I pretty much don't have any interest in the Steam Deck (mainly because of its size, ended up selling it for a different handheld) for the fact that the APU in there is starting to really show it’s age. Now there are more competition in the handheld with more powerful APUs at the expense of using a little bit more power.
The Radeon 890m really makes the Deck look more out of date as it has performance close to a Radeon 470/570 or a GTX 1060. Not to mention, we are seeing more games that are unplayable on the Deck or won't play well, and the lack of USB 4 support to use an eGPU doesn't help. After all, this is a computer
in a console form factor, and PC games are rarely optimized well.
That said, I would like to see an SoC using ARM with Radeon graphics, it would improve battery life, but x86-64 emulation on ARM64 is another story, but it’s possible given what Asahi Linux can do playing games from Steam using Proton. As for Qualcomm, it's not even worth considering given how poor it performs compared to Apple Silicon.
That said, you can already get the SteamOS experience with bazzite already, although Valve already confirmed official support on all ROG Ally models in the future.
@chikorita157@sakurajima.moe ur last point, that's the dream isn't it haha. Once ARM is viable as a Linux gaming handheld, and that will be some ways off, it's nuts just thinking the kind of form factor we can unlock from that point. No longer would we be stuck with the size of the Deck if good battery life needs to be considered.
@chikorita157 The fact that there's now an aimable floor to shoot for is great. Might start a shift in gaming to set the expectations that "it should be fully playable on the Steamdeck" as a minimum and "additional eyecandy available for folks who spent car down payment money on a GPU" as a maximum finally.
@chikorita157 I bet it already exists, but I suspect a locally stream from your PC to a very very thin client might appeal to more hardcore PC users.
Sure taking it on “the road” would be a gamble to say the least, but a giant handheld like that (and brittle to boot), with a price tag on top, might not make it into many backpacks in the end.
The problem is, as you say, that it can’t keep up with an expensive PC, and I bet people with beefy PCs buy more expensive games, and people with cheaper ones buy more smaller games.
But if you have a cheap PC you probably don’t want to spend $1000 for another mid at best PC.
And it’s not great as a main PC either.
Time will tell what happens, my crystal ball is dim here. Only thing I know is that the less Valve does, the less people will care. Whatever they do.
@yon The problem with game streaming is latency, and mobile broadband isn’t great with that.
Sure, Deck Fanboys will defend the Deck no matter what, but four cores is probably not enough these days and the GPU is kind of weak on the Deck. At least with the Ryzen Z1 Extreme handhelds, you can dock it and use it as a regular computer for productivity. However, I wouldn't want to use it on the go as a laptop since the screen is smol.
@chikorita157 I wouldn’t use anything where all the hardware isn’t under the same roof, but I keep seeing people who somehow do it.
That said I was thinking of locally, as on the same local network. If you have a beefy PC that thing has eaten up thousands. An extra $199 or less to stream the games (using the full power of the PC) would probably make it look better than a $999 dedicated device.
Basically, where does it fit in, in people’s lives? Feels like valve needs to figure that out or someone else will.
@yon You mean a Playstation Portal like device, but instead it’s a Steam Link instead. Probably appeal to those who want to play games away from their computer.
Not sure this will appeal with me. The idea of the Steam Deck and those handhelds is the ability to play the games with you, without being tethered to an internet connection.
@chikorita157 I’m wondering if the group it appeals to are smaller than I thought. The deck, already expensive, isn’t appealing to you because (ignoring the other aspects) of the hardware capabilities, or rather lack there of.
Lots of axises here now:) Price, Speed, Stand Alone or Stream, General Stream or Stream from own hardware, etc.
I’m starting to see why we don’t have a Vita 2 that plays PS4/5 games.
The Switch lives off the fact that it has bespoke games, while PC handhelds do not. You can play the literal same game (binary etc) on faster machines.
If I was valve (apart from getting SteamOS on everything before MS gets their ducks in a row), I’d work with the most popular games and basically say “if you make it run right on the deck, we will promote your game heavily”.
If Valve thinks it will work out because everyone loves them and everyone else is dumb, they are going to have a terrible day at some point.
(Me? I basically want a deck without the dumb touchpads, zero computer like stuff left, and fast enough to play PC AAA games at max screen res. For max $499. Yeah, I’m not getting that:/)