Overhyped Steam Deck

[Stahlmann]

Am i really the only person who thinks this oversized gameboy advance is ridiculously overhyped? Linus even went as far as saying it's the most innovative computer in 20 years. For me this whole mobile gaming thing doesn't really have any appeal. Either i'm out and about doing god knows what, but not gaming or i'm at home where i have my desktop. And i've personally never seen a person holding a nintendo switch in public transport, in a park etc. so it seems most of these are also used as home consoles as the major usecase, not as mobile gaming devices. The Deck will likely end up more as a cheap entry-level gaming PC people use at home than as a mobile gaming device imo. I don't get why everyone treats this thing as a new invention tbh.

 

One thing that bugs me especially: I'm pretty sure every time Linus sees a display performing so bad (color performance - especially sRGB coverage) he would hate it. Yet somehow it's fine in this device. Pretty much every CHEAP ENTRY LEVEL monitor can cover 99% of the sRGB color space nowadays, so that indicates the deck really uses a very low-quality IPS panel. Now yes, i'm a display enthusiast and i'm used to very good displays myself so my expectations might be higher than the average user. But still, the display they use is simply terrible by today's standards. And as the OLED switch shows us, there are really good displays available for these devices without breaking the bank.

 

Please share your opinions!

[BetteBalterZen]

I agree with everything you said

[connorkincaid]

9 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Am i really the only person who thinks this oversized gameboy advance is ridiculously overhyped? Linus even went as far as saying it's the most innovative computer in 20 years. For me this whole mobile gaming thing doesn't really have any appeal. Either i'm out and about doing god knows what, but not gaming or i'm at home where i have my desktop. And i've personally never seen a person holding a nintendo switch in public transport, in a park etc. so it seems most of these are also used as home consoles as the major usecase, not as mobile gaming devices. The Deck will likely end up more as a cheap entry-level gaming PC people use at home than as a mobile gaming device imo. I don't get why everyone treats this thing as a new invention tbh.

 

One thing that bugs me: I'm pretty sure every time Linus sees a display performing so bad (color performance - especially sRGB coverage) he would hate it. Yet somehow it's fine in this device. Pretty much every CHEAP ENTRY LEVEL monitor can cover 99% of the sRGB color space nowadays, so that indicates the deck really uses a very low-quality IPS panel.

 

Please share your opinions!

I'm not excited by it in any other sense than having something even more portable than a laptop. I see plenty of people in public with Switches, so I disagree on that point, but I think the only real value this device has for me is the portability. I think that this device is going to underwhelm most people's expectations however, it isn't a game changer, its just another portable option.

[Liam L]

I never see people in public using a Nintendo Switch (not that I go out much lol)

but I do see the appeal of the steam deck. Some people just prefer to sit on a couch or bed or something and just play a game in there hands. Some people just don't have room for a TV or monitor to game at. While I'm not sure i'll get a steam deck any time soon I do quite enjoy sitting on a couch or lying on a bed occasionally and playing a handheld game. some people just want a better gaming experience in terms of a range of games and better performance and graphics than a Switch for example and don't mind losing out on some of the exclusives Nintendo has on there platform. I personally don't mind the bulkiness either. I get that the Steam Deck is far less portable for people who want to play games in public but I personally really like the bulkiness of the Wii U and love sitting on a couch or bed to play it, so the bulkiness is more of a good thing for me.

[tkitch]

Hard Disagree.

If I were at my previous job?  This would have been absolutely something I fucking was hella into.  At least half the time at my previous job, I took the subway to work, and lemme tell you, for a 45 minute subway ride each way?  This woulda been the shit.  

 

When I travel, I Take a laptop because I frequently need to use a computer for "something."  Which is fine, at a hotel desk. but outside of that, it's cumbersome af.  This would solve that issue nicely.  

