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

[Niahak]

As mentioned in another thread, I picked up one of the OLED models as a PC-upgrade replacement (Graphics card update would've been $200, CPU/Mobo update more... so might as well go all in).

I've been really impressed by how it feels in the hands - the switch feels kind of uncomfortable by comparison, due to the shape of the joycons. It also supports "docked" play fairly well (a third-party Switch connector I have worked without issue) and multiple controllers easily, so you can TV-consolize for those odd local co-op games (or if you prefer the couched situation occasionally).

The trackpads weren't feeling great initially, but I managed to reasonably comfortably play a full game of Civ 6 (which... takes a long time) after a few hours of practice. I've since tried out grand strategy games, and for better or worse it plays Stellaris well (community controller loadouts really helped there). I don't think I'd play an RTS that doesn't readily pause though.

I tried out Emudeck a little bit as well, and while it isn't quite as plug-and-play it is still much easier than expected to get things going. Maybe I'll finally try one of those Destiny of an Emperor romhacks.

While I've played Fallout 4, I haven't really played any games that tax the Deck too much. It'll be interesting to see what compromises have to be made on newer games - but so far this seems like a great Switch companion.