Valve introduces Steam Deck

[cummytummies]

No, other people do and then they repost the screenshots elsewhere

TempleOS web browser has no image support.

 

[Pissmaster]

Well how the hell am I supposed to play pinball, Pac-Man, bullet hells, and other vertically-oriented games? Turning it sideways hardly seems a viable option. Sorry but this is a garbage toy for stupid trendy normalfag babies and of no use to the serious elite gamer such as myself. How did Gaybe fuck this up when the WonderSwan got it right over 20 years ago?

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A design so galaxy brained that absolutely nobody has copied it over the past 22 years

 

[Naamaleipuri]

What do you care? Do you own stock in Valve (you don't, because it's privately-owned). What difference does it makes to you who "wins the console war"? Does the number of Switches sold impact the experience of playing on a Deck? Are you afraid devs will stop developing games for PC if the Deck doesn't outsell the Switch?

I don't care, that's the thing.
It's just steam on a smaller screen. Hell, we've been hacking PC games on PSP and PS Vita for ages.
It'll just be fun to watch it go crash and burn, just like the steam controller.
And if it's great, then I'll buy one and be happy. Whatever happens, I'll be entertained.

 

[Pissmaster]

Hell, we've been hacking PC games on PSP and PS Vita for ages.

Not exactly. The source code for Doom's engine was released ages ago, and a number of other games followed, which is why we have those running on the PSP. Modern stuff like Rockstar's games running on PS Vita are Android conversions. And then you've got insane shit like Super Mario 64 where weapons grade autists decompiled it, poured over the fucking assembly code, and rewrote it all in C.

Point is, it's a hell of a lot more complicated than you think to port around just any old game, considering internal documentation and source code just isn't available for most games.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

At this point these devices feel more like hardware engineers going "look what we can do!" yet nobody stopped to ask if this is worth making.

In other words, when it comes to hardware, Valve seems to be the guys that are so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they never stop to think if they should. Although the Deck seems to be a different story, for reasons already outlined in the thread. Or it could be a massive fucking failure, also for reasons already outlined in the thread. That's the devil of this thing: it honestly could go either way with the Deck. I guess we'll see when it hits the market.....

Once there are pictures and videos of Nintendo emulators running on this thing I expect the Tendies to start mass reporting dolphin and others to nintendo itself and will create a big shitstorm.

Yeah, just like they did when the NVidia Shield ran N64 and GCN games.....

Oh wait, no they didn't.

"Switch for normal people, Steam Deck for enthusiasts, PS5 for schizos.
I could properly classify them"

Oh grorious Nippon, never ever change.

Plus Valve taking this first step may give incentive to other big name hardware manufactures to develop their own handheld PCs or even work in partnership with Valve to develop their own clones of the Deck, the more offer there is in the market the more affordable and accessible it'll become to the general public.

Remember what happened the last time a hardware manufacturer did something like that?

Spoiler alert, it didn't do very well. Not saying that Valve will necessarily fail, just that there's already a pretty awful precedent set for exactly the sort of idea you're talking about.

 

[SolidZone 26]

I don't care, that's the thing.
It's just steam on a smaller screen. Hell, we've been hacking PC games on PSP and PS Vita for ages.
It'll just be fun to watch it go crash and burn, just like the steam controller.
And if it's great, then I'll buy one and be happy. Whatever happens, I'll be entertained.

PSP and Vita are hot garbage though.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

PSP and Vita are hot garbage though.

psp perhaps but the vita is pretty noice

 

[cummytummies]

psp perhaps but the vita is pretty noice

When PSP came out playing PS2-tier video games like Burnout 3 and Grand Theft Auto on the go was nearly unthinkable. And some of the original IPs were good too. The only garbage part were the UMD movies, but you weren't forced to buy any.

 

[Calandrino]

A design so galaxy brained that absolutely nobody has copied it over the past 22 years

Yes, too ingenious and ahead of its time it appears. Sadly afaik Switch is at this time the only remotely convenient way to play vertical games on a handheld with an actual controller. Even smart phone controller thingies don't support it, in spite of vertical smart phone games not being extremely uncommon. Only other option is to duct tape a tablet to a bluetooth controller or something.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Not exactly. The source code for Doom's engine was released ages ago, and a number of other games followed, which is why we have those running on the PSP. Modern stuff like Rockstar's games running on PS Vita are Android conversions. And then you've got insane shit like Super Mario 64 where weapons grade autists decompiled it, poured over the fucking assembly code, and rewrote it all in C.

Point is, it's a hell of a lot more complicated than you think to port around just any old game, considering internal documentation and source code just isn't available for most games.

And even when there is a source code it can still be a massive pain in the ass. As is the case with Rise of the Triad (still no definitive source port of that, although 3D Realms is doing a source port due some time this year), and more obscure games like Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage (personal favorite of mine) and Witchaven 1 and 2.

 

[ZMOT]

Remember what happened the last time a hardware manufacturer did something like that?

you mean like the genesis?

Spoiler alert, it didn't do very well. Not saying that Valve will necessarily fail, just that there's already a pretty awful precedent set for exactly the sort of idea you're talking about.

you mean like the genesis?
good thing the the market and industry is the same as 25 years ago.... (how and where do you think all those pc compatible steam deck clones are gonna get their games from?).