 

Comparing this to a switch is hella disingenuous.  The switch has a super shitty APU in it.  That's been a criticism of nintendo ever since the Wii.  (Which is...  nearly 20 years ago?)  This thing has enough CPU / Memory that you can't match the performance for 400$, which is the complete cost of this.  (Roughly a Ryzen 3600 w RDNA 2, 16GB DDR5)

 

Valve is 110% losing money on these units.  There is no reason to think they'd be upgrading parts only to lose more money.

 

Maybe there'll be an upgrade later, or someone aftermarket will put out a replacement kit, like for the GBAs.  

 

But I'm excited about having an actual portable PC, in a reasonable formfactor, and a solid console-level pricetag.

[8tg]

It’s fancy new out of the box product number two billion except this time it was done by a company that can actually mass produce these things, so we might actually see some of them out in the wild.

 

I have never seen any GPD products ever irl, and they’re always super hyped, and why I’ve never seen them is down to factors:

-they cost more than better specced regular laptops

-the actual market for an expensive miniature laptop is tiny and everyone who would want one, just has a small thinkpad already

 

The steam deck has its own problems but avoids some others. It’s meant to be a portable pc for light pc gaming. 
The actual controller requirement and layout is just 100% cancelled for most “distinctly PC” games. You aren’t bringing CSGO with you to work unless you want to get your ass handed to you for a 30 minute casual game on break.

Games that will work well on a controller through steam, you already have other ports for on other portable systems.

Like yeah I wanna play Baba Is You except I want a larger device than a switch lite which also has baba is you.

Or, I want to play Skyrim on the go even though the switch made that possible years ago.

Or, I really want to play Halo MCC at the minimum possible settings and still pull sub 30fps on the way to school.

 

What it can do, the switch already does. 
Ah, but it’s a pc, with pc games, it’s not a switch competitor at all because you get this whole windows pc experience on a small device you can carry around. 
Except that’s total bullshit, it’s a gaming device for portable gaming and everything it’s reasonably capable of playing is already just a switch game. If you want to emulate stuff on the go there’s already way cheaper options like basically any of those controller case things for android phones. If your goal is some weird productivity machine on the go then just buy a damn laptop because you’re gonna have a keyboard with you anyway.

 

Overpriced, overhyped, use case is nonexistent, the only reason the product wasn’t dead out of the gates was because valve found enough companies to China to throw money at to get a reasonable number of the things produced.

[Slizzo]

To your last point, OP. He compared the screens favorably because you need to take cost of the unit into account. The Steam deck was half the price of the next closest competitor in the class.

[Spindel]

23 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Am i really the only person who thinks this oversized gameboy advance is ridiculously overhyped? Linus even went as far as saying it's the most innovative computer in 20 years. For me this whole mobile gaming thing doesn't really have any appeal. Either i'm out and about doing god knows what, but not gaming or i'm at home where i have my desktop. And i've personally never seen a person holding a nintendo switch in public transport, in a park etc. so it seems most of these are also used as home consoles as the major usecase, not as mobile gaming devices. The Deck will likely end up more as a cheap entry-level gaming PC people use at home than as a mobile gaming device imo. I don't get why everyone treats this thing as a new invention tbh.

 

One thing that bugs me especially: I'm pretty sure every time Linus sees a display performing so bad (color performance - especially sRGB coverage) he would hate it. Yet somehow it's fine in this device. Pretty much every CHEAP ENTRY LEVEL monitor can cover 99% of the sRGB color space nowadays, so that indicates the deck really uses a very low-quality IPS panel. Now yes, i'm a display enthusiast and i'm used to very good displays myself so my expectations might be higher than the average user. But still, the display they use is simply terrible by today's standards. And as the OLED switch shows us, there are really good displays available for these devices without breaking the bank.

 

Please share your opinions!

As a switch owner (and an adult) I can say I use it portable maybe 50 % of the time. But not when I'm out and about. 

 

I use portable when: 

• Kids or wife wants to watch TV, but I can still sit next to them in the couch while playing
• Taking a dump
• Playing in bed
• A nice summer eavning on the poarch (after family gone to bed)
• In bed when on vacation (i e at my wife's parents summer house) when wife and kids have fallen asleep

So a steam deck would probably fill those portable needs as well. 

