The Steam Deck - a Switch competitor coming in december 2021

[Rennadrel]

You'd be better off comparing the Steam Deck to products like the OneXPlayer and GPD Win Max, which are effectively portable gaming computers. The Steam Deck is a lot cheaper than those products, but also uses an older CPU while the others use newer tech. The 2021 GPD Win Max even has external GPU docking if you buy one of the Intel models. It's form factor is also more like a mini laptop, while the OneXPlayer is more like the Steam Deck. You also get more storage options and better battery life.

Basically, the Steam Deck has a good price point but limited expandability.

[Nitrax]

I was interested for approximately as long as I had the steam deck ad on screen. Then I forgot it. Mac M1 showed how bad x86 architecture is for portable usage, so steam deck will not be a competitor for anything. It's just a way for valve to spend its R&D money.

[Katchii]

Im the other way around i always choose portability

I want to play in bed
I want to play outside on my garden
Playing at the desk entire day is a big turn off for me

That's absolutely your prerogative. I honestly don't know how you do that, though. I can't play without a proper ergonomic set-up anymore, and I just can't get that if I'm not at a properly set-up desk with the peripherals.

I'd love portability, but that just translates to "being able to travel with it" not "I want to be able to play anywhere I want."

For me, this Steam Deck is pointless, as I'd just buy a gaming laptop.

[tehdef]

I was interested for approximately as long as I had the steam deck ad on screen. Then I forgot it. Mac M1 showed how bad x86 architecture is for portable usage, so steam deck will not be a competitor for anything. It's just a way for valve to spend its R&D money.

Spend? You can write off R&D on your taxes, lmao.

[Aliven]

The hassle of playing games on a laptop instantly turns off anyone not wanting to mess around with a bunch of other things. Elegance means a lot.

The portability of the thing is functionally irrelevant to the ease of connection for most users I reckon.

But you can use laptop for other things.

Are we into another pc and console inception?!

[Fencers]

But you can use laptop for other things.

Are we into another pc and console inception?!

Don't want to use a laptop for other things. I have several laptops and desktops already. I want a system that I can walk around my house without specifically carrying a laptop.

Maybe I wanna lay on the couch and play Streets of Rage 4. Maybe my son wants to play Avengers under the dining room table. Maybe I wanna dock the steam deck to the television in my patio to play Pokemon Diamond while lounging on a papasan while the kids in the living room are watching Demon Slayer.

That's how we use our switches and retro portables now. I don't know a single family that owns a Switch and use it differently.

This is that but with a massive steam library and whatever else, I might wanna connect to it.

I am not carrying my laptop around the house to play games or the hassle of tossing it on whatever TV of the room I am in. I can do that, I do it on occasion. But it's a hassle and burdensome when you're just relaxing.

Devices don't have to do anything more or better than another device to succeed. They just have to be more lovely to use than other products.

[jellmoo]

You are actually an example of what I was saying.
You either already have a switch and will buy this also, or you were never going to buy a switch and will buy this as a portable PC.
Nobody is waffling between the two devices. They are not even remotely similar. PC games are always more complicated than popping in a cartridge/disc/card and playing.
Switch is for casual gaming and Nintendo exclusives.
Steam deck is for PC gaming on the go(?)
The 399 model is pointless with laughable storage and the higher priced ones with moderate storage are way past the Switch price points.
Switch has 3 prices points - $199, $299 or $349.
Steam Deck - $399, $529! and $649!
They are just not even in the realm of being the same thing.
The only reason people are drawing this comparison is the form factor. Functionally they are nothing alike. The steam deck will get left behind as PC games require more and more to run even decent settings. The Switch is just the Switch until they do a Switch Pro or Plus or whatever with better hardware.

I'm not sure I can 100% agree with this. I agree with the general point of it, but I do think there is some overlap possible.

Somebody could be interested in a portable gaming system and waffle between the two devices. I mean if:

- You are a Nintendo fanboy and want to play first party Nintendo games, the choice is obvious.
- You are a heavy PC gamer and want to take your PC games on the road, the choice is obvious.

But if:

- You don't have any real preference, there are certainly pros and cons to both devices that could cause people to wonder which device is better for their needs.

[kail]

Gaming is a switch competitor.

Sony, Nintendo, Xbox, Mobile and PC gaming is in competition with each other. Gamers have a finite amount of time they can game, each platform is trying to get you to pick their platform for that time. This system is it sells well enough will help PC gaming take a clunk of that gaming time.

Sitting on the bus on the way to work/school ect.... you can whip out your Switch, Phone or Steam Deck to game. What one you decide is up to you and developers/publishers will keep doing stuff on each platform to get you to pick theirs.

Nintendo competes for gamers, yes but solely by their games and IPs. Unless this steam deck can play Mario, Pokemon, etc games, it won't be a competition to the Switch because only the Switch and other Nintendo products can play those titles. Nintendo has their slice, the other systems compete amongst themselves to play the other AAA and popular indie titles.

[Jtbrig7390]

Nintendo competes for gamers, yes but solely by their games and IPs. Unless this steam deck can play Mario, Pokemon, etc games, it won't be a competition to the Switch because only the Switch and other Nintendo products can play those titles. Nintendo has their slice, the other systems compete amongst themselves to play the other AAA and popular indie titles.

Lots of people don't just play the Switch for Nintendo's IP's alone, They also play it for other titles. One of the biggest if not biggest games in the world (Fortnite) is on the system and each MTX bought for it Nintendo gets a cut.

