Steam Deck: Valve's PC Switch

[Kong Wen]

We've known this was in development for at least a few months, but we got a good look at it today.

Valve's Steam Deck

• It's coming out in December 2021
• It's expensive: $400-650 depending on the model
• It'll have a dock to connect to TV, but I don't think the deck's "cons" come off
• The button placement looks VERY uncomfortable
• It has a couple of touch/trackpads on the control areas

I'm not sold based on the button/control placement alone, as someone whose hands both fell asleep when trying to play the Switch with normal tiny Joycons attached. I had to remedy that by buying the amazing huge chonky Daemon X Machina cons. But it's a nice concept/option for playing PC games on the go.

[Jelly]

Appealing hardware and concept. Would be interesting to try how well the trackpads work at replicating mouse input. ​Considering I never use my Switch in handheld mode I can't justify buying this machine.

I think the Steam deck will be a success. The hardware just needs to be good enough and without any issues to trigger a consumer backlash. The real killer feature is the Steam library of games brought to handheld and TV. Considering how many handheld and console classics get ported to Steam nowadays, I could see myself playing some Persona 4 Golden on the Steam Deck instead of my PSVita.

[Kong Wen]

I have one. It is indeed very good at playing games. The track pads (which most people pre-release seemed to have trouble figuring out) are not too bad for certain kinds of games. I used them primarily for navigating around puzzle games. They weren't exactly comfortable, but I might be able to find a more ergonomic way to track around on them. I'm not sure how good they would be for more fast-paced uses like an FPS or something, but most of those kinds of games will just use the sticks.

Anyway, fun system. One of my friends really gets a ton of use out of it, playing AAA games and even Final Fantasy XIV (MMO). I prefer to play smaller indies and more "cozy" games rather than big system-intensive (and focus-intensive) games, but it's good to know it works well for both.

[Kong Wen]

New model! Not a 2.0, but a mid-generation refresh, Valve is releasing an OLED model with improved... everything, pretty much. Screen, battery, faster RAM, improved buttons, sticks, and trackpads, better cooling. Just the core chipset and form factor remain the same. This is pretty much the perfected version of their original vision for the original Deck. I guess the older LCD models will get heavily discounted and then gradually phased out.

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/oled