Valve releasing Switch competitor SteamDeck Dec 2021, $399, Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU

[Jizz_Beard_thePirate]

padib said:

It's a great ambition, and something I support as a PC gamer, but in all honesty I don't see the value in the models that have low storage and no nvme. However still at that price, the fact that requirements of power and space will grow leaves a big question mark on this value proposition. While Gabe says it makes sense to him, he also says that he wants to test the proposition, and that is not a good idea to test on something so risky. The proposition is risky, but whille I know it will flop, I wish it was possible for this to be true.

Also it's on linux so many games won't run on it without massive amount of tweaking, and installing windows will ruin the hardware/software integration experience.

Wishing them all the best but I know it won't take off. PC Gamers like their towers or at the very least s very high-end laptop.

A few things to note.

You can install Windows on it if you want to and it will work like a normal PC.

Valve has been working on Proton since I believe 2018 which is a way to get Windows games to work on Linux. If you use the Steam client on Linux, you shouldn't need to tweak anything to get Windows games to run Linux for the majority of the games. Valve also said they are working with Anti Cheat developers to enable Linux compatibility for Windows games that have Anti Cheat engines. According to Valve, by the time Steam Deck comes out, every game on Steam will run on Linux.

The Steam Deck ships with Steam OS 3.0 which runs a custom version of Linux. As a casual user, if you ever used big picture mode on Steam, it will look and function very similar to that. It should be as simple as logging in, hitting the install button to download/install the game and pressing play. Valve is making it very user friendly but you do have access to the full desktop version of Linux if you are a power user.