Valve introduces Steam Deck

The main draw for me with a device like this is emulation and playing other games. Honestly I'd have little interest in an Xbox handheld if it's a walled garden like the Switch. If it's more of a steam deck - gaming device that turns into a PC at the press of a button and you can put other software on it then that would be pretty compelling.

Not sure MS would do that though, would likely be locked down IMO.
The software side of things is where the Deck shines. They still need to do some work on the desktop side of SteamOS (probably why they haven't released isos not tied to the deck?), but even that has improved since launch. The general openness of it (you can get almost anything to run on it), and how games/apps just generally work, especially in game mode, is actually impressive, doubly so when you consider most of that is through translation layers.
 
Also some interesting speculations from one of the youtubers I watch. Its a lot of autism about TDP and wattages but TL;DW is he thinks the Xbox Series S was some kind of test run for Microsoft to get in on the handheld market and we may see a handheld announcement from them in the not too distant future.
I think you are into something, Canadian man was talking about it


I think Microsoft is going to make a stripped down window version like those Laptops that come with Windows that forbid you to install apps from outside the app store to throw their own handheld or just try to make Window 11 Gayming Edition a better deal than Steam OS
 
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I think Microsoft is going to make a stripped down window version like those Laptops that come with Windows that forbid you to install apps from outside the app store to throw their own handheld or just try to make Window 11 Gayming Edition a better deal than Steam OS
If that does happen I hope it can be easily exploited to allow for linux to be installed making for a cheaper steam deck if it end up being cheaper.
 
If that does happen I hope it can be easily exploited to allow for linux to be installed making for a cheaper steam deck if it end up being cheaper.
Would be nice, though Xbox consoles are generally the last to get hacked, if they ever do. To this day, you still cannot pirate games on Xbox One. They'll probably pass it off as a Steam Deck competitor by showing off that you can browse the web on it 'n' shit, but that web browser will just be the same version of Edge that's on all the modern Xboxes. It would be a miracle to have a portable Xbox that also just ran normal Windows 11, and a double miracle if you could install SteamOS.
 
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Would be nice, though Xbox consoles are generally the last to get hacked, if they ever do. To this day, you still cannot pirate games on Xbox One. They'll probably pass it off as a Steam Deck competitor by showing off that you can browse the web on it 'n' shit, but that web browser will just be the same version of Edge that's on all the modern Xboxes. It would be a miracle to have a portable Xbox that also just ran normal Windows 11, and a double miracle if you could install SteamOS.

The main takeaway it seems rather than releasing a Xbox branded handheld Microsoft may introduce a native Windows 11 "handheld" mode that would recognize when the OS is running on a Steam Deck like PC and change its interface to work with joysticks/buttons without using any third party overlay to make it work.

Windows was made and expects a mouse and keyboard for users to interface with the OS, that's why it sucks when trying to use it in a handheld. Microsoft may have recognized that this is a new market that Valve may dominate with Steam OS.
 
Asus is already aware that the price is a issue because people is not going to blow 1000+ bucks in a handheld when the steam deck is there at half the price
to be fair the deck is subsidized tho, and asus can't recoup some of it via software sales. I expect other handhelds to be more expensive simply by being priced more realistically.

besides the price those handhelds probably also miss out by being locked down, planned obsolescence chinkshit where the deck is pretty open to tinker with in both hard- and software.
 
Why im not surprised that AMD saw the success of the Steam deck and said "hey fuck it, we are going dry"


For what i can tell they are throwing this for the steam deck market and to annoy nvidia showing certain people cough nintendo cough that they are the better deal, this is confirmed to be the "custom" system that is going to go in the Ally
 
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Why im not surprised that AMD saw the success of the Steam deck and said "hey fuck it, we are going dry"


For what i can tell they are throwing this for the steam deck market and to annoy nvidia showing certain people cough nintendo cough that they are the better deal, this is confirmed to be the "custom" system that is going to go in the Ally
Hopefully this means more Steam Deck clones besides the already announced Asus ROG device.
 
Hopefully this means more Steam Deck clones besides the already announced Asus ROG device.
What none of these competitors have figured out is what makes the Deck such a success. They still shove shitty Windows 11 on their systems and charge $800 or more.

If the Ally is less than $600 I'll fucking buy one.
 
What none of these competitors have figured out is what makes the Deck such a success. They still shove shitty Windows 11 on their systems and charge $800 or more.

