I remember one of my first thoughts on the Deck was "even if this fails commercially or can't play any new games, I want it for old games and emulation. Even if it goes nowhere else, it would be worth it for me."
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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Steam Deck
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It ended up being more powerful than I thought it would be. I thought I'd just be playing some retro 2d games and really old 3d games, but it ended up running some new titles better than expected to be able to play them on the Deck.
Running games at 800p targeting 40fps is a lot more viable than I would have expected just looking at the numbers. It looks great for a display that size and 40fps feels like it's a lot closer to 60fps than it really is.
I get why people using it as their primary gaming device would want more power but as a secondary device for me it's stellar.
and 40fps feels like it's a lot closer to 60fps than it really is.
Counter-intuitively, 40fps, not 45fps, is the mid point between 30fps and 60fps, so it really is closer than what a lot of people think.
On the surface that seems impossible, but looking at frame times tells the story.
Let's divide 1 second by 30, 40, and 60:
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1 / 30 = 0.033s per frame
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1 / 40 = 0.025s per frame (0.08s less time per frame than 30fps)
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1 / 60 = 0.017s per frame (0.08s less time per frame than 40fps)
The way I see it, is because of the controls. You have a much stronger reaction with a mouse than a joystick. Anytime you play with a mouse, the reaction time is expected to be lower because you I dictate where you want to be looking (like in am fps). The mouse acts as a view positioning device. It is not forgiving. A joystick however is a rotation device. It tells how fast you want to be moving around when looking, not where it should be looking. It is much more forgiving because you only dictate the speed of rotation. If you plugged in a mouse in your deck and played it on the deck you would immediately notice the difference I imagine. I think the trackpads do bring some aspects of the mouse to the deck too in that regard.
But yeah, my takeaway is, with a joystick you don't need that tight of a latency as with a mouse.
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Last night, I was playing cyberpunk without any problems. That’s pretty insane in my opinion.
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That's me. Also it was based on Linux, so its not a waste of hardware, because I know a Linux operating system works well with it. I wasn't even expecting it to play new AAA games developed for the newest console generations.
This is so important, especially as we live in an age where tech being churned out that ends up as paperweight is the norm. Being solidified in the Linux kernel we know this thing will live on for decades until in 2080 they will pull the plug on the x86 architecture and you'll be one of the 3 people still around to remember it
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Funny thing is, now that I have it I keep finding uses for it. Sure, some of it is "well I've got it now so why not?" but I didn't expect a handheld pc of this configuration to be so handy to have around.
and that's the secret to a good product
And it's why I hate capitalism as a consumer.
"People need an incentive to invent things!"
Well, if that incentive is making money instead of making a great thing, it's probably not going to be a great thing. Great things make money.
Oh hey, that’s why I hate capitalism as an engineer. The endless pursuit of profit first rather than making good things that people want is disheartening as someone who just wants to make things that make life better
Listen. We need you to shave another $0.13 off the cost of the unit. Just like, reduce the quality a bit. No end user will ever notice.
3D printing is such a boon for this. You can make things for yourself put it online for free, and other people can also make it. There's no need for a profit incentive. I hope in the future everyone owns a 3D printer.
Exactly, if you want a good product, have the developers make what "they" want. Usually works out.
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I love this so much. It reminds me of how AMD Threadripper came to be.
Apparently Threadripper was a skunkworks project by some of the engineers at AMD that they worked on in their spare time. They wanted to see if they could basically slap together a bunch of normal CPU dyes into on mega chip with a high speed/bandwidth interposer connecting them together.
It was almost abandoned and they had to fight to get it taken seriously. But it proved to be a viable product, and singlehandedly was responsible for decimating what was left of Intel's place in the HEDT market so badly, that after several years of failed attempts to keep up, Intel officially announced that they wouldn't be competing in that space anymore.
It's such a cool thing when talented and passionate people come together without having to be subject to strict marketability and just try to create something awesome and revolutionary.
The Steam Deck kicked off an entire new market for handheld gaming devices that had real power to play modern PC games. And despite a bunch of competing and copycat products, the Steam Deck is still king.
I love mine, have close to 200 hours on it, which for me is a ton. I've barely gamed on my main PC in the last year, it's just so much more comfortable to play on the couch or in my bed.
It's just too bad that AMD is also not competing in the HEDT space now, leaving no reasonable options whatsoever
It really shows, because it's just a well thought out, no compromises device. I'm still crossing my fingers hoping that they're getting somewhere with the steam controller 2 prototypes that I'm sure they're playing with if only for shits and giggles
The first one didn't sell that well, so doubt it. Which is a shame, since it's the best controller I ever had. If they removed the buttons and put in a joystick (or removed the right Gaben nipple) it would've been perfect.
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It's also what got me to finally go linux full-time.
I had tried to a couple times before, but always ran into one too many snags.
