Steam Deck officially announced by Valve

I'll be glad if they replace Big Picture with this entirely, Big Picture was always clunky - Even with a controller.
 
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Also, you have to go through round-about ways to disable Big Picture when you press the Xbox button on the controller (even today).

If you want to shut off the Xbox gamepad, you hold the Xbox button, but after a few seconds, Big Picture appears. It's the worst experience ever and nothing in the Steam interface fixes it.

The only work around I know of is to set the Xbox button in Windows to launch the Game Bar, but then disable the Game Bar. This has the effect of disabling the Xbox button as well. But it's a joke you have to do this.
 
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Good news! I switched to Big Picture exactly once, fooled around a bit with a confused look on my face, and switched it back immediately. Glad the Deck UI will be more like a variation of the regular Steam UI.
 
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Cool vid. Contrary to my early assumptions it is indeed more modular than I thought it would be. I really like the idea of replaceable thumbsticks and the suggestion replacement parts will be available.

My favorite part is a comment made in the first 30 seconds - 'it is your PC and you have every right to do what you want with it'.
 
The position of the M.2 2230 drive is kinda what I was expecting, the metal cover throws me for a bit of a loop. Part of me is hoping to get a riser to stick in it's place and run a cable to a typical 2280 board. I would expect eventually to do something like that. Maybe 3D print a back cover tho help facilitate that.
 
Now that expansion if necessary is confirmed, I'm glad I got the 256GB one :p
If Valve can deliver as estimated (I'm still skeptical). I may get mine sooner too.
 
maro said:
Now that expansion if necessary is confirmed, I'm glad I got the 256GB one :p
If Valve can deliver as estimated (I'm still skeptical). I may get mine sooner too.
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Considering you can run games off of a flash memory card and it includes 16GB of RAM there seems to be little incentive to upgrade the built in storage.
 
maro said:
Cool vid. Contrary to my early assumptions it is indeed more modular than I thought it would be. I really like the idea of replaceable thumbsticks and the suggestion replacement parts will be available.

My favorite part is a comment made in the first 30 seconds - 'it is your PC and you have every right to do what you want with it'.
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It is pretty modular but it sounds like they make it pretty clear that the plastic framing on it isn't very sturdy and you will weaken the durability by opening it even once. From my experience, opening devices like this can leave undesired consequences (e.g. creaking frame, visible abrasion along plastic seam, and permanent damage from repeated openings). It could range from being no issue, to leaving your new Steam deck appearing and feeling very "used" before you've had the chance to enjoy it.
 
"You probably shouldn't do this, but here's how to."

I love how they know people are going to be doing this anyway and decided it was better to help them rather than trying to lock it all down. All the more reason to buy stuff from Valve imo.
 
LZ_Xray said:
Good news! I switched to Big Picture exactly once, fooled around a bit with a confused look on my face, and switched it back immediately. Glad the Deck UI will be more like a variation of the regular Steam UI.
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It's a big improvement.

Big Picture massively improves with Deck UI replacing the old Big Picture UI.

The original Big Picture was an attempted solution for a very distant sofa far away from yesterday's SD and 480p/720p television sets. Big Picture looks like it was designed long before today's streaming services.

Today we have bigger and sharper 1080p and 4K HDTVs now, even for bottom barrel entry level TVs. And Deck UI is much closer to what a good Steam HTPC interface could be. Still looks good at 720p too.

In other words, Deck UI is what Big Picture should have been in the first place. Even for those who don't build dedicated HTPCs, the Deck UI being added to desktop Steam will also look great on gaming laptops now commonly used as impromptu gaming consoles whenever they're connected to TVs.

I look forward to seeing Deck UI come to all desktop Steam platforms as a Big Picture replacement.

It's very intuitive to anybody familiar with surfing modern streaming service layouts -- This complete Big Picture reboot (new Steam Deck UI) is supposed to be designed to be (eventually) universally intuitively operable by either keyboard, mouse, joystick, remote, gamepad, Wii-style pointing device, and even in-VR pointing devices, etc.

