a revolution.
I guess the question becomes “what percentage of current PC gamers are motivated to shell out $400 to play on the train?”
Frankly, I feel like it’s probably a decent number of people? Enough for this product to do okay, if not change the whole market. But people have been very confidently incorrect about almost every iteration of mobile gaming in the past. I guess we’ll see.
[+] [-] chme|4 years ago|reply
> The default Steam Deck experience requires a Steam account (it's free!). Games are purchased and downloaded using the Steam Store. That said, Steam Deck is a PC so you can install third party software and operating systems.
I like their middle finger against other console and smartphone manufacturers.
[+] [-] vaylian|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gfaure|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yehudalouis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BiteCode_dev|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TheRealDunkirk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|4 years ago|reply
https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech
[+] [-] flanbiscuit|4 years ago|reply
My first thought when I saw this was that it better be able to connect to an external screen, and it does! An added bonus would be if I could hook up external controllers to it as well.
I've heard of Valve's Proton[1] but not sure how stable it is and if it can support any Windows game on their platform. If so, then that would be pretty amazing to have access to some Windows-only games without building a PC.
I'm definitely interested but I'm in no rush. I'd rather upgrade to a PS5 first but I'm gonna keep my eye on this. If the reviews in the long term are good maybe I'll get the 2nd generation of it.
Wonder if they'll release a Oculus-Quest-like all-in-one VR system next.
1. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
[+] [-] AdmiralAsshat|4 years ago|reply
> Operating System: SteamOS 3.0 (Arch-based)
> Desktop: KDE Plasma
This is sure to excite the Linux community.
[+] [-] mmastrac|4 years ago|reply
EDIT: Found a half-answer to this: "Pierre-Loup Griffais: I mean, it has all the connectivity. You would need [a lot] to do that, but that's not really what we're optimizing the performance for." [1]
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/steam-deck-valve-faq-big-questi...
[+] [-] mikl|4 years ago|reply
Interesting that Valve is diving deeper into hardware. Remember when they still made video games? Remember when there was still a hope they would some day release Half-Life 3?
[+] [-] dantondwa|4 years ago|reply
It does look very appealing: it could become a Switch with the whole PC library available. Damn cool.
[+] [-] least|4 years ago|reply
Valve seems to want to get in on a price that is more competitive with the Nintendo Switch, so its hardware specs are a bit worse it seems than the others in the market. The plus side to this is that the base model comes in at just $399, though that is with eMMC storage, while the next bump up uses NVME. The other specs seem to be identical across the 3 SKUs, though.
The trackpads a la the steam controller seem appropriate for the types of games that require a mouse on PC, which is unique in this product market. Gyroscopes are also built in, which I'd presume would work similar to the Wii U and Nintendo Switch for aiming. I don't think it'll be as good as a mouse, but I've found that aiming with gyroscope on the Wii U was much easier than using just the analog stick, so hopefully it makes FPS games with a controller more pleasant for me.
I also think it's interesting that it is using SteamOS, which had been kind of abandoned by Valve for quite some time. This also means that it is depending on Proton for game compatibility, which in itself is a huge statement on their confidence in the maturity of it. Without it, this would be a complete failure like "Steam Machines" were. If it works out well, maybe we'll finally see a real product instead of a tech demo from Dell and other PC manufacturers. Exciting.
[1] https://www.ayaneo.com/aya-neo
[2] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/onexplayer-best-performin...
[3] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gpd-win3-the-world-s-1st-...
[+] [-] OscarCunningham|4 years ago|reply
EDIT: Otherwise 'runs the latest AAA games - and runs them really well' seems like oversell.
EDIT2: From their 'software' page: 'For Deck, we're vastly improving Proton's game compatibility and support for anti-cheat solutions by working directly with the vendors.' Yes!
[+] [-] jalgos_eminator|4 years ago|reply
I don't actually play games much anymore, but do people actually want a portable gaming device in addition to their phone? They always felt like gimmicks to me.
[+] [-] mrpippy|4 years ago|reply
GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz (up to 1.6 TFlops FP32)
RAM: 16GB LPDDR5
Display: 7", 1280x800, 60Hz
OS: SteamOS 3.0 (Arch-based), KDE Plasma desktop
Storage: Onboard 64GB eMMC/256GB NVMe/512GB NVMe, microSD slot
[+] [-] floatingatoll|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xaduha|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FredFS456|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cynicalreason|4 years ago|reply