Yes, too ingenious and ahead of its time it appears. Sadly afaik Switch is at this time the only remotely convenient way to play vertical games on a handheld with an actual controller. Even smart phone controller thingies don't support it, in spite of vertical smart phone games not being extremely uncommon. Only other option is to duct tape a tablet to a bluetooth controller or something.

how many vertical games are there? how many players of those?

it's a simple cost/benefit calculation, nothing more. if you really want to you can use it on the side with an external controller.

 

[My world my rules]

I'm unsure what to think of this in general, i really don't think i would have alot of games that would be comftrable to play on a handheld like that.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

you mean like the genesis?

You talking about that version made by Majesco? If so, A. That variant was made long after the Genesis was discontinued. B. It also didn't do very well. It was originally sold for 50 bucks, but dropped to 20 because literally nobody wanted one. C. It literally cannot play certain games. I'm not just talking about the CD and 32X shit, I mean some dyed-in-the-wool Genesis games don't fucking work on the thing (Virtua Racing and Gargoyles being the most notable ones).

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

As the title suggests, Muta bought a bootleg Steam Deck off IndieGoGo and makes a strong prediction that handheld consoles based off PC hardware and firmware will get more popular in the next five to ten years.

Interestingly, though, he tells people to not just simply throw away a $1,000 dollars off something like this if you’re expecting to play something like Persona 4: Golden with a perfect FPS rate.

 

[Belvedere]

Although the Deck seems to be a different story, for reasons already outlined in the thread. Or it could be a massive fucking failure, also for reasons already outlined in the thread. That's the devil of this thing: it honestly could go either way with the Deck. I guess we'll see when it hits the market.....

I'm actually more curious as to how other dedicated hardware manufactures are going to respond to this and if the market is suddenly going to be flooded with a bunch of different variants of handheld gaming PCs

Remember what happened the last time a hardware manufacturer did something like that?
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Spoiler alert, it didn't do very well. Not saying that Valve will necessarily fail, just that there's already a pretty awful precedent set for exactly the sort of idea you're talking about.

I remember the 3DO and that's not even remotely a valid comparison to what the Steam Deck is going to be. For starters the 3DO's failure had less to do with anything related to hardware SKUs and more to do with it launching with a price tag of $700 in 1993 (That's $1300+ of today's money once adjusted for inflation) and had a mere handful of games at launch ( which added to the cost of the unit and were for the most part ports of games available elsewhere.)

The 3DO was proprietary hardware that had licensing fees and required development kits to make games for it. The Steam Deck, except for the "custom" Zen 2 processor (which could basically mean it was tweaked to optimize battery life) everything about it is literally made up of off-the-shelve PC hardware that could be replicated by third parties on their own without paying licensing fees and PC developers have to do nothing special to have their games running on it. Right now there may be people at GDP and Aya Neo designing the next hardware revisions of their own handheld PCs to included the same features the Deck has to be able to compete with it.

I'm 99.9% certain that the costumers who buys a Deck already have Steam accounts with a plethora of games on it, heck even in the case of the 00.1% who doesn't, you can install non-Steam games on it too. (let's not even get started on the amount of console emulation this thing is going to see from day 1)

Even for the sake of argument let's say Valve licensed the exact technical specifications to other manufactures so the clones work 1-to-1 as the official hardware, Valve makes its money from Steam sales not from hardware, they'll probably license the specs for free and only ask for a contract that would bind the 3rd party manufacturer to build the Decks to strict standards to bare the Steam branding and the specific version of SteamOS that will be customized for the Deck. Valve probably would welcome such an scenario as it'll free them from having to manufacture all the units and cover demand. Also, again the Deck is a PC, people can dock it to a mouse/keyboard and monitor and do whatever productivity task a regular PC can do for $529 if you go for the mid-range model ( $280 in 1993's money ).

 

[Mr. Duck]

Plus Valve taking this first step may give incentive to other big name hardware manufactures to develop their own handheld PCs or even work in partnership with Valve to develop their own clones of the Deck, the more offer there is in the market the more affordable and accessible it'll become to the general public.

They did that with the Steam Machines.



And they failed miserably.

 

[Pissmaster]

how many vertical games are there? how many players of those?

all I can think of are top-down shooters, pinball games, specific puzzle games where something falls from the top like Tetris and some music games like Sound Voltex

so almost all of them are arcade games

Pinball works pretty well on phones due to the simple controls, just tap for flippers and swipe for nudging; top-down shooters work well because the screen can work like a trackpad; and music games are just tapping out sequences

@Calandrino have you considered just building out a vertical arcade cabinet at home? Maybe just modding an Arcade1Up with your own controls and computer? Some of them come with a rotated 1280x1024 monitor

 

[Nobunaga]

They did that with the Steam Machines.

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And they failed miserably.

Steam machine was just a pre build with linux, the deck is at least something different i guess

 

[Belvedere]

They did that with the Steam Machines.

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And they failed miserably.

Because there is literally no difference between a Steam Machine and someone buying the parts at a local PC store and building their own. Last time I checked going to a PC store to buy parts to build custom handhelds isn't a thing.

 

[X Pac Heat]

Steam Machines actually were released?

I thought they just never materialized lol