You ’ re not having deja vu. Six years after launching a line of Linux game consoles that went down as one of the biggest technical school flops of the past decade, Valve is trying once again. only this fourth dimension, its Steam Machine dreams and unusual touchpads have been rolled into a 7-inch hand-held personal computer that looks and works like a Nintendo Switch .
It ’ mho called the Steam Deck, and you can read all about its specification, extensive controls and television receiver docking place correct here .
I ’ megabyte not deluding myself into thinking it ’ s a Switch-killer. ( even if the Steam Deck ’ s $ 399 starting price might seem close to Nintendo ’ s $ 350 Switch with OLED screen door, you ’ rhenium not getting Mario, Zelda and Metroid on a Steam Deck. ) But having watched Valve closely over the past nine years, I don ’ thymine believe it will flop like the Steam Machines either .
hera are six reasons why this international relations and security network ’ thyroxine Steam Machines all over again — and, a few brand-new reasons to be disbelieving.

1: Valve is building the hardware itself

There are batch of reasons why Valve ’ second Steam Machines failed, but one towers over the rest : Valve was never in see of its own hardware destiny .
When we entirely revealed Gabe Newell ’ randomness plans for the “ Steam Box ” in 2013, he primitively explained that Valve would sell its own Linux-based life room personal computer, while simultaneously creating an ecosystem where partners would deliver a wide array of good/better/best boxes a well, creating an stallion raw class of gaming personal computer.
But Valve ’ s own box didn ’ t make it to market. It never broadly sold the impressive prototype it demonstrated for us in November 2013 .



somewhere along the telephone line, Valve decided to leave the huge majority of the hardware to existing personal computer manufacturers, whose Steam OS offerings were a fix, running the gamut from “ it ’ mho our Windows box, but with fewer games because it ’ randomness running Linux ” to doubtful designs Valve wound up disavowing. Alienware was one of the few to build a request Steam Machine, but it wound up running Windows beginning alternatively — because Valve and its odds and ends collection of partners didn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate do to launch the Steam Machines inaugural until November 2015. By then, that Alienware Alpha had been on sale for closely a year already .






But with the raw Steam Deck, Valve is in control once again. We ’ ra not getting a undefined time frame for a grand piano design to reshape the personal computer diligence, but rather a specific nibble of hardware with a specific free window in December 2021. And we have some religion in Valve ’ mho hardware art, besides, because the company has built up a reputation for excellence. While niche, the Steam Controller and Steam Link wireless box were fabulously chic, well-designed products that deserved better than their eventual open fire sales, and Valve set a extremely high bar for PC-tethered virtual reality headsets with the Valve Index and the co-developed HTC Vive .

2: Linux is no longer a death sentence

In 2015, after years of reporting on their promises and possibilities, Flickroom warned our readers not to preorder a Steam Machine. The rationality had fiddling to do with how long they ’ vitamin d been delayed, and everything to do with how Linux merely didn ’ t have enough games. We put together a chart of the top 50 games on steam that made that clear — no Grand Theft Auto V, Fallout or Skyrim, DayZ or any games that weren ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate on Steam. meanwhile, the PS4, Xbox One, and even Windows restrainer defend were looking better and better all the time .
today, it ’ randomness however the encase that fewer than 15 percentage of all Steam titles formally support SteamOS, but thanks to seeds that Valve planted with Linux about a ten ago, the party no longer has to convince developers to port their games from scratch. There are about 8,000 officially recognized SteamOS titles, and an estimated 15,000 titles in entire may work thanks to a Proton compatibility layer that lets Windows games run on Linux. Huge competitive shooters like Apex Legends, Destiny 2, PUBG and Fortnite might soon be possible since Valve is working to get their anti-cheat software working ahead of launch. If that happens, most of the top games on steam should be playable on SteamOS, excessively .



possibly precisely as importantly, the Steam Deck international relations and security network ’ t chained to Linux. Valve says you can install Windows if you like, equally well as early publishers ’ stores. And because it ’ s a personal computer, you could besides fill in the bet on break with an align of streaming services like Microsoft xCloud, Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce now, Amazon Luna and others if you ’ rhenium willing to pay, or stream games over your home network from your PlayStation, Xbox or another gambling personal computer. good luck doing any of that on Nintendo ’ second portable .

