I’m really excited by this. I sold my nintendo switch a while ago and I miss handheld gaming while going on trips. and also the fact that alot of games will probably be ported to linux because of this. what do you all think?
Think you’re being a bit generous to think more games will be ported to Linux over it. Unless the thing sells well it’s gonna be business as usual. Would be cool to see but I can’t imagine it’ll pick up steam (no pun intended) the same way the Switch has. The Switch is tailor made for that experience and PC gaming isn’t really. But I do hope it does well even with my pessimism.
Proton/Wine works so well these days that you can play basically any Windows single-player game on Linux. The problem is really only on those few multiplayer games that deploy super invasive anti-cheat root-kits.
Maybe this new Steam console will result in some native ports of such multi-player games, but the form factor makes this less likely as few people play such multi-player games on hand-held consoles.
People play PUBG, Fortnite, Dead By Daylight and others on mobile (Android) and I’d argue a Switch-like console would be better suited for such kind of games.
~~Personally, I think what makes the console experience is just make some games exclusive to the console. I don’t think that’s what they really want, according to myself; an ex-handheld/console gamer. these machines are powerful but not utilized to the fullest and they don’t allow it even if it can be done. what we really want is to be able to play with most people on other platforms, have more cheaper games, more freedom in customizing our machine and maybe play retro games with an emulator. these things are only possible on the pc. not on the handheld just because gaming console always has an closed ecosystem like that of an iphone. handheld gamers are kind of oppressed in this way. which is why if a company like valve made a handheld PC. this would not only change linux gaming. but it will affect the whole handheld gaming world.
There are many, many PC exclusives. They could do one single timed release for such a console and sell hundreds of thousands of units.
Well, SteamOS thing caused Steam to go on Linux so it benefited the platform a bit
I have no love for Valve, but I don’t think it can be argued that SteamOS and Steam in general helped jump start linux support for games. I think linux support was always going to increase but I don’t think it was a given that there would be so much widespread support at this point.
Will it be able to compete with the KFConsole though?
did you forget about him?
I think that it will have the same problems the Steam Machine had. Proton will be a big help, but I can’t get my hopes up.
Since the Steam Machines we had lots of proton and client releases. Works way better than back then.
Considering there is big market for handheld gaming. a switch form factor pc would definitely blow up. that, if people can actually afford it…
I guess it will be about 600-700€ since similar handhelds already exist and cost that much. GPD Pocket for example.
The leak claimed that their target price is $399. Which seems a bit low but still realistic based on the AMD APU they apparently are using.
I don’t think they’ll be able to sell for that price with the current hardware component availability issues. Maybe mid to late 2022.
I think read somewhere that the main problem at least with TMSC made chips is the long in advanced booked out production capacity, so if there is an unexpected change in demand (like with GPUs) this can not be adapted to.
However from what I have read, this is planning to use the next generation low-cost mass-consumer APU that AMD probably ordered larger quantities off well in advance. And in general it seems the supply in AMD CPUs is not effected at all right now.
So lets wait and see… and of course stuff like RAM, storage, displays and all that also are a factor. But this does not necessarily have to have such problems.
CPUs, APUs and GPUs aren’t the only components which are in short supply right now. Think about VRM chips, EEPROMs, flash storage, …
and what do I see popping on my feed, little did we know that thing actually took off
Honestly I think it will be a flop.
I want it to succeed, but it probably won’t.
We were so wrong, yay!
Oh boy
All will depend on the pricing. But it will be hard to go against the big three.
I’ve never been more happy that someone was wrong, sorry it had to be you
I’m happy it was me too, I love my steam deck!
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You can stream SteamPlay titles to Android already with Steam In-Home streaming.
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Have you actually used it? These streaming services are nice for extremely casual gaming and will have a niche market (which might become big indeed, similar to mobile games), but they do not replace a home PC or console for “proper” gaming due to latency issues.
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i use it daily. latency is only an issue if you are one of the world’s top players in an online multiplayer (and if you are, you own a crazy expensive rig that doesn’t need to stream anyway), or if you have poor/slow internet connection. otherwise, it is perfectly fine, even for “casual” competitive use in those types of games.
I disagree, maybe you are almost living next to the data-center this cloud gaming runs on, but most people don’t and input latency is really noticeable on fast paced games even for a more casual gamer like me. It really demotivates me playing a game if the input latency is so bad, and I almost feel like it makes me borderline physically sick (which would explain why it unconsciously demotivates me to play).
damn. i’m sorry you have had that experience.
SteamPlay could be extended to stream from rented computers.
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It’d be awesome if you could even self-host streaming computers/servers and Valve didn’t host all of these, but instead certified data centers (like the “official” Steam Machines) or something like that.
You could guarantee a good service with a certified data center but you could also choose to self-host or go to a non-certified game streaming service. De-couple the software from the service, so to speak. It already worked well in gaming for self-hosting community game servers for tournaments, custom modes, private WAN parties and so on.
