Steam Deck ~ PC Switch

[dacencora]

Guys, one thing i don't see mentioned: On Archlinux, i frequently play Heroes of the Storm, Diablo III, and Overwatch. I also know that WoW plays flawlessly on Linux. So, if you are playing Blizzard games, this is your portable Blizzard device. World of Warcraft in the shitter.

Diablo III and WoW don’t have controller support right? So it would be a poor experience IMO.

 

[Nutmeg]

Put 6 face buttons on it, why can't anyone get this right.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

What's with the B button? It's trying to run away from the rest of the controller, lmao.

 

[J_C]

isn't valve's VR thing one of the more popular ones on the market?

It is, and the most powerful. And you can use it for every VR game, so I don't know what kind of support it is missing, according to the meme.

 

[Tacgnol]

isn't valve's VR thing one of the more popular ones on the market?

It is, and the most powerful. And you can use it for every VR game, so I don't know what kind of support it is missing, according to the meme.

Yeah, that image seems to be made by a facebook/oculus shill.

I'm not entirely convinced about VR, but it does seem as though the Index is the best hardware for it if you're going to take the plunge.

 

[Zarniwoop]

It's amazing to me how many people are willing to pay $400+ for a mediocre hand-held PC. Do that many people play games when taking a shit? Where are people playing these things that it doesn't make more sense to simply buy a $400+ better GPU/CPU or simply not waste money? Lol @ 'in bed.' The decline is real.

$400 GPU?

 

[ferratilis]

https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-deck-...selling-on-ebay-for-absolutely-stupid-prices/

Steam Deck reservations are already selling on eBay for absolutely stupid prices
By Andy Chalk about 8 hours ago

And people are buying them.

 

[TemplarGR]

I don't think this is going to result in a huge increase of native titles. There's no incentive. If developers release a native Linux port, they need to support it.

Linux support, contrary to popular belief, is not that hard or costly. Most game engines natively support Linux anyway, they just don't release Linux ports because they like licking Microsoft's butthole. Take for example Amplitude with their Endless series, it is unity, unity supports Linux ports, so all they have to do is press a button to make a Linux port. Their publisher, SEGA, is also extremely linux friendly. Is there a reason their 4X games do not support Linux? No. They are just retarded.

If the SteamOS installed base increases though, you might see developers finally ceasing to be cunts and make linux ports too.

 

[Tacgnol]

Take for example Amplitude with their Endless series, it is unity, unity supports Linux ports, so all they have to do is press a button to make a Linux port.

It's not quite that simple with Unity. Things will work out the box on Linux if you only use default libraries and plugins.

It's not guaranteed that third party libraries and extensions will be Linux compatible out the box.

 

[Tehdagah]

I think a lot of people are underestimating the appeal of this

This thing is gonna be this decade's Game Boy. It is going to sell like hotcakes, especially if Valve can keep up production. Also, i can see Valve releasing a Home console version of this, to compete with the current gen home consoles, if this catches on. The main thing Valve needs, is for AAA developers to support Linux, and releasing a handheld first can help entincing them. If they had released a TV version first, people would get stuck on not having a 100% perfect experience on the latest AAA titles, and it would lose vs PS5 and Xbox. But as a handheld, it doesn't have any competition other than the Switch, and the Switch has less games, more expensive games, it is far less powerful, it is locked up, can't run emulators, can't be used as a laptop. So Valve will be able to sell a lot of these in the handheld market, and once this catches on and AAA developers realise the market justifies better support for Vulkan/Linux, Valve could potentially release a proper TV version with 10-15 teraflops and conquer the entire console market.

