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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2195 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 5, 2024

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I'm surprised that throughout the past few weeks I've seen no discussion on handheld computing a la the Steam deck, so here it is.

I've fairly recently gotten my hands on a Steam deck OLED, and it's everything that I've wanted a modded PSP to be (maybe a touch too large). A higher quality brighter screen is a significant improvement from the old LCD I had from yesteryear. Having Arch OS behind the scenes comes at a significant benefit as well, as full software support means you can literally run common applications, Emulators, etc. with actual software support! Oh, and it can run steam games too, I guess.

Anyways, I think it goes to say I enjoyed messing around with it a lot and have actually started tackling a non-0 amount of my steam backlog. My hope is that the success of these handheld compute units will create incentives for Microsoft to actually take a look at a lightweight version of their OS for ease of use without the endless need for internet connection to send telemetry and personal information and maybe implement some battery-optimizing techniques. I'm not holding my breath but one can hope!

Valve still don't sell the deck directly in my country. I'd have to pay a very inflated price to an importer. I can't justify that given how I can often go 2 weeks without playing any games, and how much I enjoy my PC/TV setup for most gaming purposes. Don't see myself using a handheld all that often. Might get tempted by the Deck 2 though, if it has good specs and they sell it directly to consumers in my country.

I certainly think it had limited use case is somewhat limited if you don't choose to tinker with it. It definitely leans towards the 'portable' end of the current offerings of handheld computers in that it emphasizes battery life over performance which is why it's my preferred device. If you don't game a lot or have an extensive steam library it's probably not worth the money imo. I have both and tend to travel and split time between multiple places so having a to-go device like the steam deck is beneficial for my lifestyle.

If I were more of a traveling man I'd get one for sure. Would eliminate the need for a gaming capable laptop.

I don't travel anymore but I've found much use for my steamdeck anyway.

I can now lie in bed or on the sofa and game more easily. I wasn't sure I would use it enough but I game on it more than my computer and TV nowadays.

I might get into handheld devices about the time you can control them with a headset reading nerve impulses, and you 3d glasses with them.

Between hating bending my neck using phones and small devices not having keyboards or large screens, what kind of games can you even play on them ?

Platformers, card games, metroidvanias, Rogue likes, third person action games, driving games, etc.

What you don't want to play is high paced precision games like FPSs, MOBAs and RTSs.

I play either FPS's, quasi-simulators where memorizing the keybinds is quite a feat or strategy games, so nothing suitable for phones..

Some games (eg Terraria) are intentionally 'game-boy esque', and work as well or better on handhelds as on desktop keyboards. That said, I've seen some people play casual levels of more complex games like MineCraft or even FFXIV on Steam Decks without too many problems -- they're not an ideal form factor, but they're still quite usable.

I definitely hear you on the neck bending! Avoiding the dreaded back hump is something I've always fought against due to how phones and laptops tend to leave you in bad posture positions.

The steam deck can have a (less refined) switch output where you can hook it up to a monitor or TV with a dock, so I frequently use it as a more open source switch which can run all my emulators easily. It has pretty stellar bluetooth as well so you can connect any controller you'd like to it.

Genuine portable computing's long been an underserved and overfragmented market. My gaming uses tend to revolve around keyboards, but this design space has a lot of utility for things like (giant-)pocket-sized tablets for note-taking and light management devices that are otherwise not very well-served -- either PalmPilot- or Pi-level devices that can do too little, or GPD Win-knockoffs that are way too high-end for most users.

I am a little worried about how much they're willing to explore. Valve's had enough success to at least drive imitators (Asus Ally), but there's a lot of design decisions in both the original and OLED variant that point towards a lot of caution in design scaling (both devices use MIPI displays, and the original IPS one was a weird left-over from a generic tablet display with a funky aspect ratio). Valve has historically been careful in general, but if it's more than just their normal engineering-by-the-shelf, either indicates that they don't want to put down the capital, or don't think they can get the manufacturing interest in it.

To date, Valve has never meaningfully iterated on their hardware.

First the Steam Link and Steam Machines, until they lost interest in that.
Then the Index, until they (mostly) lost interest in that.
Now the Steam Deck. It's only been out for a year and a bit and they replaced the screen- sure, faster than Nintendo did, but that's a really low bar.

Sure, the Switch 2 has absolutely sold a lot of units- far more than any other Valve hardware product has- but I can understand why a manufacturer wouldn't be interested in seriously developing the Gabe Gear with a track record of no repeat business- especially if they're now saying "there won't be a new one for a while", and when Valve says "a while"...