If someone decides to play the Steam Deck over the Switch that is loss profit for them. Every platform sells itself on its features/exclusives and each platform is in competition with each other. Anyone saying X isn't competing with Y is foolish and clearly don't understand how the market works.

Saying Nintendo competes solely by their games/ip is a no brainer because all platforms do it. You get people with your exclusives and features....

[Soon-TM]

I love the thing, especially since it will be running Linux by default. Hopefully more devs will start worrying a bit more about Linux ports for their games, or at least better integration with WINE.

[Rogalicus]

I love the thing, especially since it will be running Linux by default. Hopefully more devs will start worrying a bit more about Linux ports for their games, or at least better integration with WINE.

I thought Proton exists specifically because Valve doesn't want devs to worry about Linux ports. In most cases it should be enough to run game on Linux without any extra work.

[kaminaris]

I love the thing, especially since it will be running Linux by default. Hopefully more devs will start worrying a bit more about Linux ports for their games, or at least better integration with WINE.

It's not going to be the case simply because of amount of distributions and differences between them. There is not just one linux, there are dozens of them.

Companies don't want to pull up with this simply because they would have to support it. It's already pain in the ass trying to support windows + osx.
It's gigantic investment for puny gain.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussio...7208483242529/

https://www.pcgamer.com/what-happene...team-machines/

and since windows is absolutely overwhelming in gaming industry it's probably never going to be a thing.

And funny thing is, valve by making yet another distro only made things worse.

[Soon-TM]

It's not going to be the case simply because of amount of distributions and differences between them. There is not just one linux, there are dozens of them.

Companies don't want to pull up with this simply because they would have to support it. It's already pain in the ass trying to support windows + osx.
It's gigantic investment for puny gain.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussio...7208483242529/

https://www.pcgamer.com/what-happene...team-machines/

and since windows is absolutely overwhelming in gaming industry it's probably never going to be a thing.

And funny thing is, valve by making yet another distro only made things worse.

You don't necessarily have to develop stuff for a specific Linux distro. As a matter of fact, what Valve is doing is trying to encourage compatibility with Proton (i.e. their spin of WINE), which is distro-agnostic.

[jellmoo]

And funny thing is, valve by making yet another distro only made things worse.

It's just Arch with an overlay and tailored to run on the Steam Deck hardware. Valve didn't do anything to fragment the Linux community. Anything compiled to run on Arch will work just fine on the Steam Deck (within the confines of the hardware).

There honestly isn't a ton of effort needed to compile something to run on a different Linux distro. And having binaries in just two types (deb and rpm... and if you'te using Arch you can also go the aur route) will let you cover the overwhelming majority of Linux users. All they are are source code compiled into an easily installable format. Is it extra work for game makers? Sure, technically. But it's a pretty trivial task compared to everything else that goes into it. Is it worth it for most game makers? Not really, the market share is that low. But there is a chance that the Steam Deck will help change that.

[kaminaris]

You don't necessarily have to develop stuff for a specific Linux distro. As a matter of fact, what Valve is doing is trying to encourage compatibility with Proton (i.e. their spin of WINE), which is distro-agnostic.

Yes you do. The moment you make your product "linux compatible" you have to support it. That alone adds a loads of work to both customer support and development.

Not only that, you also have to put a lot more work into initial development as well.
OpenGL was garbage - yes it was (and still is) until vulkan came around, devs simply didn't bother and used DX.

And when a consumer sees something like this: https://www.protondb.com/
The choice is obvious.

While its much easier to make xplatform app thanks to chromium based software, its absolute nightmare when it comes to 3D stuff.

[Maljinwo]

On one hand, the idea seems solid

On the other hand, Valve has an awful story with hardware

[kaminaris]

It's just Arch with an overlay and tailored to run on the Steam Deck hardware. Valve didn't do anything to fragment the Linux community. Anything compiled to run on Arch will work just fine on the Steam Deck (within the confines of the hardware).

There honestly isn't a ton of effort needed to compile something to run on a different Linux distro. And having binaries in just two types (deb and rpm... and if you'te using Arch you can also go the aur route) will let you cover the overwhelming majority of Linux users. All they are are source code compiled into an easily installable format. Is it extra work for game makers? Sure, technically. But it's a pretty trivial task compared to everything else that goes into it. Is it worth it for most game makers? Not really, the market share is that low. But there is a chance that the Steam Deck will help change that.

That is only what you think, while reality is like that in this topic. You have a problem -> support will say it's not supported.

Devs don't really want to handle the clusterfuck. There can be even a difference within the same distributions. Simply because of 5 different version and possibility that you might have some software that is somehow interfering with it. It's just not worth for 1% of marketshare.

[Tech614]

Lots of people don't just play the Switch for Nintendo's IP's alone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...more%20rows%20

Ah yes look at all those multiplatform games on the list...

Oh wait...

Its like 90% Nintendo published games...

What the hell dude did you seriously make this post? People buy a Switch to play Nintendo games, that is by and large a fact and the sales numbers on games show this.

[KevyB]

Cheapest steam deck is fine, best mobile steam link machine possible, with a beastly PC at home and solid 5g mobile internet (yay europe) self-streaming is absolutely a thing that can easily grow here.

[Hellobolis]

On one hand, the idea seems solid

On the other hand, Valve has an awful story with hardware

going to be an expensive joke if this thing develops joystick issues after 6 months, an all to common issue lately.

at least with the switch and consoles you can just use a second controller while you deal with warranty, on this thing you're going to have to ship the entire device which is no doubt going to take 6+ weeks.

fan noise also a concern when the thing gets older.