This UI is clearly inspired by streaming service UIs as well as recent console/VR app stores, in a much more proper UX design for away-from-desk use.

I imagine they'll bring Steam Deck UI into in-VR too at some point. The "floating curved app store window" currently used by competing in-VR app stores. The heavily rumored Steam standalone VR headset Valve seems very interested in building probably within a couple years or so. In many ways, Deck UI is also extremely similar to the floating in-VR Oculus Store user interface (on Oculus GO, Oculus Quest or Oculus Quest 2) for buying VR games while inside VR. Quite easily, this could be the SteamVR replacement in theory, even for PCVR.

Any streaming user / console user / standalone VR user -- will probably find the Steam Deck UI pretty familiar and easily jump right in despite never having used Steam before -- there is heavy inspirations by the modern UIs used today.

It also now finally conveniently doubles as a proper modern "Easy Mode" (with optional parental and purchase control) for Steam that you're comfortable letting younger, older, or otherwise less experienced family members use/abuse. Assuming enough settings flexibility is added, it looks like would also theoretically easy to adjust to create a kiosk mode (Steam Arcade Machine, anyone?)

It's possible they won't quite yet max out all of the potential (e.g. in-VR mode, kiosk mode, reduced-content Kids mode, etc) but it's got all the hallmarks of the proper 21st century content-buffet user interfaces completely ready to drop in to all of Valve's future projects.

Experienced PC users will still want to switch to the heavy duty Steam UI when at a desktop rig to surf the richness of Steam. But it's nice to say goodbye to the horrible old Big Picture mode that felt nearly useless.
 
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Yeah, I liked the idea of Big Picture, but the design was dated and horrible (even when it came out). Today it's a joke.

I mean, look at the interface on the PS5 or XSX, that is how you do it. The new Steam UI looks like it's going to be that good, but they waited quite a while to update it.
 
I’m pretty sure I’m going to run Windows on this thing. I just don’t see why not, unless there are issues with performance or drivers / stability in Windows.
Even if many or most games run fine under proton, I don’t want to feel like there’s some I can’t play etc. Plus there’s xbox gold, and regular windows apps that I would like to use on this thing. From experience, Linux and proton can be finicky. I think Valve is doing the right thing with building a DB of compatible games but in the meanwhile everything I play now runs in Windows.
 
Horizon Zero Dawn
https://twitter.com/yosp/status/1453974734366932994

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you guys are a paying a lot of money for a device with 20 year old screen tech and resolution. you know you can just bluetooth a real controller like dualsense to your phone right?

the last good idea by gabe before he finished stroking out was TF2 hats. don't know he keeps hyping you all over garbage
 
flegg said:
you guys are a paying a lot of money for a device with 20 year old screen tech and resolution. you know you can just bluetooth a real controller like dualsense to your phone right?
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Well it's a portable system, and 720p is fine at that screen size.
 
flegg said:
you guys are a paying a lot of money for a device with 20 year old screen tech and resolution. you know you can just bluetooth a real controller like dualsense to your phone right?

the last good idea by gabe before he finished stroking out was TF2 hats. don't know he keeps hyping you all over garbage
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Speaking of garbage experiences, how would I play full fledged PC games on my phone while mobile?
 
SPARTAN VI said:
Speaking of garbage experiences, how would I play full fledged PC games on my phone while mobile?
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You don't. You play mobile games while mobile and you play PC games on PC. The way they were designed and intended. Not some gimped steaming shit deck. You can just stream to your phone if you are that desparate rather than carry around an entire extra device for the luls.
 
flegg said:
You don't. You play mobile games while mobile and you play PC games on PC. The way they were designed and intended. Not some gimped steaming shit deck. You can just stream to your phone if you are that desparate rather than carry around an entire extra device for the luls.
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the people buying this dont want shitty mobile games
 
flegg said:
You don't. You play mobile games while mobile and you play PC games on PC. The way they were designed and intended. Not some gimped steaming shit deck. You can just stream to your phone if you are that desparate rather than carry around an entire extra device for the luls.
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Mobile games are mostly junk, not sure why any PC gamer would want to play them (yes, there are some good ones, but like 95% of the stuff is crappy).

