Valve/Steam do a handheld thingy

[Syt]

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/

Price seems steep (419 - 679 EUR )

[Barrister]

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/

Price seems steep (419 - 679 EUR )

It does seem steep.

But I guess when you consider you're buying a a full-fledged gaming PC in a handheld form factor it makes more sense.  But certainly a Nintendo Switch is much cheaper.

[Syt]

It supports remote play, obviously, but I wonder how powerful it is by itself. In the promo thing for connecting it to a screen they show CK3. But Doom Eternal ... seems a bit questionable. And the battery life seems pretty low:

Steam Deck's onboard 40 watt-hour battery provides several hours of play time for most games. For lighter use cases like game streaming, smaller 2D games, or web browsing, you can expect to get the maximum battery life of approximately 7-8 hours.

[Grey Fox]

I got burn once, GabeN. Not getting me again.

*Steam Link & controller owner*

[The Minsky Moment]

I can do that already with Shadow and a phone controller.

[Josquius]

I got burn once, GabeN. Not getting me again.

*Steam Link & controller owner*

They suck?

I've heard both are pretty good. Link in particular has tempted me in the past.

[Grey Fox]

I got burn once, GabeN. Not getting me again.

*Steam Link & controller owner*

They suck?

I've heard both are pretty good. Link in particular has tempted me in the past.

No, they are fine products on their own but Valve totally abandoned them.

Controller is hard to master but can be awesome if you learn the pads.

Link is fine but Valve now supports streaming on almost all Android devices there is no need for it.

[FunkMonk]

Yeah I regularly stream games via Steam's interface from my gaming PC to my puny laptop and it works very well.

Can't say I'm going to buy this product but we'll see where things are in a couple years.

[Josquius]

Thinking about this... the idea seems good, though I'm sure there already are other companies making it already?

15 years ago or so I had a console called a GP32, it was awesome. It was a complete flop in terms of first party software but it had an excellent mod scene so in essence I used it as an all purpose portable emulator for anything up to 16 bit.

Even just that but for more recent consoles would be nifty.

The battery life is the problem with this valve one though. Game Gear echos.

[The Minsky Moment]

I broke down and got one of these things. Has its limitations but a pretty fun device overall.

There is a full linux computer running underneath, so in addition to playing steam games, you can easily set it up to play: xbox game pass, gog store games, epic store games, probably others.  If you are into retro emulation, you can set up emulation station or even set up ROMS to play directly from the UI.  It's also possible to set up ps+ streamed games as well, though I haven't tried and thus can't verify for 100% certain.  The ability to play console game streams is nice as controller-designed games tend to play well on the deck.

Easy to hook up keyboard and mouse as well, which significantly expands the list of playable games.  PDX games can be played although not ideal with screen size.  Of course, you can hook to a monitor.

Battery life is poor but it can be plugged in with an adapter (included) or into an external battery. 

[FunkMonk]

I broke down and got one of these things. Has its limitations but a pretty fun device overall.

There is a full linux computer running underneath, so in addition to playing steam games, you can easily set it up to play: xbox game pass, gog store games, epic store games, probably others.  If you are into retro emulation, you can set up emulation station or even set up ROMS to play directly from the UI.  It's also possible to set up ps+ streamed games as well, though I haven't tried and thus can't verify for 100% certain.  The ability to play console game streams is nice as controller-designed games tend to play well on the deck.

Easy to hook up keyboard and mouse as well, which significantly expands the list of playable games.  PDX games can be played although not ideal with screen size.  Of course, you can hook to a monitor.

Battery life is poor but it can be plugged in with an adapter (included) or into an external battery. 

You can indeed stream PS 4/5 games via PS Remote Play. I've used it to play Ghost of Tsushima this way.

You can also stream games via Steam Remote Play or Moonlight or whatever service you use from a beefier desktop PC to your Steam Deck. It's how I play Red Dead Redemption 2 with very high graphical settings on. It looks gorgeous on the Deck and because it's streamed it doesn't knock the battery life out.

The Steam Deck is a very versatile little handheld gaming PC.

[Jacob]

That sounds pretty tempting.

How easy or complicated is it to set up the non-Steam streaming stuff?

And could you run heavily modded skyrim on the thing do you think?

[The Minsky Moment]

Game pass streaming was easy to set up, as were other "stores" like epic.
PS+ is more involved - I tried to set it up over this weekend and failed.

Have not run skyrim on the deck.  Obviously any mods that can be run through steam would work.  Otherwise, you could set up the mods through "desktop" mode - but keep in mind it is a linux environment.

[FunkMonk]

At least for me I find myself gaming more often than before. It's a lot easier to roll up onto the couch next to my wife and play a computer game while she's watching Netflix, or play something in bed before I fall asleep.

I've been using Game Pass cloud streaming  a lot to play Pentiment. Works great on my network but ymmv.

I also installed Battle.net and Diablo 2 Resurrected works great. All in all it's a charming and flexible little device.

Have you used it for emulators Minsky? Supposedly the Wii U version of Zelda Breath of the Wild works great on it and if I can get that working I may never buy another game system ever again 

[The Minsky Moment]

I did set up some emulators - mostly to play a couple old PSX games I have disks for but are not available on the PS+ library.  There is some set up time but there are plenty of videos on youtube to run you though the process.  I would expect just about any console game should work pretty well because the control system is easy to replicate.