Topic: Valve's Steam Deck console Thread

I can't see it realistically replacing any of my existing consoles or my PC but it'd be a pretty sick companion device for taking my Steam stuff with me with the amount of Steam games I have right now as is. It'll also be an unofficial PlayStation Portable/Vita successor which means Steam is giving me what I wanted from Sony this entire time lol

I know this is what we like to say as Nintendo fans and it's certainly true Nintendo change forms while their competitors do not. Or at least when Nintendo do change forms they bet all in on it rather than making it an optional thing. But when you really think about it there haven't been that many "forms" for Nintendo's consoles.

There was the traditional console form which was what we got from NES through to GC. The portable version of that same form which we had from GB through to GBA. The Virtual Boy was something on its own so that's a third form. Then there was DS which brought in touch and a second screen, that continued to the 3DS. And the Wii which brought in motion controls as the core control focus.

Wii U? That was basically a continuation of the DS form in a home console and optionally a continuation of the Wii. The games that used the full feature set of Wii U were games with content on the main screen and additional content on a secondary touch screen. It's a DS for your TV you can use WiiMotes with. And Switch is basically the same again but abandoning the idea of a second screen.

So there have been five different form factors Nintendo has done. Two of those existed before Nintendo did them, one of them was a failure (or at least before its time). So when you boil it down the only times Nintendo has dramatically and successfully changed forms was with the Wii and DS. Everything else novel they have done has either been an evolution or a migration of one of those two things.

I don't see a reason why they need to drop the Switch form factor. They've been tuning it since 2004 in one way or another and the tech has finally caught up to the point where there aren't many compromises. The only thing they fall short on is raw power..... and maybe more precise tracking for JoyCon motion. Possibly a smaller footprint. I mean I'd say OLED but they've done that one now also

@Ralizah
I think it'll be no different than owning multiple consoles. Sure, you could get by with just one. Having another won't result in more playtime, it'll just result in a different mix of games being played. Instead of the top 10 on Platform A, it'll be top 5 on A and top 5 on B.

But you already have a PC. So it's not really about a new library of games so much as making the library of games you have playable in a state you'll actually finish them (as both you and I have noted on several occasions- when it's hybrid the game actually gets played). It's not pocketable, that's for sure, but it comes with a fairly slim case with handle, which is how I carried my v1 Switch around for years. It's not that much bigger than Switch, especially if you use the Hori Pad Pro, which I believe you do iirc. For me it's Binboks.

At the end of the day, I have Switch games, and everything else from other consoles all consolidated on PC. What few games aren't on PC will be in due time. So Switch and PC cover all the games. The problem is, having all those games in non hybrid form factor means... do I really have those games? I mean sure, I "have" them, but do I have them, in a format I'll actually play? I'd argue no.

Way I see it is, if I can pay thousands of dollars for a PC I rarely play because it's not hybrid, how can I not justify the price of an iPad or PS5 to change all those games into hybrid format like Switch where I'll actually play them. A big reason why I hardly play anything else is specifically because Switch is the only hybrid. But what if it wasn't? What if every other game was hybrid also? That would be a paradigm shift.

Of course, we'll all have plenty of time to see reviews given the current ETA on delivery. But from what hands on we've seen so far, I'm not seeing any red flags.

@TheFrenchiestFry
And not just a PS Portable, but also the Xbox Handheld we've speculated about for many years, all rolled into one.

Finally, Halo on handheld with Gyro! Finally, Monster Hunter World on handheld with gyro! Finally, Mass Effect Trilogy on handheld with Gyro! Finally, Portal 2 on a handheld with Gyro! It also sounds like Valve has more 1st party games in development. Half Life Alyx lit a fire under them it seems. I'm betting we see a new Half Life to push Steam Deck, maybe even Portal 3? Who knows. But they are working on more games, which is exciting!

@Snaplocket
If they add a magnetometer like Dualsense has, they won't need IR. Polar orientation from magnetosphere via magnetometer combined with spatial orientation from gravity via accelerometer is enough to provide a fully constrained alignment for frame of reference. It solves the issue without requiring sensor bars or sensors on joycon (which really don't have room for a sensor where your finger won't block it using shoulder buttons).

It won't have the instant 1:1 response of IR, but it's close enough while avoiding all the trappings and stigma of IR sensors.

They're for sure sticking with hybrid. There's no other logical approach. But I'm not confident they'll add a magnetometer. They seem very stubborn when it comes to adopting innovations of rival platforms.

@JaxonH
I wasn't aware the PS5 controller had a magnetometer, that does seem like a sensible solution to the gyro drift problem. I mean technically it's not exactly as good as a literal fixed point of reference because it only covers rotation and not translation. But for most things I don't think that'd matter much

And TBH I think line of sight issues was a large part of what people disliked about "motion controls" on the Wii. They put the sensor bar too far back, they had reflective surfaces between them and the sensor bar or they had additional IR lights (i.e. the sun) interfering. Much harder to screw up a magnetometer. And they're like a $5US component....