At least never releasing a second version of a thing prevents people from asking them when the third one's coming.

At least never releasing a second version of a thing prevents people from asking them when the third one's coming.

The most wounding comment I've ever read on the Motte.

Yeah, especially given Valve's competence in the designs it does create, it's weird how much they don't like building new stuff. Even places that look like past iterations aren't, officially: the Lighthouse V1s were HTC builds and V2s were the first genuine Valve production design, and the Knuckles controllers were 'updated' a few different times but never had an official release.

Optimistically, maybe that's just Valve Being Valve, and when they get bored other people can go into the market that they've formalized (and done a lot of the annoying software work for). Pessimistically, if you only expected to have one shot at this design and picked those joysticks, it doesn't say a lot about what you're planning around. Worse, other companies seem equally cautious about the field: Asus looks like it's using off-the-shelf panel-controller combos on their display as well, even if a little higher-quality, and hasn't committed to long-term support or replacement parts.

((And Asus isn't as competent when it comes to software.))

I think that whole "playground" structure they have there (they call it "flat office", but "office" suggests it's a place where work happens) does kind of kneecap them when it's time to do things long-term or that are "uninteresting". I think Valve gets to be Valve because Steam literally prints money, so as long as they're not drawing the budget down too hard they (as a business) can piss high-six-figures-per-employee time into a hole indefinitely.

I think the hardware strategy might have been intended as some internal group's hack around this, because hardware designs have a half shelf life. If they want a game to push the hardware- and as everyone rushing to adopt the Alyx way of grabbing things showed that was the right decision- they need to make harder decisions and actually sit down together and make the thing rather than sit around and Episode 3 it up until Mark Laidlaw leaves an obscene yearly income behind for lack of work (also semi-retirement, but y'know).

I don't think it worked as well with the Steam Deck- yeah, we got Desk Job, but I think the "become really exclusive Nintendo" (one game per franchise per hardware release, and those games are tech demos that encourage full use of the hardware) thing might have a chance if they had a success rate greater than 1 in 2 (only counting post-Index). And the only unique thing with the Deck, other than the form factor, is the gyros (done already with the Switch, but in fairness Nintendo didn't do it right) and the touchpads (which not even Valve gets right on the first time- the ones on the Knuckles are just awful- and the PS4 console ports most people are playing on the Gabe Boy Advance probably don't implement touch controls, good riddance).

That said, however, I think console manufacturers have absolutely been put on notice. Nintendo has it worst because the Deck is literally just a better Switch that they got soundly beat to market releasing and the fact the Deck implements all Switch hardware (and then some) is fantastic for pirates customers who want a better refresh rate or maybe just to do this, and this thing kind of boxes Sony and MS (to a lesser extent, since Microsoft's game pass doesn't really work on Linux to my knowledge) into a place they really do not want to go, since the Gabe Boy Advance is also a better PS4/XBone than those consoles are and GPU improvements in the sub-400-dollar range over what those consoles currently use literally do not exist.

Also, doesn't ASUS clone-and-one-better a computer in basically every form factor anyway?

Also, doesn't ASUS clone-and-one-better a computer in basically every form factor anyway?

Weirdly, no. For the bigger markets, they're willing to make weird one- and two-offs (though not always well, contrast FriendlyElec).

But there is no Asus GPD-clone, for example, probably because it's just too small of a market. While the 5-inch tablets in general have just dissolved since around 2010 for everybody but the weird Aliexpress vendors, for 7-inch tablets you're looking at the MeMoPads running android 4.4 on an atom processor from 2014 (wut), despite a lot of sales at the high and low ends. They don't do nano itx as a form factor, period, even as they've become a major player for NUCs.

Which isn't an awful decision as a business -- spread too far and you lose yourself -- but it's a weird one.

Don't forget the steam controller.

Valve has explicitly said that the og Steam Deck was largely commodity hardware, as they couldn't find manufacturers confident enough in them to make more bespoke hardware. The OLED one is a midcycle refresh from when they had more confidence and could order more bespoke parts.

At this point, I think they could justify entirely custom hardware, but Valve prefers a more console-like approach of establishing baseline performance and sticking with it for a bit until a truly meaningful upgrade is possible instead of annual releases. They've said it'll be a while till the next one, which at least lets devs optimize for the current performance targets.

Edit:

Valve hardware is also milspec: https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1743340445294264373?s=20

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