If the Ally is less than $600 I'll fucking buy one.
If they make a deal the cost is halved iirc, but considering how fucking awful 11 runs on deck people will just wipe it out existence and install HoloISO
 
or what i can tell they are throwing this for the steam deck market and to annoy nvidia showing certain people cough nintendo cough that they are the better deal, this is confirmed to be the "custom" system that is going to go in the Ally
The Z1 is pathetic, half the GPU "cores" of the Deck. The Z1X is interesting, but is effectively a normal Ryzen 7040U with tuned power firmware to maximize it's 15W celing.

If Valve is still up for doing their own thing for the next chip, I believe a proper SoC would help to reduce cost. On-package or soldered storage would mean they don't have to source parts and do assembly separately from the motherboard. Just leave an empty M.2 port if someone wants to expand.
What none of these competitors have figured out is what makes the Deck such a success. They still shove shitty Windows 11 on their systems and charge $800 or more.
A lot of the cool things the Deck does is incredibly difficult to do, if you're just selling hardware like Asus. Gamescope w/ built-in FSR scaling, per-game power profiles, Steam Input all play a part in making the Deck so versatile.

Microsoft is going to have to build a lot of that tooling and UI, and users will have to stick with ads everywhere. But, hey, if that portable Series S is a thing, maybe they could just port over the UI in the Xbox app.
 
As long as they will support a way to install some version of linux I would be good with that.
unless they go out of their way to fuck with it (which would smother any deck competitor in the crib) linux support shouldn't be that hard, meaning they could also easily support it themselves if they wanted to. which down the line could increase the amount of official linux support in general.

Why im not surprised that AMD saw the success of the Steam deck and said "hey fuck it, we are going dry"


For what i can tell they are throwing this for the steam deck market and to annoy nvidia showing certain people cough nintendo cough that they are the better deal, this is confirmed to be the "custom" system that is going to go in the Ally
amd was always pretty open to custom designs, part of the reason their stuff is in consoles. nvidia much less so and more prone to burn you while working with them (fermi pun intended).
 
What none of these competitors have figured out is what makes the Deck such a success. They still shove shitty Windows 11 on their systems and charge $800 or more.

If the Ally is less than $600 I'll fucking buy one.
I'm pretty sure its going to end up at the $800 line. I like the cooling design and the more powerful processor is good but the efficiency is wasted on the battery size they have chosen. Its going to have the same battery life as the steam deck.

For me the biggest deal breaker is the removal of the track pads. The directional track pads provides a way to keybind a few additional buttons in case you need them and an option to have a scroll wheel in games without a mouse connected. They're also good for having a navigational tool for desktop mode if you are in a hurry and don't want to connect a Bluetooth mouse to navigate the interface.

IMO the failure to include track pads alone kneecaps the Rog ally as a standalone device. I'm personally going to just wait for Steam to do a deck version 2. I'm not going to navigate away from the Deck unless its something too good to ignore and has the features I use regularly.
 
What none of these competitors have figured out is what makes the Deck such a success. They still shove shitty Windows 11 on their systems and charge $800 or more.

If the Ally is less than $600 I'll fucking buy one.
Isn't the Steam library how they're keeping themselves in profit despite a lower price tag for the Deck itself? Most competitors seem to be relying on the single purchase of their unit rather than a whole game library beyond it to give the flexibility to lower their unit cost like Valve does.
 
The only way I could possibly care about any kind of new portable game system is if it's pocket sized. Like, no bigger than the PSVita. I really don't see why anyone would buy a portable like that for double the price of a Steam Deck unless they just have a deranged hatred for Valve.

The Steam Deck is great. It feels like the final game system. Like, shit just isn't really going to get any better than it, and we'll have little upgrades like newer hardware and a better screen in the future, but it really feels like it's the last significant evolution game systems will ever have. It won't look like total dogshit in a decade or two, it'll just look like an older version of the exact same game systems they'll have by then.

Isn't the Steam library how they're keeping themselves in profit despite a lower price tag for the Deck itself? Most competitors seem to be relying on the single purchase of their unit rather than a whole game library beyond it to give the flexibility to lower their unit cost like Valve does.
Yeah, you can run anything you want on a Steam Deck but it's a lot more of a hassle to do that than just buy your game from their store.
 
Tagging you again because Verge got the scoop that is supposedly going to cost 699$ with the Z1 Extreme, Asus is going balls to the wall with it
If that's the case then I'm going to assume the other version is $599

It does highlight another thing that these companies fuck up and that is different tech specs. One of the great things about the Deck is that all the versions are the same as far as power goes. When you say a game is verified that means no matter what deck you have that it will work.
 
When you say a game is verified that means no matter what deck you have that it will work.
AkSHuaLLy it only means that it will run without a problem in Steam OS, if you make a more beefy computer and use HoloISO you can play any verified game without a issue as long as your hardware is not worse than the Deck, thing that is very hard to do in year of Kojima 2023
 
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