@skywake
I play a lot of games with motion, and from my experience with the Dualsense, the Gyro is what I would describe as "perfect" for all intents and purposes. You can rotate the controller and point it left and right and it always seems to hold its position without drifting.

Obviously I haven't run extensive testing and it's possible it could lose its position with enough movement, but from all games with normal use I've had no issues. 9-axis Gyro they call it? Doesn't really make sense in terms of rotation and translation, but ya, it needs to become standard.

At least we can now enjoy games on PC with flawless Gyro aiming. I doubt Steam Deck will have a magnetometer, which is unfortunate. But at least most games where Gyro fine tunes don't need it really. It's most beneficial for games where Gyro imitates IR, like the Wii games ported to Switch.

Even so, games with Gyro fine tuning still benefit. It just makes it that much more accurate and repeatable when in use.

Sony really doesn't get enough credit for the DualSense. Or rather, they do but for the wrong reasons- for things that don't really make a difference (haptics are good, don't get me wrong, but the trigger resistance is a curious fad). The controller is a game changer, but even PS fans fail to recognize why. And ironically, even though the mousepad isn't a gamechanger by any means, it has proved very useful for Steam games when mapping extra buttons, usually as a split pad for start and select, which frees up Select to take screenshots.

If only Dualsense had L/R grip buttons. Then it would be the perfect controller as far as I'm concerned.

1 TB micro SD $149.99

If you're getting a Deck, you're gonna want a 1 TB micro SD. Maybe they'll drop more in price between now and then. Then again, maybe not. Who knows. What I do know is this is the cheapest I've seen a 1 TB go for to date.

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-MicroSDXC-Memory-Adapter...

@JaxonH ‘tis a good price. Cheapest I seen in UK Amazon for a decent brand is Lexar Play 1tb for £140 (150 mb/s spec). Or Integral for £135 (180 mb/s).

But the way of these things is they always drop in price so I’m waiting until Q2 2022

I wonder if it would be worthy to get the Extreme or even Extreme Pro Sandisk tho?

The Sandisk Ultra is about £160. Extreme £205 and Extreme Pro about £220.

Probably best to wait for real reviews of it in action with different cards. I’m sure there will be plenty of articles and advice once some people have the beastie in hand!

I did a little working out of the games I really want to install (and buy) first and to have them on the fast internal SSD, means I can only fit 4 or 5 games within the 512gb!! Argh… some PC games are massive!

@Needeep
Lexar, despite its read speed claims, only hit 35 mbps in tests compared to SanDisk and SanDisk Extreme which both hit 93 mbps. I'd steer clear. Same for Integal. My one and only SD from them failed in 6 months, meanwhile I've bought nearly two dozen SanDisk cards and never once had an issue.

I wouldn't bother with the Extreme Pro. And actual tests reveal both SanDisk and the SanDisk Extreme have equal read speeds of 93 mbps. The difference lies in their write speeds. The Extreme was in the 80's while the regular one was around 15-20. BUT. Writing really isn't that important aside from moving files back and forth, if you want the fastest transfer times. For me, the Extreme is worth it just because the write speeds in real world testing are 5X faster, but if you're frugal, it honestly doesn't really impact the gaming experience either way.

I've already made my mind up on which micro SD to use. I ALWAYS go with SanDisk Extreme. I own a half dozen of them, and have purchased nearly every microSD under the sun, and the ones I haven't purchased it's because I thoroughly researched them and deemed them unsuitable.

Some PC games are massive. That's why I think everyone will want a 1 TB micro SD, even if you're buying the 512 GB NVMe model. Especially once you account for roms and other files. I have 200 GB just in GameCube and Wii roms, for example. We're gonna need every gigabyte we can get.

@JaxonH thanks for the very clear info. Duly noted!

@JaxonH
Depends on what games you want to have installed on it and what you're using it for. I mean on my PC currently I have about 600GB of just game installs. Maybe a tad more than that. Which does kinda line up with the "this is barely enough storage" bit. But at the same time, not every game is 50-100GB. There are a lot of games that sit in the 10-20GB range and even more releases in the 100MB-1GB range

I don't know about you guys but most of the games I tend to go back to aren't the huge releases. That's now how I tend to play games. When I get into a major release I'll play through it either until completion or I get tired of it before I move to something else. The games I tend to keep coming back to are generally the small releases. Rocket League, Super Meat Boy, Geometry Wars, Cities Skylines.

And in any case, it's a PC running Steam with WiFi and full support for USB Type C devices. There are ways to make the "redownloading of games" process less painful. Steam is pretty good at managing a library of games from multiple drives so if you want you could just carry around a USB type C HDD with your library on it and "clean the fridge" when you want to swap games. Or, if you're super ambitious, you can create a Steam download cache server......

@skywake
I know there's always ways to juggle libraries but that's never been my thing. I'm sure there are plenty of more frugal gamers who will look for ways to shuffle and redownload, and for those people, well I won't say their problem is solved, but they've learned to tolerate it. Obviously those people were never going to care about storage in the first place.

