Valve announces $399 Steam Deck handheld PC gaming device
Valve has revealed the Steam Deck, its new device for handheld PC gaming.
Valve is one of the biggest names in the PC gaming world, and the company is looking to further its offerings with a new series of products. Valve has announced the Steam Deck, a handheld PC gaming device set to launch this December, with pre-orders beginning this week.
Valve announced the Steam Deck in a news release on July 15, 2021, sharing new details on the product's website. This handheld device will let users take their PC games on the go. The Steam Deck features a custom APU developed in partnership with AMD. The device also sports a 7-inch touchscreen, as well as a USB-C port and a microSD slot for storage expansion. The Steam Deck has WiFi and bluetooth compatibility.
Looking at the device, we can see the Steam Deck has analog sticks on either side of its screen. There’s also a dpad in the upper left-hand corner of the device, with a standard 4-button layout in the opposite corner. There’s pairs of shoulder buttons, as well as buttons on the backside of the system. The Steam Deck’s power button sits on the top side of the device. Coming in at 669 grams, the Steam Deck weighs roughly twice as much as the Nintendo Switch.
The Steam Deck is set to launch this December, with three different storage models. The base model of the Steam Deck costs $399 USD and features 64 GB of internal storage. The 256GB model costs $529 USD and also features an NVMe SSD, allowing for faster storage and speedy access to downloaded games. Lastly, the 512GB Steam Deck model runs for $649 USD and also packs an anti-glare etched glass.
More images and details for the Steam Deck handheld PC gaming device can be found on its newly created website. The Steam Deck will begin shipping this December, with pre-orders beginning tomorrow. For future updates on Valve’s new device, be sure to bookmark Shacknews’ Steam Deck topic page.
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replyDonovan Erskine posted a new article, Valve announces $399 Steam Deck handheld PC gaming device
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You guys see this already? Portable hand held gaming device from steam?
https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck-
Looks cool. Will probably be much more expensive than Switch, but play some pretty serious games.
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$50 more than the new OLED switch
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So $400, not bad.
Curious how well it could run Control at 1080p medium settings, since that's one of the games on the home screen in the promo shots.
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Interesting! But kinda pricey? I dunno... https://www.steamdeck.com/en/
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Interesting. The preloading thing isn't loading though, I'm guessing they are getting a lot of traffic.
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nope.
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On Steam Deck, your games run on a different operating system than the one on your desktop PC. It's a new version of SteamOS, built with Steam Deck in mind and optimized for a handheld gaming experience. It comes with Proton, a compatibility layer that makes it possible to run your games without any porting work needed from developers. For Deck, we're vastly improving Proton's game compatibility and support for anti-cheat solutions by working directly with the vendors.
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It has onboard storage plus an SD slot so you'll be able to do some local installs:
"Get the built-in storage you need: 64GB eMMC, 256GB NVMe SSD (faster), or 512GB NVMe SSD (fastest). If you're looking for more space, augment your built-in storage with a microSD card and fill it up with even more games." -
Runs SteamOS as a full PC
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Arch Linux, by the way.
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Upper decker
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thats a pittsburg platter
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Except without the Nintendo games
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I would put money on someone finding a way to get emulators working.
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80 more lines than Switch.
Surprised it wasn't 1080p.
Glad it's 16:10 though. Fewer and fewer games were supporting 16:10, which by extension meant few and fewer games supporting 4:3, which has been a problem for me on my Diamondtron and Trinitron CRT's.-
Imagine how poor battery life would be with double the pixel count that 1080p demands. As it stands it only has 2 hours of battery life with the most demanding games at 720p.
In any case its effectively a 720p screen since it has the same horizontal resolution, just with 80 more pixels at the top and bottom. I love 16:10 on laptops but curious to see what the benefit is on a gaming device. Its not like I'll be using the Linux KDE desktop on this thing.
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This is probably a good thing, since the hardware will
Be obsolete in 3 years. Lower res should hopefully be able to play AAA games for a bit. -
wasn't the 4k complaining about the Switch related to better support for 4k TVs in docked mode? no one was asking for a 4k 7" screen
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Not surprised.. we are far from a APU that can really push 4K in a ~15W power target. I'm sure the APU can do a 4K signal but most likely games would be ~800p to 1080p actual resolution.