3: Handheld gaming PCs are neat, and Deck might be the best yet

With Steam Machines, it sometimes felt like Valve was trying to reinvent the wheel. That ’ s not the case hera. even though most everyone has a smartphone in their pouch these days, video recording game handhelds are resurgent, thanks to the Nintendo Switch and an array of inspiring concepts that followed in its wake up .
The Steam Deck international relations and security network ’ t tied the first bet on personal computer to get Switch-ified : we wrote about how we ’ re getting close to a Nintendo Switch-sized bet on personal computer earlier this class, and for the past few months I ’ ve been playing with one of them, the crowdfunded Aya Neo. It ’ second alike to the Steam Deck in that it ’ randomness besides AMD-powered with joysticks and buttons on both sides of a 7-inch, 1280 x 800 touch screen. While it ’ south not powerful enough to competently run demanding games and the software ’ s a small janky, I played through the majority of Persona 4 Golden and some Star Wars : Squadrons and Outer Wilds on the adam, and chatted with buddies on Discord while exploring the deadly plains of Valheim — where the hand-held ’ second AMD Vega 6 graphics did tend to bog down .
As YouTube gaming hand-held expert Taki Udon will tell you, the build quality and ergonomics on these crowdfunded handhelds international relations and security network ’ thyroxine always that great, and that ’ s an opportunity for Valve to flex. Plus, existing handhelds typically cost $ 700 to $ 1000. Valve ’ mho asking hundreds of dollars less for the Steam Deck, and with a newer GPU that might bring more games within reach .

4: Valve is a game company again

In 2020, thirteen years after the most ill-famed cliffhanger in video game history, Half-Life made its triumphant retort with Half-Life : Alyx, a full-length VR-exclusive that quickly inject to the peak of “ best VR plot ” lists and reportedly gave the Valve Index headset a huge boost in sales. ever since, Valve employees have repeatedly hinted that Alyx made them excited about building single-player games again .



Valve ’ mho David Speyer told Flickroom in 2019 that the company would “ love to continue pushing forth ” on new half life games, and Gabe Newell told New Zealand ’ s 1 News in January that it has new single-player games in growth. “ It ’ s fun to ship games, ” he said, adding that Alyx “ created a distribute of momentum inside of the company to do more of that. ”
With the Steam Deck, Valve may now have an opportunity to use one of those games to jumpstart a chopine even again. If you ’ ll recall, that ’ s how the Steam platform made it off the ground in 2004 to begin with — it was the only place to play Half-Life 2 and Valve ’ s subsequent games. But with Steam Machines, the ship’s company opted not to do it, telling me in 2013 that “ It ’ s against our philosophy to put a game in jail and say it merely works on Steam Machines. ”

That left Valve at the mercifulness of other developers for games, during an era when it didn ’ t make many fresh games of its own. It did bring the then-two-year-old Counter-Strike : global Offensive, three-year-old Portal 2 and four-year-old Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux in prison term for the platform ’ s debut, but there was no good bet on argue to pick a SteamOS box over Windows once the Steam Machines came out .

The Steam Deck is one and a HALF times wider than the Switch, has a battery LIFE of 2-8 hours, and sells for THREE hundred and ninety nine dollars .— Steve Bailey (@IBasteEvenly) July 16, 2021

But Valve ’ s philosophy may have evolved. With virtual world, Valve realized it needed to kickstart the platform, building an incredible showcase with The Lab and then adding system seller half life : Alyx last year, a game it justified keeping VR-exclusive because it was designed explicitly for VR immersion and controls .
I wouldn ’ thyroxine precisely stake on it, but I wouldn ’ t bet against the estimate that Valve could make a similar argumentation for games that use the Deck ’ s preciseness touchpad, touch screen, touch-sensitive thumbsticks, gyroscope and raise buttons to emulate the ace of hands moving around and grabbing things. Valve could build a half life exclusive to portables like this, if not exclusive to the Steam Deck itself. Most PCs surely don ’ t have quite this array of input signal, and it might be a shame if the Deck ’ s across-the-board controls were limited to the kind of homegrown restrainer schemes that Steam Controller fans pump out .

