We don't have any official sales numbers but if you were to order one right now on Steam, the earliest you can get one is "After Q3 2022" and many places like Japan can't even order one yet. So it sounds like it's doing quite well.

If you have been following my thoughts on the Steam Deck, you would know that I have been one of the biggest fans of it. But after seeing this video, it has raised enough alarms for me to be in the Deal Breaker territory for now.

If you watch the video, you will see that Windows is effectively unusable. Not only does Windows perform worse but the entire thing is buggy af. And the worst part about it is the fact that there is no Radeon Settings and neither CPUz/GPUz even knows what it is. This brings up a huge problem in the PC space. See AMD has had situations in the past where they leave their APUs/SoCs to OEMs only. What that means is that every time a new game comes out, AMD optimizes their drivers but the APUs/SoCs that are OEM only do not get those driver updates until the manufacturer of the product provides the updates. So the question becomes whether or not Steam Deck is an OEM only product or will it get driver support from AMD directly on Windows?

And this is a question that to me is a make or break situation. Because the Steam Deck goes from a portable "PC" experience to a portable "SteamOS" experience. Because the idea has always been, well if shit hits the fan, we can always go back to Windows and use it that way. But now, a lot of questions need to be answered. And if they are answered in a bad way, this will become a product that will heavily depend on Valve and their commitment to it.

So I suppose the dilemma for me right now is as my Steam Deck is coming in a few days... I can either keep it and hope that my concerns are a non issue or I can get a refund and if it turns out to be a non-issue, I'll have to wait until next year to buy one...

Dang it Valve!!!

The main question I have to ask Linus and others is: "why would you, when it's clearly made with one particular OS and storefront in mind?".

Like I get that you might want to tinker around with Windows, but Linus is in that "it's gotta have 8k and all the trimmings or it can fuck off" mentality, and tbh, his isn't even grounded with what people can currently afford, let alone know and want to use.

I want the deck, mainly for playing indies and older AAA titles I know the device can handle, because I've already seen benches done on the device, I more or less know what to expect with it, so playing brand spanking new AAA titles is mostly out of the question for me, but someone like Linus is going to just push the clock speeds and TDP higher, because he's just that nutty with wanting something to work now, instead of knowing when a limit truly is a limit.

At best, i'll probably use the already included emu's to emulate older games as well, but again, not pushing the device past it's limits, because I'm honestly not thrilled by burning a device or hampering perf for the sake of "I did it" (which is what Linus loves doing a lot of the time and again, I find that stupid at times vs what GN does or even Jay2C, both feel more grounded than Linus does at times). 

Also I'd expect more from MS when it comes to driver support and generally getting it to work friendlier with the Deck, than simply getting Valve to do MS's job with their OS, and we're still waiting on all these neat features MS has promised us over the years on top of that, so again, not expecting greatness with Windows on the Deck. We take the piss outta Valve taking their time, calling it "valve time", but I'm still here.... waiting for MS to drop their features and perf uplifts with DX 12 (when is "MS time" gonna start being a thing lads?, it's deserved by now).

Well it's mainly because of compatibility. We know how janky it can get on the PC space with DRM and Anti-Cheat and 3rd party launchers and modding support and optimizations and whatnot. My idea has always been to use SteamOS as the primary OS but then dual boot into Windows for compatibility because not all games will run on SteamOS and there isn't anything that Valve can do. Steam has over 10,000 games yet only 1300sh are officially compatible with the SteamOS. Then on top, you have some games that are listed as being compatible but have crashing issues like Horizon Zero Dawn in SteamOS after 5+ hours.

Now obviously that will get fixed but my expectation has always been that if Valve goofs this up, you could still use it as a Windows handheld similar to Aya Neo and such and get the drivers off of AMD's website and continue on. But now it sounds like that in fact is not going to be the case. Instead of being this portable PC experience that I was hoping for, it sounds more and more like a console experience with Steam's library with SteamOS.

While I agree that MS has work to do like the fact that Suspend and Resume is still not a thing yet on Windows, a lot of the issues strictly is on Valve. It is up to Valve to get the controller to function probably in Windows, it is up to them to get the Audio drivers to work, it is up to Valve to make sure they work with AMD to have good GPU drivers. But Valve didn't do that. Instead Valve seems to be in the mindset that if you want Windows, we will let you install it but we won't care about you. And to me, that's not a good thing, especially with SteamOS is still in such an early stage. If Valve had 90, hell 80% of the games on Steam being officially verified, then sure. But instead, it's like 10% and they aren't even verifying the games fully to make sure they are flawless with SteamOS. And if they are gonna treat Windows like this while having their own OS be so jank, it's like great, maybe I should get a refund and wait instead of committing.

Buy another handheld for windows.

Obviously a beta experience on Windows, would wait until it is officially released with dualboot comp to switch back and forth OS.

Steam has over 60,000 games. Over 20,000 games with a SteamDB rating of 70% or better.

But why do you assume that most (yet) unverified games won't work with SteamOS/Proton? The number of already compatible games without Valves official check will be in the thousands, maybe even in the ten thousands. Plus thousands of compatible emulated games.

So far I've started around 50 unverified games and almost all of them worked, from "The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles" to "Sunset Overdrive". In Heavy Rain some "six-axis" inputs are a bit tricky, f. e. rubbing Ethan dry after showering.

Sure, all I played are single player games / modes, but since I don't intend to play multiplayer modes on a handheld, I couldn't care less about "anti cheat" problems.

Honestly, yeah, I would be in that same boat and it's why I'm just sitting back and waiting for things to pan out with the Deck. If I have to wait years and years for MS to finally release these features they keep boasting about for PC, then I'm going to have to for the Deck and it's supported games list/drivers as well.

At the end of the day though, I just want to move away from Windows, and that's taken time for Linux to reach this point, so with Steam OS, it will also take time to wait till it reaches a decent point for me to move over.

Everyone buying the Deck at this moment in time should know that they are all a form of early adopter, and it's why I choose not to be one, because I know the pitfalls of what that crowd get into when they choose to adopt stuff early on (it's also why I stopped bothering with AAA games day 1/month 1/sometimes year 1, because they mostly come out half baked, content and perf wise).

I just compared "AI Somnium Files" on Switch and on Steam Deck:

Switch can't keep 30 fps when moving the camera but has slowdowns. 

Steam Deck has stable 30 fps (8 - 12 watts total system power) or stable 60 fps (10 - 15 watts total system power).
(highest settings: quality = fantastic, MSAA 16x) 

My bad phone camera had some hickups, but the green frametime line is flatlining: