Steam Deck handheld PC $399 comes December

[BWG]

Ordered 3,400 already.

[ENTERPRISE]

4 hours ago, Diffident said:

But not having anything exclusive to the platform is a good thing.  It's an open platform that you can use anyway you want.   I'm sure soon @BWG will have a basement full of Steam Decks running folding@home.

 

We need to get away from exclusives, not encourage more of them. 

It is not all about exclusives, however I still struggle to see the market for this. IMHO it will be niche at best, not bad thing but hopefully those who do invest in it will not get shafted down the line if valve decides to bargain bin it.

[mouacyk]

GabeN was crying about having to sell this at $399.  Let's save the drama for HL3, man.

[tictoc]

 

On 18/07/2021 at 17:12, Diffident said:

But not having anything exclusive to the platform is a good thing.  It's an open platform that you can use anyway you want.   I'm sure soon @BWG will have a basement full of Steam Decks running folding@home.

 

We need to get away from exclusives, not encourage more of them. 

 

^This 100%

 

On 18/07/2021 at 21:54, ENTERPRISE said:

It is not all about exclusives, however I still struggle to see the market for this. IMHO it will be niche at best, not bad thing but hopefully those who do invest in it will not get shafted down the line if valve decides to bargain bin it.

 

There is pretty much no way that Valve can bargain bin it.  It is commodity hardware running on an open source OS.  Unless they drop in some proprietary driver for the controls, anyone who buys one has more or less a guarantee that it will work unless Valve abandons Linux altogether, and even if that were to happen, there's nothing that's been revealed that would preclude someone from running games via other means (native Linux games, emulators, Wine, installing Windows, etc) 

Everything that Valve has done to improve gaming on Linux is open source: Proton, DXVK, ACO, RADV.  On top of that it is running on an AMD GPU, which has a very good kernel driver + mesa. 

 

I don't personally have a use for this, but outside of some KickStarter/Indiegogo products, it is a pretty unique device.

Edited July 20, 2021 by tictoc

[ENTERPRISE]

2 hours ago, tictoc said:

 

 

^This 100%

 

 

There is pretty much no way that Valve can bargain bin it.  It is commodity hardware running on an open source OS.  Unless they drop in some proprietary driver for the controls, anyone who buys one has more or less a guarantee that it will work unless Valve abandons Linux altogether, and even if that were to happen, there's nothing that's been revealed that would preclude someone from running games via other means (native Linux games, emulators, Wine, installing Windows, etc) 

Everything that Valve has done to improve gaming on Linux is open source: Proton, DXVK, ACO, RADV.  On top of that it is running on an AMD GPU, which has a very good kernel driver + mesa. 

 

I don't personally have a use for this, but outside of some KickStarter/Indiegogo products, it is a pretty unique device.

I agree that the device has a lot of uses even outside of gaming as arguably you could install any OS you fancy and use it as a portable device for all sorts, that for me is the best selling point. I wouldn't mind it as a portable PC for general entertainment (game emulators, Netflix etc) or even as a diagnostic tool. I would probably purchase it on  the above premises, just not for the marketed purpose of playing AAA pc titles. However, that is only as I have a PC build to handle AAA pc gaming.

 

I already know one of you will try Folding@Home on it lol.

[UltraMega]

10 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

I agree that the device has a lot of uses even outside of gaming as arguably you could install any OS you fancy and use it as a portable device for all sorts, that for me is the best selling point. I wouldn't mind it as a portable PC for general entertainment (game emulators, Netflix etc) or even as a diagnostic tool. I would probably purchase it on  the above premises, just not for the marketed purpose of playing AAA pc titles. However, that is only as I have a PC build to handle AAA pc gaming.

 

I already know one of you will try Folding@Home on it lol

Until windows phones come back haha. 

 

I think Microsoft is playing a long term game here. Eventually either windows will run well enough on arm and arm will be powerful enough that we can just use full windows on our phones and have them work as full fledged PCs or something like an Intel CPU will become power efficient enough to put in a phone. Either way, eventually windows in a phone sized form factor will be an option and there will be lots of competing devices for it. 

 

My step sister used to work at Microsoft as a high up product design person and I asked her once if the plan with windows phone was to eventually have it run a full x86 version of windows and she got kinda awkward and said she can't talk about that.

[cscoder4ever]

This is pretty dope, hopefully it won't have proprietary screws, otherwise the OS will be very bad. But knowing valve, I don't think they'll use proprietary screws.

[Supercrumpet]

I'll admit, I made a deposit for the 512 GB version. My thought process is I won't use it super frequently for gaming, but I don't think it'd be really stupid to use as a sort of multi-purpose mini-PC, especially since a dock will be available, and hopefully won't be super expensive. (Wouldn't be necessary, and I'm sure someone will come up with a fancy 3D printed alternative.) The screen resolution is a little disappointing, but I don't really see any other major red flags. In my opinion, it's made up for by the microSD card slot; games can be run off of it without any additional trouble, and it really opens up possibilities.

  

On 18/07/2021 at 13:12, Diffident said:

But not having anything exclusive to the platform is a good thing.  It's an open platform that you can use anyway you want.   I'm sure soon @BWG will have a basement full of Steam Decks running folding@home.

 

We need to get away from exclusives, not encourage more of them. 

 

QFT.

 

On 18/07/2021 at 16:44, BWG said:

Ordered 3,400 already.

 

Lol never change BWG