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The choose your steamdeck thing on the webpage doesn't load.
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go here instead: https://www.steamdeck.com/
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Uhh that looks awesome
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Not for me, but cool I guess. Milleh will probably get it!
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Yea it is surprising it isn’t OLED. The Nintendo switch OLED is looking much better right now.
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IGN hands on. https://youtu.be/oLtiRGTZvGM
Seems to be a more powerful Switch. You can even hook it to a monitor w/ m+kb. Pretty sweet for $400. I'll probably grab one. -
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Holy crap lol
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Definitely a concern. Even my Switch Lite gets tiresome to hold after a long session.
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.61 lbs
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My only real concern with this thing are the ergonomics. It seems bulky and heavier than something like a switch and the control placement seem different than what we are used to.
Other than that, seems like a neat device the more I look at the specs and what it offers for the price.-
Yep. Almost double the weight of a switch and small doll hands need not apply.
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the control placement and ergonomics on the Switch are a nightmare precisely because they had to compromise on an optimal handheld layout (and shape) in order to support the joycons being useful as standalone controllers. I think this looks more ergonomic (bottom edges shaped for your palms while the upper edge is shaped for controls with your thumbs not held awkwardly in the middle) but that could all fall apart because of the added weight
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Episode 3 is coming out any day now
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Fair, but even one more Valve made VR game would rock.
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As someone who loves PC games but more often wants to play sitting on the couch - I am super tempted by this
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Holy shit!
It can be used as a desktop too!!!
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I'm super tempted here.
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Pretty much
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"Valve told me they were looking at ways to cloud-save suspended games"
From IGN's hands on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLtiRGTZvGM
Man, if they could figure out a way to do that in Steam, that'd be huge. That's the new Xbox's killer feature. -
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Another piece of hardware from Valve to over hype, under support and under deliver.
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How dare people want it to be good!
People like the specs, I think the specs are great (even if the ergonomics look typically bad and the industrial design sucks like their other hardware), but Valve's track record isn't the best when it comes to reliable support and maintenance. Its not dogshit like Google but they definitely suffer from hoping that key staff members don't abandon whatever project they're on because they become interested in something else.
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Although apparently that's changing. No idea if they're silently mandating that products get supported but they're doing better with Dota 2 recently.
It is wild that they pioneered games-as-service but then end up doing way worse than Riot, Blizzard, Respawn, basically everyone else in terms of longterm support because there was no mandate to keep all-hands on a game after it had entered maintenance/support mode.
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It's a full fledged PC based on SteamOS, I'm sure it will be able to stream.
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If you have an iPhone then get a Backbone, its terrific: https://playbackbone.com/
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Not seeing anything about Freesync. I assume it will have it though, running a game at 40 or 45 fps will be a nice smoothness:fidelity compromise.
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"This item is not available for reservation in your country" oh good this again
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Yeah this is everything I wanted in a portable console. It’s almost what the switch was going for with the extended third party library, but having access to my own steam library is amazing.
If they can get steam cloud suspensions saves working, omg.
This also works as a multiplayer lan party 2nd computer. Hell yea.-
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GabeN interview: https://youtu.be/4FXgDAF6QpM
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IGN Hands On
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLtiRGTZvGM -
I also wonder if they ever considered going with a 4k or 5k screen, to allow variable resolutions with transparent scaling.
Like you could play shit from the first decade in 4k, play PS4 era stuff at 900p or 1080p, play new games at 720p or 540p.-
Unlike Sony or Nintendo, they aren’t assured to recoup costs from game sales.
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how so? Surely the type of person buying this is going to buy a bunch of Steam games and likely some different ones than they otherwise might've now that they have a reason to play more portable friendly games
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Nintendo and Sony get a cut from every game sold, while Valve is but one PC vendor.
Yes, chances are people will buy games through Steam, but with sales and PC games usually being less expensive then that cut is smaller and more risky.
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Lots to unpack. Button and d-pad layout seems terrible but a friend who tried it (their BIL is on the hardware team) says its more comfortable than it looks.