 

But I generally also agree with you in that I think the steam deck is over hyped. My main issue is that the games I do want to play on PC I play on PC because of KB+M. Adding that to a steam deck it suddenly becomes less portable. But that is just my personal opinion, I won't stop anyone that wants one from getting one, it's just not for me. 

[GuiltySpark_]

I am 1000% on board and you basically echoed my thoughts on the entire portable gaming focused PC space. I cannot for the life of me figure out a time when I would ever use this. If I'm out, i'll listen to audiobooks or podcasts, i'm not trying to play PC games, I'll play my games on my expensive desktop in the comfort of my home. 

 

I watch Linus' coverage on this type devices with a little disbelief over his excitement and think "Am I the one who just doesn't get it? Am I that old?" But then besides Linus, I truly don't see hype for something like this anywhere so it really blows my mind how much effort he puts into selling how cool he thinks these things are.

 

Low settings on a small screen is not the PC gaming experience I enjoy, and I don't have to sacrifice those things to have portability, i'd rather just not play games at all.

[8tg]

6 minutes ago, tkitch said:

When I travel, I Take a laptop because I frequently need to use a computer for "something."  Which is fine, at a hotel desk. but outside of that, it's cumbersome af.  This would solve that issue nicely.

I want you to imagine for a second trying to open your email with an Xbox controller on a Linux desktop.

That is the mobile computer user experience this thing offers.

7 minutes ago, tkitch said:

This thing has enough CPU / Memory that you can't match the performance for 400$, which is the complete cost of this.  (Roughly a Ryzen 3600 w RDNA 2, 16GB DDR5)

Except you totally can just like every single time these types of products come out, biggest comparison is gaming consoles.

The way specs are marketed is very intentional, they don’t give you any real numbers, they give you synthetic numbers and hype it up as much as possible. 
Like when the Xbox one and PS4 were coming out and everyone was losing their minds over these 8 core processors in consoles, never going to be able to make a pc to compete on a raw price to performance standpoint. And then they dropped, everyone realized it was two Athlon 5350’s slapped together, and anyone with a Sandy bridge i5 and 750ti was shitting all over the Xbox one and PS4.

 

Same thing here, wow look at those specs, what big numbers, shame they mean basically nothing because at the end of the day this is a sub 15w ULV mobile apu we’re talking about and basically any modern desktop processor will decimate it. Not that it’s meant to compete with that, but that’s how they try and market this. They only give those numbers so people compare it to other hardware and go “wow it’s gonna be this powerful”.

And then they’re gonna actually use the thing and it’ll probably be pretty good for ULV mobile hardware, but then ULV mobile hardware is waaaaayyy under the tier of the average desktop or full wattage laptop processor.

That mindset right there looking at these products is dangerous and it’s falling right into the trap these companies set every time to get people interested in the product.

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

samsung makes small but reall good displayes that they use on their phones, im pretty sure apple also uses samsung displays...so why could the valve add a display like that? On the samsung galaxy A series phones they even have lower res but still really good displays if they really wanted something lower res

[Imbadatnames]

It’s just overhyped. I have a switch and outside of first party Nintendo IPs I barely touch it 

[Chris Pratt]

35 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

One thing that bugs me especially: I'm pretty sure every time Linus sees a display performing so bad (color performance - especially sRGB coverage) he would hate it. Yet somehow it's fine in this device. Pretty much every CHEAP ENTRY LEVEL monitor can cover 99% of the sRGB color space nowadays, so that indicates the deck really uses a very low-quality IPS panel. Now yes, i'm a display enthusiast and i'm used to very good displays myself so my expectations might be higher than the average user. But still, the display they use is simply terrible by today's standards. And as the OLED switch shows us, there are really good displays available for these devices without breaking the bank.

You missed a key point to what Linus said, and it makes all the difference. Color accuracy and things like sRGB coverage are based on the screen at a certain brightness level. You can take the best, most color accurate display out there, and turn the brightness down, and it's shit.