And yes, streaming to your phone is possible and I've done it with Stadia. I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p 60fps on the Razer Kishi, probably runs significantly better than it will on the Steam Deck.

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However, you need a fast internet connection, so only really viable on Wifi. Even on 5G you're probably limited to 720p and you might have to pay extra for the data.
 
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flegg said:
You don't. You play mobile games while mobile and you play PC games on PC. The way they were designed and intended. Not some gimped steaming shit deck. You can just stream to your phone if you are that desparate rather than carry around an entire extra device for the luls.
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To expand on what Spartan VI "said:" let people enjoy things.

As you get older, you learn it's okay to simply say "it's not for me" rather than insist you are the sole arbiter of taste in the universe. The Steam Deck certainly has its compromises, and I'm not buying one myself, but you know what? It looks like it'll work well enough for those that want handheld PC gaming, and I'm stoked for those people who'll get to play a favorite Steam title while they're curled up in bed or commuting to work.

Life is a whole lot easier when you spend less time hating differing opinions and more time being happy that there's so much diversity in experiences.
 
It's a fully running pc with the controls on it Switch-style.

There's a market for this. A big market if all the parts on it work like it was designed to and not like every other past Chinesium hacked up piece of junk that has no real support or quality.

There's no reason to think it won't work well out of the box since Valve is making it. Their controller was good, their Index headsets are good. They know how to make hardware.

Considering that the performance will probably be on par or better than a overclocked 5700G APU... which costs over $300 by itself... $399 for the entire base Deck is pretty solid in the current economy.

The PC gaming world really needs this. I'm going to encourage it as much as possible. I've got my $5 placeholder in for sometime first half of next year.
 
Yeah, I didn't like the Steam Controller that much when it first came out, but I've been using it more these days.

It was really a solid idea and great for games that don't work well with Xbox pads (like old games that only use mouse and keyboard).

The community configs are really cool too, lots of options.
 
flegg said:
You don't. You play mobile games while mobile and you play PC games on PC. The way they were designed and intended. Not some gimped steaming shit deck. You can just stream to your phone if you are that desparate rather than carry around an entire extra device for the luls.
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With due respect, after having tried VR games, iPad games, NVIDIA RTX 3080 raytraced games, and Android games, I am a messenger to inform that some things have converged. The number of game-playable platforms and legitimate cross-platform-funness (TRUE natural non-awkward fun) have increased and are no longer silos, period, bluntly, full stop.

Thirty years ago, we had VHS VCRs. We had tube TVs. We had a cassete deck. We had a CD player. We had broadcast TV.

Holy silos, batman!

But, today, we can do all of that media consumption on a single mobile device (or any device, really) that is totally multimedia.

Likewise, many games play very well on multiple platforms. For example, those super-enhanced 3D ray traced versions of a mouse-click Sierra Quest game. Or an indie game such as “Cloudpunk” which is dramatically different from games that some of you play. The types of games that exist have grown bigger. Maybe many esports CS:GO players have never played solo games before…. But.

Here’s a great example. There are several games available on Steam that are mouse-click style Sierra Quest games that I wish I could play on mobile, but they have never been released for mobile. Steam Deck, for example, would totally pay for itself, just by the virtue of satisfying a SIerra Quest itch (remixed into modern GPU 3D parallaxed graphics). Some great solo games don’t really need more than just thumbsticks and/or touchscreen.