Sure, it’d still be proprietary, but OTOH way better than any of the alternatives. Maybe FOSS implementations could follow.
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Why do you think it would be better than the Switch?
Anyway, PC’s has all the features we need for handheld gaming. controller support. lan. etc. back then the idea of having a phone that doubles as a handheld console is really exciting to me. do you remember about the xperia play? The unique looking devices really fascinates me. I’m a big fan of the handheld form factor. if something like that exists, I can see myself using it to write my diaries and take pictures, use it for navigating around the city, communicating and play my rpg games.
Why do you think it would be better than the Switch? Multiplayer compatibility, almost everyone runs steam either on windows, mac and linux. You can play with most people. and A large catalogue of games from years ago. all games are available other than console exclusives.
Likely cheaper overall, especially considering I already have games on Steam that should work with this. But even without that, Switch games are crazy expensive and are rarely as deeply discounted as those you can buy on Steam.
Yeah, Nintendo really coats their games in gold. It’s so weird I can buy Cyberpunk 2077 for half the price after half a year and 5 year old Nintendo games cost 60€ still.
LBRY URL: lbry://@TheLinuxGamer#f/steampal#0
I don’t believe his expectations about the vr thing but overall mote linux consoles seems pretty cool. I haven’t had a chance to try the steam deck out so if this has a reasonable price I would want to buy it.
What are ‘trips’?
Steam is proprietary software so I’m not touching that
Unfortunately there is no real way to play games without using proprietary software unless your type of game is GNOME four in a row
There are a lot of free (as in freedom, libre) good games. I specially enjoy DOOM, Freeciv, 0ad and SuperTuxKart, but there are more “mainstream” kind of games which are completely free software: Veloren, Minetest, etc
All the games listed minus 0ad are clones which dont really stack up.
Not one to knock free software but im not a joyless fsf member lol
Well, DOOM isn’t a copy at all, since the original DOOM was realised under the GPL license. And Veloren seems to be a pretty good game, idk if it’s inspired by any game but I think that it’s unique.
Anyway, I think that remaining free as in freedom is way more important than playing a certain game
However all these games will likely work just fine on this Steam console, as all the OS will be fully open-source most likely. You might have to hack it slightly to stop it from auto-starting the Steam client, but based on the likely hardware inside there isn’t anything that wouldn’t work on a fully libre stack (AMD GPU firmware issue aside).
The problem goes deeper than that. Libreboot is a must have
Libreboot is a must have
Libreboot is a smokescreen if you have other proprietary blobs on your system possibly circumventing it. You have to look at the whole PC, libreboot is no magical bullet.
Of course that it isn’t. But if a device supports libreboot it means that it supports the Linux-libre kernel, so you can install a 100% free as in freedom distribution
AFAIK Libreboot is a general problem on AMD systems right now. But at least there should be nothing preventing a libreboot to work on this.
Libreboot can’t be ported to post2008 machines (yet, although I don’t think this is happening anytime soon) because they require proprietary blobs for booting. That’s caused by Intel’s ME and AMD’s PSP.
So if this machine has an AMD processor, it can’t be supported by Libreboot.
Okay, compare that to the dozens of thousands of proprietary games which are a lot of fun. Steam doesn’t even have intrusive DRM. It’s easily circumvented. I applaud that many games are available DRM free on GOG.com nowadays, but you wouldn’t play them either, because they’re pR0pRiEtArY™.
Art is usually proprietary. If you go to a museum, you pay an entry fee to a proprietary gallery of art. The art itself is proprietary most of the time. You can get it printed, if the copyright ran out even while only paying the print and no license, but it’s still not copyleft or libre.
I like to view, consume, use art. I think artists are entitled to sell their art however they like. It’s sad that you dismiss everything which isn’t proprietary software.
And I don’t even think you only use Open Source Software, as I’m very sure you probably didn’t buy a PC without any proprietary software. Usually at least the blobs in your NIC, the BIOS/UEFI, GPU firmware or similar things are proprietary.
Do I think that’s bad? Sure. But it’s how things are run right now. Let’s change it instead of creating our own little bubble of useless software.
You’re wrong. I don’t even like open source software. I exclusively use free software. And yes, I have a librebooted laptop which is my daily driver with a free, as in freedom, BIOS.
I respect artists and I think that they deserve to get paid and make a living with their art. I love visiting art galleries, reading and listening to music.
The problem with games is that they execute code in my machine. I don’t want any code to be executed in my machine if I can’t know exactly what it’s doing. This gives me freedom and digital sovereign. This is how things should work. This is what I believe in. So no code will be run on my computer if it isn’t free software.
And the software I use isn’t useless at all, since I can get my job done with this software. So I guess that it’s pretty useful. It isn’t a little bubble, you have thousands and thousands of pieces of free software you can use. At least you need something really specialized, I bet that you can do it using free software.
Edit: fixed some typos
