This article is idiotic. “There are a number of steam deck killers already on the market”
Okay then why haven’t they killed the steam deck? Because they fucking aren’t steam deck killers, you can’t compete with that gaming library built in. I don’t give a shit how much better it performs on paper, if it’s pain in the ass to run games nobody will want it over a deck. Oh I have to install windows? Fuck that. So fucking tired of the “Insert Product Name Killer” thing. It’s bullshit
Steam Input & double touchpad is also an insane feature. Right now my main game is Dofus : a turn based tactical MMORP. This game is probably one of the most keyboard+mouse I could have thought of, however it has A LOT of keyboard shortcut. I maybe spent one hour fine tuning my layout and now it feels almost better playing it in console mode.
Turning a PC game into a console game like this almost feels like magic, I really love this big boy and really hope it will have successors in the distant future.
And also this game is not even on steam, the global openness of Valve letting me do whatever the f**k I want with my device is very welcome.
The UI can be a bit tedious but it is intuitive, with a bit of training and exploration you should be able build anything you have in mind. Enhancing community layout can also help, for example I usually map back buttons to joystick buttons because it would hurt my thumbs.
If you want a fun thing to start exploring, I’d suggest touch and radial menus. They are a pretty unique feature and it’s pretty easy to make them useful on games with keyboard shortcuts mapped to some settings.
Aslo, have a try on online tutorials 🙂
This article is idiotic. “There are a number of steam deck killers already on the market”
Okay then why haven’t they killed the steam deck?
Um… seems you overlooked that the line links on an earlier article by them: Supposed Steam Deck killers are missing the point
They use that term in reference to that earlier article.
The sentence in the article, even if linking to an older article, should still make sense as a sentence on its own. Without the word “supposed” as the older article has, it just doesn’t.
Duh, of course they are “Steam Deck Killer” I know what I am talking about playing “Wild Star” on my Windows powered consol that last 2 hours, you know, the “World of Warcraft Killer”
Jesus it’s like when the iPhone showed up and then suddenly every dumbphone with a touchscreen was an “iPhone-killer”
I remember the comparison on TV crowning the LG Voyager a superior.
It was, but that’s beside the point
Except Valve said they don’t want a mid-gen refresh. They want game developers to have a fixed target for performance optimalisation.
A mid gen refresh wouldn’t change the performance target, just offer a better screen or something like that.
A better screen at a higher resolution will change performance targets.
They can offer a better screen without changing resolution. Better color accuracy, VRR, and maybe OLED would improve the screen without changing the performance target.
You can improve the screen without impacting performance. Larger screen, smaller bezels, better colors, OLED, matte finish (on cheaper models), better touch accuracy, etc.
Better screen doesn’t mean higher resolution exclusively
Doesn’t something have to be planned initially in order for it to become delayed?
came to say this. nothing was ever planned for this time to delay.
TLDR: current hardware developments compared to original steam deck wouldn’t allow for significant upgrades with the same level of experience, but they should release a flashy sidegrade like oled switch
While there is little to debate on the first part, I disagree with the second half. Even these little sidegrades usually carry minor hardware differences (the switch itself is just “the switch” but if you ever took interest in modding it you know that there are a lot of generations, all different). One of the greatest features of the deck is that there is just the deck, every deck in existence has the same exact hardware save for bigger storage and slightly different screen finish - underneath a deck is a deck is a deck.
I never want to read “this issue affects steam deck gen2”.
The deck has had a decent number of minor hardware revisions. They’ve improved some of the buttons, added foam strips to the fan to reduce whine, downgraded the SSDs, replaced the heat shield with a brand new design, etc.
Not to mention they’ve supplied different components through different companies, so you have multiple types of fans and joysticks due to that.
Which is all entirely normal and actually respectable that a company does this over the life of the device. Rather than have some stupid marketing gimmick to have you buy the new one they just improve it under the hood. The alternative is similar to how Nintendo is just keeping the same exact shitty hardware and broken joycons and then marketing the gimmicky OLED edition with different hardware
Not entirely true that every deck is the same.
Outside of storage configurations/screen etching, there are some obvious and less obvious differences:
- Delta vs hua Ying fans (didn’t check my spelling, sorry)
- Some have a reduced number of PCI lanes made available to the NVME storage.
- Joysticks we’re changed at some point, being coloured black instead of grey.
I’m sure there’s more, but that’s what I can recall from keeping on top of the news.
Pretty sure 2 was the sad was downgraded as a component to one that supports less lanes, but still supports what the deck supports so it’s no performance difference. The other parts were also just pulling similar components from different sources and all hardware makers do it to have continuous supply or reduce production costs.