Yes it may be fine and dandy to hate on those crossplay square pegs in round holes. But that’s not what I am talking about. Amazing PC indie games like CLOUDpunk (21st century mix of Sierra Quest / Banjo Kazooie in gameplay feel, with a scifi story) would be perfect for Steam Deck, for example, chrissakes. Some things that normally uses a mouse click (e.g. inventory items) are convenient on touchscreens, like the inventory screens of Maniac Mansion or Leisure Suit Larry clones clones that are constantly released all the time these days by indie studios. Or Sim City / Tycoon / Civilization clones. Or whatever.

Also, this is BIG for many tight-budget indie studio revenues, who now can access mobile market, with fully 100%-mobile-enjoyable PC games. Do you realize there's 100+ raytrace GPU-fancy-shit clones of those old style classics, all developed by indie studios, but never was released for iPad because the indie studios couldn't afford to port them from PC to iPad/iPhone? I want to GIVE them money, support the indies. They translate almost perfectly losslessly between PC and touchscreen iPad with 100% preserved enjoyment funness. But what if there's no mobile port of an accidentally mobile-friendly PC game? Ouch. Hating on Steam Deck = hating on indie studios who currently can't afford to port mobile-friendly PC games to mobile platforms.

Also, not to mention all that numerous big-name wonderful 4K ray-traced RTX PC games that were also programmed to behave as nice 720p-compatible console ports (but still running on PC) at middle graphics settings, with HUD elements that auto-resized big enough to be readable on a tiny budget 37" HDTV across a big room. They had to do that because they targetted PC/PS4/PS5/XB1/XBSX or whatever with the same responsive UI coding. So these flexible PC games that degrade gracefully with quick settings change (big text, good HUD, gamepad control) to console-perfect-ports also apparently play perfectly well on a Steam Deck, so you already have a mobile port equivalent with better performance than a Nintendo Switch. So Steam Deck benefits ALL game studios. Hating on Steam Deck = also hurts your favorite game studios (even if it's not Valve).

While fun mobile playability is not true for ALL PC games with fiddly controls and doesn't gracefully adapt to 720p, keyboard-required and super tiny text. Yes, they will play crappily on Steam Deck.

But the fact is that even a portion of the Steam store totally justifies Steam Deck enjoyment, I do tell the haters to shaddup. Even ONE favorite years-replayable game (not available on iPad/Mobile but plays perfectly mobile) can even justify Steam Deck. Look at those people still on certain games years later, like Civilization type games or Sim City type games, or those Tycoon type games that have perfect mouse:touchscreen equivalence. Drag finger = drag mouse (to pan map or move inventory items). Tap finger on inventory = click mouse on inventory. Some games just apparently have great 1:1 mouse:touchscreen behavior equivalence as many of those didn't add any or many right-click operations that broke any mouse:touchscreen symmetry (which are easily remapped dynamically based on per-game profiles). Some of these games (or versions of games) have never had mobile ports released ever, despite having perfect 1:1 funness when mobilized because the controls naturally adapt perfectly to a touchscreen(for inventory) + gamepad(for controlling scrolling/character/etc). There ARE also many old games that exist that just apparently naturally accidentally adapts to touchscreen ops, like tapping/dragging the inventory screen of an indie Sim City clone. Hundreds of examples which I will reply in continued rebuttals if you reply with a disagreement.

Fine, some of you dislike Valve. If you hate Valve, go buy a Steam Deck clone such as GPD or something else. But disliking the rightful need-to-exist generic concept of a mobilized PC in a Nintendo Switch style form factor? It's an obvious need-to-exist product if you play many 3D non-FPS games, some of which are very CPU/GPU horsepower hungry. Duhblankstare.

Sure, competitive FPS is fun. But FPS isn’t the only game in the universe, peeps.

Bottom line:
  1. The number of exceptions are growing bigger and bigger.
  2. Many great PC games DO play well and naturally on mobile.
  3. Many great mobile games DO play well and naturally on PC.
/micdrop-slamdunk
 
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