 

What Linus said was that the Steam Deck's display had very accurate colors for the range of brightness levels it operates at. He made a point of showing how much more dim the display could get than other similar devices. He never said it was the most color accurate. As usual, context is everything.

[Rauten]

I think you're being way too harsh on the device.

 

Yes, there's a bit too much hype, but it is an interesting product and, even though I have no real use case for it, I am mightily tempted  to get one.

A tiny, somewhat capable "laptop" that you don't need to worry about cooking your genitalia or finding a table, and you don't need to carry any peripherals around if you wanna play some games (not all, though).

Also, if these devices had no use and no interest, how come GDP has been making them for years and recently even got competition (Aya NEO, OnePlayer)?

 

Valve is making this much more appealing to the mass market by putting the weight of an actually large corporation behind it, and slashing the price aggressively to make it much more palatable.

 

And on the software side, if everything goes according to Valve's claims (probably not, but we'll see how close they can get), it could be a huge boost to Linux gaming if enough people buy it and stick to using SteamOS. That possibility (unlikely as it might be) alone makes this a device worth keeping an eye on.

 

7 minutes ago, 8tg said:

 

What it can do, the switch already does. 
Ah, but it’s a pc, with pc games, it’s not a switch competitor at all because you get this whole windows pc experience on a small device you can carry around. 
Except that’s total bullshit, it’s a gaming device for portable gaming and everything it’s reasonably capable of playing is already just a switch game.

Huh. I didn't know Hearts of Iron 4 was on the switch.

 

Maybe many of those games are on the switch. You know what isn't on the switch? My humongous Steam library that I'd need to re-purchase, on top of the cost of the device.

Also, can the switch run discord with BT headsets/earphones? Can I browse internet on the switch? Remember, this isn't just a "switch-like", it's a bloody computer.

If I was in the market for something portable to play games, I wouldn't even look at the switch, I'd buy this in a heartbeat.

7 minutes ago, 8tg said:

Overpriced, overhyped, use case is nonexistent, the only reason the product wasn’t dead out of the gates was because valve found enough companies to China to throw money at to get a reasonable number of the things produced.

Again, GDP and it's competitors which already existed before Valve even announced their device? And their products are far more expensive than this!

[CerealExperimentsLain]

46 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

And i've personally never seen a person holding a nintendo switch in public transport, in a park etc

End of August I was flying to British Columbia.  As I settled into my seat in coach, I pulled out my Switch.  The guy next to me pulled out his.  The guy next to him pulled out his.  We all laughed... And they were sad cause I had Quake but not Smash Brothers...

[tkitch]

Just now, CerealExperimentsLain said:

End of August I was flying to British Columbia.  As I settled into my seat in coach, I pulled out my Switch.  The guy next to me pulled out his.  The guy next to him pulled out his.  We all laughed... And they were sad cause I had Quake but not Smash Brothers...

That is your failure, Smash is clearly the superior choice.

 

[Stahlmann]

24 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Valve is 110% losing money on these units.  There is no reason to think they'd be upgrading parts only to lose more money.

I don't think that's their business model here. For consoles i can get behind that, as they have a lot of other ways to monetize on their users. But in what way does steam benefit here after the initial sale? Most people already own the games they're gonna play and valve doesn't offer something like game pass (yet).

 

5 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

You missed a key point to what Linus said, and it makes all the difference. Color accuracy and things like sRGB coverage are based on the screen at a certain brightness level. You can take the best, most color accurate display out there, and turn the brightness down, and it's shit.

 

What Linus said was that the Steam Deck's display had very accurate colors for the range of brightness levels it operates at. He made a point of showing how much more dim the display could get than other similar devices. He never said it was the most color accurate. As usual, context is everything.

Seems i misunderstood this part of his "review". Thanks for the clarification!

 

1 minute ago, Rauten said:

I think you're being way too harsh on the device.

 

Yes, there's a bit too much hype, but it is an interesting product and, even though I have no real use case for it, I am mightily tempted  to get one.