"This thing is gonna be this decade's Game Boy"

It can't run Fortnite so I doubt

 

[Naraya]

You can effectively consider Steam Deck's chip as being most similar in nature to Xbox Series S, with significant reductions in all dimensions. The eight-core, 16-thread AMD Zen 2 chip is cut down by half, while the fixed 3.6GHz clock adjusts to a variable 2.4GHz to 3.5GHz. Series S's 20 RDNA 2 compute units drop down to just eight and again, a fixed clock on the Microsoft machine (1565MHz) shifts to a variable 1.0GHz to 1.6GHz on Steam Deck, meaning a range of 1TF to 1.6TF of GPU compute against the locked 4TF on Series S. Bearing in mind that we've measured Series S as drawing up to 82.5W of power, we need to keep expectations in check about the performance of Steam Deck.

My plan: wait and see. However, I am potentially interested as I'd like to step away from Windows for good before Windows 11 hits the fan.

I am not a fan of the 800p (16:10) resolution, but maybe I'm exagerrating.

 

[Tacgnol]

Also another point about it being "easy" to port a game to Linux. The game might compile on Linux, but you still have to repeat all the QA you've done for Windows.

I.e. You'll need to get Linux QA testers to play through the game on different hardware which might take hundreds of hours. There is a lot of potential cost associated with that.

With the tiny pool of Linux gamers that don't just use WINE, you then have to weigh up whether it's worth paying those QA costs/potential dev time for a handful of sales. Much easier to just release a windows version and say it might work with WINE but it isn't officially supported.

"Officially supporting" something always means QA costs and future maintenance time.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Not quite as good as Amiga resolution (320x200) and not nearly as good games, but it's a step forward after so many years of going backwards.

 

[Naraya]

Not quite as good as Amiga resolution (320x200) and not nearly as good games, but it's a step forward after so many years of going backwards.

Oh don't get me wrong. I spent my childhood in 320x200 resolution (CGA, DOS etc.) and it was god damn glorious.

 

[Morgoth]

Though I'm not interested in any of these toys, I must say this is the most exciting hardware announcement since the NDS and PS3 days.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Seems this thing is going to indirectly help port even more games to Linux, which is not a bad thing.

 

[whydoibother]

Seems this thing is going to indirectly help port even more games to Linux, which is not a bad thing.

Might advance efforts to get an efficient Nintendo Switch emulator, too.

 

[Morgoth]

Seems this thing is going to indirectly help port even more games to Linux, which is not a bad thing.

It's just gonna use Proton to run Windows games. Probably less work than making native Linux clients.

 

[whydoibother]

Seems this thing is going to indirectly help port even more games to Linux, which is not a bad thing.

It's just gonna use Proton to run Windows games. Probably less work than making native Linux clients.

But other services that run parallel to games, like anti-cheat systems, or various server hosting tools, might get Linux versions. Emulating these doesn't seem to work too well.

 

[Lyric Suite]

But Proton can run on Linux no?

 

[whydoibother]

But Proton can run on Linux no?

Obviously, Proton is a Windows emulator for Linux. But then if you want to emulate a Switch game, you are running and emulator inside of an emulator, and hilarity ensues.
By hilarity here I mean horrible glitches and memory leaks, by the way.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Do we care about Switch games though? Lmao.

 

[whydoibother]

Do we care about Switch games though? Lmao.

People who want a handheld gaming machine care about Switch games.

 

[CyberWhale]

But Proton can run on Linux no?

Obviously, Proton is a Windows emulator for Linux. But then if you want to emulate a Switch game, you are running and emulator inside of an emulator, and hilarity ensues.
By hilarity here I mean horrible glitches and memory leaks, by the way.

Yuzu has a Linux version, though. Most emulators do, actually.

 

[TemplarGR]

Obviously, Proton is a Windows emulator for Linux. But then if you want to emulate a Switch game, you are running and emulator inside of an emulator, and hilarity ensues.
By hilarity here I mean horrible glitches and memory leaks, by the way.

Proton is a set of open source libraries that implement the Win32 api and various other complementary libraries, in order to run windows software. It is NOT an emulator and it does not emulate anything. It captures system calls and instead of sending them to various windows .dlls it sends them to WINE equivalents.