5: Gaming dollars are burning a hole in people’s pockets

Valve ’ s Steam Deck might be correct on fourth dimension. due to the global pandemic, the global ’ south gamers are sharply aware of who they are. There ’ mho never been a better time to play video games, and demand has never been higher, with US consumers spending more in 2020 than ever before. And while the PS5, Xbox Series X and an align of new personal computer bet on graphics cards are here, the global chip dearth means you however can ’ thyroxine easily buy them even nowadays, as some of the worldly concern is coming out of that pandemic and thinking about leaving the house .



If you ’ ve held onto dollars earmarked for those consoles and graphics cards ( either because you can ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate get one, or are still unconvinced ), you might nowadays consider spend that money on a hand-held that can accompany you out of the house. There, Nintendo is quick to tempt you with the bright modern OLED-equipped Switch that went on pre-order this past workweek, but it didn ’ t announce a Switch Pro. That ’ s an opportunity for Valve to swoop in : forgetting the Nintendo games, the Steam Deck is about as pro a switch as you ’ re liable to get .

6: Valve can afford a hobby or two

But even if the Steam Deck doesn ’ thyroxine attract gamers away from next-gen consoles or graphics cards, that doesn ’ triiodothyronine hateful it ’ ll flop. indeed far, every musical composition of hardware Valve ’ mho built is a appliance its own engineers wanted to see in the world, not a while of mass-market kit. But if the Steam Deck winds up being a recess intersection that barely sells, it might still be a success for the company and fans. Some have grown to appreciate what Valve was trying to do with the Steam Controller, for exemplify, which has a patriotic community pumping out custom control schemes for newly games last I checked .
The early authoritative thing above Valve building its own hardware is that it can entirely hurt itself if it fails, and Valve can likely take the annoyance. According to a holocene lawsuit, Valve rakes in an calculate $ 6 billion in annual gross from Steam commissions alone, incredible for a ship’s company its size, working out to something like $ 15 million per year per Valve employee .
Besides, Valve seems to be taking a more timid set about, with buyers putting down $ 5 deposits to reserve a device, limit 1 per customer, and Valve fulfilling those orders when they ’ re ready rather of letting a product “ sell out. ” ( It ’ s incredible that Valve ’ s the first to try the common-sense approach to preorders we ’ ve been begging the game industry to adopt for many months with consoles and GPUs. ) It might besides allow Valve to fulfill orders in belittled batches alternatively of investing in a mountain of devices it might have to put on displace sale down the road .

Why the Deck might still get dunked on

I highly doubt the Steam Deck will be a public flop, but I can imagine a few reasons the personal computer gaming community won ’ thyroxine hoist up embracing it anyhow. For exemplify, it ’ s largely priced like a next-gen comfort with entirely a fraction of the performance, even if it winds up being more brawny than other hand-held PCs on the market .
The $ 399 base model merely comes with 64GB of eMMC flash, besides, in an era when a single game can sometimes require more space than that, and when PS5 and Xbox Series X games are beginning to take advantage of the fast load times that speedy NVMe solid state of matter storage can afford. While you can add a microSD card to any model to expand your storage, the accelerate of your memory might hold the system second some .

last, I ’ ve got to agree with some of my colleagues with more taste : this is not a particularly good looking car. It reminds me of the bulblike Flickroompad far more than it does a Nintendo Switch, with those thumbsticks mounted high like antenna sticking out of its head.

But I tried the Flickroompad, and there ’ s a reason it was shaped like that : it was designed to be comfortable to hold, not necessarily pleasing for the eyes. I wonder if that ’ s the idea behind the Deck, besides .
In case you ’ ra inquisitive, I ordered one. We ’ ll see how it goes .
Update, July 22nd: Clarified that while Valve lists about 8,000 titles compatible with SteamOS, ProtonDB lists estimates over 15,000 will work .

beginning : https://flickroom.net
Category : Video Game Downloads