A tiny, somewhat capable "laptop" that you don't need to worry about cooking your genitalia or finding a table, and you don't need to carry any peripherals around if you wanna play some games (not all, though).

Also, if these devices had no use and no interest, how come GDP has been making them for years and recently even got competition (Aya NEO, OnePlayer)?

 

Valve is making this much more appealing to the mass market by putting the weight of an actually large corporation behind it, and slashing the price aggressively to make it much more palatable.

They make their product more appealing compared to their competition. I still personally don't see the use case of this or it's competitors though.

 

1 minute ago, Rauten said:

And on the software side, if everything goes according to Valve's claims (probably not, but we'll see how close they can get), it could be a huge boost to Linux gaming if enough people buy it and stick to using SteamOS. That possibility (unlikely as it might be) alone makes this a device worth keeping an eye on.

There will be a significant portion of users that will probably install windows as soon as they take it out of the box. SteamOS might help Linux catch up some more, but it's still gonna lag behind windows in terms of compatibility for games and emulators.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

34 minutes ago, tkitch said:

If I were at my previous job?  This would have been absolutely something I fucking was hella into.  At least half the time at my previous job, I took the subway to work, and lemme tell you, for a 45 minute subway ride each way?  This woulda been the shit.

To be fair, I'd probably not use a Steam Deck on the subway or a city bus.  I'd be too concerned about getting robbed.  Aircraft, proper railway, even commuter train, those are civilized.  The subway?  Some mother fucker's gonna rip it out of your hands and be out of the train and the doors will close before you can get after him.  Big nope from me.

[GuiltySpark_]

3 minutes ago, Rauten said:

Maybe many of those games are on the switch. You know what isn't on the switch? My humongous Steam library that I'd need to re-purchase, on top of the cost of the device.

Also, can the switch run discord with BT headsets/earphones? Can I browse internet on the switch? Remember, this isn't just a "switch-like", it's a bloody computer.

I think the difference is you find the capability of doing that appealing. To me all that sounds terrible and I'll just wait until I'm at my proper desktop. 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

4 minutes ago, tkitch said:

That is your failure, Smash is clearly the superior choice.

Yeah well next flight I'll be rocking Open Roller Coaster Tycoon on my Steam Deck!  And if I get bored, I'll just switch to a media and watch a movie or TV show.  (WHY CAN THE SWITCH NOT PLAY MEDIA FILES???  My PSP Could watch media files!  WTF!)

[tkitch]

1 minute ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Yeah well next flight I'll be rocking Open Roller Coaster Tycoon on my Steam Deck!  And if I get bored, I'll just switch to a media and watch a movie or TV show.  (WHY CAN THE SWITCH NOT PLAY MEDIA FILES???'

Same reason they couldn't use BT Headphones for years.  Because big N said so.

[8tg]

Just now, Rauten said:

Huh. I didn't know Hearts of Iron 4 was on the switch.

I too like playing RTS games with a controller and hating my entire existence the whole time as I slowly try and navigate 20 different sub menus to make an anti aircraft gun.

1 minute ago, Rauten said:

Maybe many of those games are on the switch. You know what isn't on the switch? My humongous Steam library that I'd need to re-purchase, on top of the cost of the device.

How many of them are actually playable on the steam deck, hardware wise, because this is out of the box basically a decent Ryzen laptop with Linux on it.

How many of those playable games are comfortable to play with a controller and not a keyboard and mouse?

Of those, which ones can’t you get on a switch?

Are those games worth the initial cost of the steam deck so you can use it once a day at most to play at best:

-a game which works well with a controller

-runs well on low end hardware

-and can run on Linux

 

4 minutes ago, Rauten said:

Also, can the switch run discord with BT headsets/earphones?

I can’t imagine doing that when a phone exists, and trying to use discord with a controller would be awful.

5 minutes ago, Rauten said:

Can I browse internet on the switch? Remember, this isn't just a "switch-like", it's a bloody computer.

Again, besides a few things that work well with a controller as an input, everything else you’d realistically do on a steam deck your phone does better.