Weight and battery life are big ooofs. Its also pretty butt ugly. I wish Sony made something like this, they have better ID for their VR HMD and I know that the Vita (or the DS or 3DS XL or Switch for that matter) looks much more appealing than this.-
Honestly, I'm way more interested in this for plugging into hotel TVs to game on when I'm on long work trips. This would be much nicer than what I currently do with a laptop, especially since I'm considering an M1 Macbook Air or Pro in the future and it would save me having to figure out Parallels or whatever to get Windows games working on them.
As a handheld the weight (twice as heavy as a Switch!), battery life, and sheer size aren't the best. It almost seems like more a replacement for a gaming laptop-
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Found it, four cores on the Deck vs 8 cores on the PS5, PS5 GPU is capable of 10.28 teraflops while the Deck is capable of 1.6 teraflops, all pretty normal considering that the Deck has to pull 15w from a battery while the PS5 is rated for 350w (peak consumption in actual use is probably around 200w-220w).
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Sorry, should have linked it above!
https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech
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Am I the only one that couldn't give a shit about mobile / portable gaming? I just don't see the appeal in holding a big clunky device to look at games on a relatively tiny screen. By itself, this does absolutely nothing new or different. It just plays the same old games for you, on a clunky device with a tiny screen. Cool?
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a lot of people like to play games on buses/trains/planes that are part of their regular commutes
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OK...I guess this is cool for those people.
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I don't game on portables but but I certainly see the appeal.
I just prefer a full tv or monitor - being in the "space" I have designated for gaming and being focused solely on the game is more up my alley.
But I totally understand people gaming on portables, especially certain types of game. And if you commute on public transit or fly a lot, it's probably a great way to pass the time.
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Damn, that is chunky. And the Gamepad felt like a big boi even at launch.
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Why does the B button look like a piece of pepperoni sliding off a pizza?
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/387515437707034625/865360985894944818/E6WiLiGWYAwjgPt.jpg
I'm so agitated by the trackpads pushing out the actual physical UI that you use 99.9999999999999% of the time out to the margins.
Even traditional PC devs treat gamepads as first class interface, just look at how good it is in Civilization 6!-
Yeah I seriously feel like Valve needs to let go of trackpads.
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It's Valve, they'll change this like a dozen times before it ships.
Remember when the Steam Controller was going to have a little LED screen?
https://cdn.gamer-network.net/2013/usgamer/Steam-Controller-Image-01.jpg -
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That's down to muscle memory.
One of the things I was surprised about when teaching my nephew on how to use a regular Xbox controller, was how much knowledge and familiarity with it I took for granted.
I completely forgot how much of a pain in the ass joysticks are to learn, specially for camera control, and it takes years of use to properly get the hang of and I bet most people here have forgotten that process as well.
It's a shame Valve screwed up the launch of the Steam Controller by not giving it proper support with tutorials on how to use the device (specially in conjunction with gyro), but it's certainly one of the most accurate forms to interface with a game this side of a mouse. It took me breaking years of old habits from using common controllers (including the one you mention), but once I understood how to use it I was a convert.
Hell, trackpads are so flexible you can even use them as multiple input sources with touch, click and gestures or to completely switch modes and change how the controller operates by simply touching a specific area, but I get it, we're talking mass market adoption here and people just want to sit down, plug and play.
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Probably because Sony has decades of goodwill from shipping world class consumer electronics and Valve hasn't made anything approaching a good controller.
Even the Index wands are odd, the Index HMD still isn't as ergonomic or well balanced as the PSVR, etc. This isn't to say that the Index wands aren't horrible like the Steam Controller was, far from it, but it isn't on the level of Sony/Nintendo/MS either
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It feels like he Wii U -> Switch, where decades of Nintendo evolution led to this convergence product. In this case it is Valve's work with SteamOS, Stream Machines, more performant APUs, as well as seeing that these markets are proven thanks to Nintendo, that makes this possible.
The building blocks of SteamOS and Steam Machines weren't great on their own but they led to something like this that looks pretty great
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Valve's industrial design has never been very good. Compare with something like the PlayDate: https://play.date/
I'm not saying that Valve had to go to a company like Teenage Engineering to go that playful, but an ID firm could certainly have helped it look more like a real product than something you'd see on KS.