When the deck was announced I thought to myself "that can't work with every game, can it?" as I'd attempted that myself.
But I had to see for myself, and the improvements in proton were staggering. And it's gotten even better since! Who would have though Apex Legends, Hunt Showdown, and a bunch of other holdouts and anti-cheat games would be running on linux within a year of the deck releasing?
In the early days I thought it would be some niche gimmick that would never take off. Turns out it wasn't and it's the best handheld gaming machine ever made.
It feels good to be wrong!
I adore mine. Not the best for GPU-intensive games like Elden Ring or Resident Evil 4 remake.... But for essentially everything else it's just the best.
Minecraft, 90fps Balatro, Slay The Spire, Binding of Isaac and similar.... 90fps Dark Souls 1-3 - 90fps!
Very, very happy.
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When I heard of it, I was wondering who that was for and what was even the point. Since I got mine, I barely play on my desktop PC anymore. I really didn't expect to live it this much.
This is a shared experience.
Every single person in my circle gave the biggest wtf to it and when they finally got it, talk about how they rarely use their gaming PC.
I'll be real, before the Steam Deck existed, I was toying around with the idea of either building something basically like it, or how to slap a Steam Link into that kind of formfactor (3d printer, breadboard shenanigans, etc.)
Was very pleasantly surprised when Valve announced exactly what I wanted. Have been happy with it ever since.
still loving and using it. grabbed bf1942 from the archive.org, now playing in lan with friendo and 255 bots. epic joy.
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There’s another product that probably was this and ended up… somewhat badly. Valve index
It wasn’t bad in itself but the whole vr thing kinda missed the chance for whatever reason and now Zuckerberg took over it mercilessly. Maybe it was naive to think it will ever take hold outside of simming
Still the beginnings were real fun and that valve demo was so real I had panic attack from past me agoraphobia while in tutorial
Yeah, it's really sad. VR is great for some experiences. There's just two issues with it. The largest is the price. It's pretty expensive for something that doesn't have much content. The second smaller issue is that it's too hard to swap into and out of. I can just sit down at my computer and instantly get into something, but switching to VR takes effort.
The price can probably be solved over time, assuming we keep making VR hardware. The convenience is harder. I don't think there's a solution to that, at least not in the near future.
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I am impressed with how many games are now playable on Linux with Proton and how well they look and play, to think this game meanwhile has graphics glitches on the PS5. I might get one myself.
While you're all here what controller do you use for your deck? Been thinking of getting one of the hall effect 8bitdo ones, but I'm open to trying anything.
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That's how all products should be
I got one to replace the Xbox that I've had hooked up to my tv's since gen 1.... absolutely no regrets.
I have a 14+hr travel day coming up in the next couple months and it's going to get it's first work out as a portable, lol.
"And there are people [at Valve] who were like, ‘I just want that for me.’ The point wasn’t even to make a product out of it. It was just, let’s see if you can actually make something that I would want to use for that purpose.”
I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. Seems highly unlikely Valve was dedicating valuable dev/engineer time and money to make a toy they had no intention of ever producing...
The more I learn about Valve culture the more I realize they definitely have teams just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. I bet there are some really wild prototypes that we never get to see.
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Seems highly unlikely Valve was dedicating valuable dev/engineer time and money to make a toy they had no intention of ever producing...
This actually is basically how Valve works.
They have a pretty small team, and Steam is a fucking money printer.
They are a private company, not public.
That means no shareholders. No need to jam out a product to keep stock prices up, no boards of directors that also sit on 12 other boards that are all scheming to figure out how to push the whole industry toward stupid bullshit like NFT game items or 'replace all our employees with AI' or 'every game is actually just a marketing tool for MTX or battlepasses.'
(The entire idea of loot boxes and in game microtransactions was basically just another 'i wonder what would happen if, or if it would even be possible to...' and then the steam marketplace of ingame items was born, and then basically every one else copied them, poorly.)
(Fuck, its basically the same with modern in game achievements as well.)
...
They could do nothing other than maintain their existing products and basically just coast on that forever, remaining profitable.
Because they have essentially no hard deadlines to put out some new product... this enables them to have a very loose, very voluntary, workplace culture which emphasizes quality over quantity, creativity over 'its the same game in a new setting', as well as not rushing anything.
A whole lot of their projects in the last decade are just people saying 'I'm gonna do this' and then if anyone else thinks its cool or neat, they work on it too.
People are allowed and encouraged to contribute to any project, at any time, as opposed to basically all other corporate software studios that have very rigid and defined roles.
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You would be surprised how much companies experiment behind the scenes, that you never see. Prototypes aren't actually the most expensive thing, so its totally doable, especially if you have lot of engineers hyped for that. Given that the teams at Valve produced hardware before, its only normal to get money for new experiments. Also the structure at Valve is a bit different than most companies.
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