Watch a YouTube video, browse websites, check your email, whatever. Except now you’re doing that on a device which is larger than your phone, has worse battery life than your phone, and is more difficult to manage from a software standpoint than your phone.

 

Man, I sure do love carrying a tiny portable computer around with me, something that has the hardware just good enough the bare minimum of mobile games and productivity, while losing all of the use comforts of just using a regular laptop.

It’s the modern equivalent to old Sony Vaio UPMCs. It’s an amazing device on paper, it’s a full fledged computer experience in your pocket, except then you realize you’re doing everything on a tiny screen, with a terrible keyboard, awful battery life and the whole thing is just overall outclassed by any basic laptop where your only negative trade off over the UMPC is physical size.

it’s not even a new idea, and it’s sucked then and it sucks now, behold, ye olde steam deck

IBM palmtop PC110, a tiny portable PC for the home or workplace, shove it in your pocket, dock it to real accessories for more functionality when portability isn’t needed, it even had buttons to play games on the go, it literally follows every marketing point of the steam deck except IBM did this in 1995

heres why it sucked, turns out trying to do anything productive on that tiny keyboard and screen sucks, the battery life sucked compared to any regular laptop of the time, it’s overall performance was really mediocre, everything that it did, a cheap laptop did better

the only thing the cheap laptop didn’t have was that it couldn’t be crammed into your pocket 

[Commodus]

13 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Am i really the only person who thinks this oversized gameboy advance is ridiculously overhyped? Linus even went as far as saying it's the most innovative computer in 20 years. For me this whole mobile gaming thing doesn't really have any appeal. Either i'm out and about doing god knows what, but not gaming or i'm at home where i have my desktop. And i've personally never seen a person holding a nintendo switch in public transport, in a park etc. so it seems most of these are also used as home consoles as the major usecase, not as mobile gaming devices. The Deck will likely end up more as a cheap entry-level gaming PC people use at home than as a mobile gaming device imo. I don't get why everyone treats this thing as a new invention tbh.

 

One thing that bugs me especially: I'm pretty sure every time Linus sees a display performing so bad (color performance - especially sRGB coverage) he would hate it. Yet somehow it's fine in this device. Pretty much every CHEAP ENTRY LEVEL monitor can cover 99% of the sRGB color space nowadays, so that indicates the deck really uses a very low-quality IPS panel. Now yes, i'm a display enthusiast and i'm used to very good displays myself. But still, the display they use is simply terrible by today's standards. And as the OLED switch shows us, there are really good displays available for these devices without breaking the bank.

 

Please share your opinions!

It is and it isn't overhyped.

 

The Steam Deck won't make Nintendo break a sweat. It's big, relatively expensive and will only truly sing with games that thrive on a gamepad. You're right that people are more likely to use it in bed (or when a PC/console is occupied) than during their commute.

 

However, it's also a thoroughly well-designed and surprisingly capable handheld gaming PC coming in at a considerably lower price than its rivals. This is not an entry-level laptop shoehorned into a smaller design, with few optimizations; this is not some $800-plus niche device that only appeals to PC diehards who would never use a Switch. It's just affordable enough that you might consider it over a conventional console if you either have a healthy Steam game library or just want titles that don't normally make it to consoles.

[saltycaramel]

1 hour ago, Stahlmann said:

Am i really the only person

 

No you aren’t, see my comments in this thread about the weird vibes of overhyping I’m getting from the Steam Deck coverage

 

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1409635-steam-deck-discussion/

 

[BuckGup]

Lmao what. The sole fact the shear amount of software development that goes into making non linux games with DRM run well is already enough to make it stand out. Try and take PC components and shove them in a switch sized case, that's user upgradable friendly, and then write large amounts of clever software for energy savings and also write your own operating system while you are at it. Everything else is just frosting on top like the gyros, touch pads, speakers, headphone jack, and USB C dock support. 

 

Simply put there is no device on the market like it and the competitors are going to struggle with software development as they don't have Valve sitting behind them