I mean, compare the Deck with something like these: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/387515437707034625/865349555851886662/41e5GO31UWL.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/387515437707034625/865349582686912532/1331663191111_2.webp
Ugh, its just very unappealing. It looks like it was devised by a PC Master Race type person who might actually detest gamepads lol.
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The GPD win pretty much kick-started the recent handheld gaming PC trend but this is by far the most powerful and cheapest model.
This is probably the closest comparison at $800 and it still uses a zen+ apu with Vega 6 graphics.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ayaneo-world-s-first-7nm-handheld-gaming-device#/ -
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There are a lot of them like this but not in the same class and price. However by the time the Steam Deck does ship, that could significantly change.
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My thoughts:
-The name is terrible. Especially since there’s a product called Stream Deck. Although they are nothing alike, I wouldn’t want my product sounding nearly identical to another populate product.
-If it works right, it’s a pretty cool piece of tech.
-Seems like a product no one asked for. -
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Sidejack Regarding proton
So since Steam OS kinda failed, they must have kept it alive just for this type of application, right? Otherwise it seems like proton invalidates Steam OS on a regular PC. A dedicated game OS on PC could have a decent performance advantage, but you’d need devs to write games that take advantage of it natively. GPU manufacturers would have to support it as well.
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It runs SteamOS but it can also run Windows or whatever you want on it.
Its a portable Xbox with Game Pass if you wish, also a better emulation box than the Series S. RetroArch with Dolphin, FightCade 2, potential is pretty insane.
The question, just like with PC, is how much work one wants to put into doing that.-
hm. i guess it could be cool if the graphics and battery life are amazing. otherwise, idgi i'd rather use my switch that weighs half as much? just struggling to think of many pc games (let alone a subsection of them that are on steamos) i'd want to play with a controller that aren't on switch. maybe wreckfest? but then does that even run on steamos?
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The purpose is to get even more people buying even more games on STEAM, duh.
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if microsoft related
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On paper its performance is roughly in-line with a PS4 or Xbox One. Practically speaking we'll see how optimized SteamOS is towards this hardware, how performant Proton is in translating Windows games to Linux on this, what the difference in performance in between Windows and SteamOS (I assume it'll depend game by game).
A big plus is that the screen is 720p, so this hardware should be able to run anything well at that resolution in portable mode. Only downside is that the most demanding games will run the battery down in two hours, understandable but also very low from a practical standpoint.
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Each one is preloaded with Half-Life 3
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Half-Life 3...exclusive to a tiny little portable screen. Yep, sounds about right!
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Its a big boy, much larger than the Wii U gamepad, probably because they needed to accommodate cooling and the big battery for that APU. Lower quality screen than the OLED Switch too now that I think about it. Pixel density is the same but there's no mention of it being an OLED and it peaks at 450 nits.
Its kind of wild, I love how open and performant it is but the ID is very unattractive and the ergo looks questionable. I'll have to get my hands to judge the latter but I wasn't a big fan of the Steam Controller or Index VR controllers either.
It being an open platform on top of the instant Steam library are very exciting though, so exciting I wish this was more like a small Apple TV type box instead. Mobile tech is moving fast and its conceivable that Nvidia could already have a comparable Tegra based on where Apple GPU performance was a few years ago. I imagine that this is about where Switch Pro performance lies whenever it comes out.
But yeah, big bezels
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I just checked my Steam library and I have a couple of games that won't fit the 64GB version. Horizon Zero Dawn is 67GB, so is HL:Alyx but that's a VR game so doesn't apply here. Cyberpunk 2077 is 62GB. Even Witcher 3 is 50GB. The starting price is basically $529.
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Honestly, I'm not too sure about this, as someone usually hyped about Valve hardware. Nintendo kind of designs their games with bigger interfaces to account for the handheld screen, but most PC games seem like they'd look tiny on that screen. My Google Pixel 3 XL is 6.3 inches, not that much smaller than the SteamDeck's 7 inch, 800p screen!
I have Baldur's Gate on the aforementioned phone but I never actually want to play it on here because it's far too tiny. I saw that screenshot of Factorio but oof, that would be tiny tiny. TINY! TOO TINY!
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