I have about 6 TB of actual games in my Steam library (10 TB space with about 3.5 left unused across all drives). It's a mix of all sorts of sizes. But very few, percentage wise, are under 10 GB. Small games I buy and play on Switch. Steam is for the games Switch doesn't get, and most of the games I own are 20-60 GB each.

I'm quite sure you could fill the Deck with indies and smaller titles and never deal with expanding storage. But that's not why I'm spending $650 on a handheld PC. I want my full library to go hybrid. Obviously that won't happen since there's no way to cram 7 GB of games onto the thing, but I can at least fill it with my SNES/GBA/GC/Wii roms and a full terabyte of Steam games. Most of which will actually be larger titles such as Mass Effect Legendary Ed, Days Gone, Horizon Zero Dawn, Tales of Arise, Scarlet Nexus, Outer Worlds, Street Fighter V, Halo MCC, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein New Order and Wolf 2, Elden Ring, Control, Resident Evil VII and Village, etc.

My shortlist for day 1 installation:
1. MS Flight Simulator = minimum of 150gb. Probably a lot more with required updates, expansions etc that need space to download and install. (Proton rating = Gold)

2. Red Dead 2 = 150gb (Proton rating = Gold)

3. Cities Skylines = 4gb base but all the Mods I will put on needs more. Not too much tho (Linux native)

4. Star Wars Squadrons = 40gb (Proton rating = Silver)

5. Star Wars Fallen Jedi = 55gb (Proton rating = Gold)

6. Wreckfest = 32gb (Proton rating = Platinum)

That lot is about 440gb. With the OS taking whatever space and needing to leave some empty operating space, that's full or already too much

Pretty sure MSFS will benefit most from being internal as it's streaming in textures and geometry constantly. Might have to move RDR2 to SDXC.

@Needeep
Wow. You're installing some serious heavy hitters.

I'm not going to install anything multi-player focused or cloud-related given the fact its a handheld and will not be connected to my strong wifi all the time. Also, any game over 100 GB is probably going to be an automatic no for me, unless it's a game I really want (can't think of any offhand).

I'll have to strategically select which games make the cut and which games don't (and, which games get NVMe priority and which go to micro SD).

Will also likely have to limit one game per franchise. Exception being Wolfenstein New Order and Wolfenstein 2.

@JaxonH
I guess it depends on what your library looks like. Most of the "larger" games I have on Steam are late PS3/360 era titles, a lot of them were never ported to Switch and the ones that were I already have on Steam. Then second to that I have hundreds of titles that are indie releases I've got via Humble Bundles. Do these exist on Switch? Yeah, a lot do. Would they be fine running on Switch? Of course. But I have them already on Steam.....

Of course I wouldn't be buying a Steam Deck for Super Meat Boy, Pikuniku, Boomerang Fu, Trine or VVVVVV. I wouldn't be buying it for Bioshock, Resident Evil, Deus Ex, Dirt, Batman or Tomb Raider either. I wouldn't even be buying it for semi-portable versions of games I had on Wii like Skyward Sword and Super Mario Galaxy. Obviously the Switch is just as viable an option for those sort of titles. But...... I would buy it because it's a portable PC that gives me access to all these games I've already purchased. A lot of which I never completed because they're not on a portable which is where I like to play my games

I don't really see the need to keep that much of my library installed. Even if I did you can get a fairly large portable HDD for pretty cheap. Just pre-download a bunch of games on that and plug it in to shuffle your library when you're away from home. I mean if you're wanting to play games like Cities Skylines on the go you're probably taking a mouse + kb anyways. How much extra is a portable HDD?

@skywake
Oh I'm not playing City Skylines. That was the other guy. I can't stand using mouse and keyboard to game, though I must say even if I did, I couldn't imagine bringing a KB/M alongside a handheld. May as well just have brought a laptop imo.

Costs of HDDs depend. If it's SSD then it's like $450+ for a 4TB. Mechanical ones a super cheap. But at that point why not just buy the 1TB micro SD and be done with it.

I know I wouldn't wanna deal with that. There's always ppl out there that will jerryrig ways to make not enough storage work. And that's fine. But definitely not for me. Storage needs to be expanded, and hopefully the 2 TB micro SD will release somewhat soon.

edit
I do like the idea of having an SDD for extra games when docked, if someone was actually using the Deck docked and didn't have a separate PC connected to their TV already. Again, not for me. But certainly it could work for some others.

This is me. Same reason I got a series X is that I am getting too old to play confortable on my desktop PC setup and all things I tried to connect it to the TV in the living room did not work for me. I like to play lying down on the couch and that is something it only works with a controller on the hand and nothing more!

@Balta666
PC on the TV is great. Keep a slim, lap keyboard with built-in touch pad next to the recliner or couch, just grab it and swipe the pad to wake the PC from sleep mode.

Keep Steam running at all times, just minimize when not in use. Set up DualSense controller desktop configuration in settings so the analog controls the mouse at the speed you like. I made it so holding L2 slows the mouse cursor down to a crawl for fine tune control. I also set it up so clicking right analog activates/deactivates Gyro for the mouse cursor. It makes navigating Windows a breeze.