As of press time, Tomlin had browsed the Steam store while riding to work and bought Hi-Fi Rush, Dave the Diver, and Street Fighter 6, before ultimately just booting up Vampire Survivors again.
Didn't expect to be called out like that first thing in the morning holy shit.
I have a Switch but have bought maybe 3 games for it tops. Where Steam has user reviews, a super simple refund policy, and frequent deep discounts, Nintendo’s purchasing experience is clearly lacking in a customer-friendly approach.
Anyone asking for recommendations for their next gaming device, it’s Steam Deck every time.
And Nintendo insists on never discounting certain games. It’s hard to swallow paying $60 for a 5 year old game that I’m only somewhat interested in. Meanwhile steam will let you buy a game like that for $15 bucks. Half the time you buy it and never play it, but just wanted to get it on sale just in case you do find time to give it a go.
Plus most people will already a pretty stacked library day 1 when they get a steam deck. I wouldn’t have to buy another game for years or even a decade if I were to get a steam deck just based on what I still have on my backlog.
And if I buy a game for the steam deck I can still play it on my pc whenever
Don’t forget a more user friendly digital download SHARING system as well… We tried “SHARING” a digital download switch game a few times… Steam is far more forgiving. Switch wins on swapping carts however, if you stick to physical purchases for sharing.
Except you can play that same Zelda game on a Steam Deck 60fps with no frame drops, I never play my Switch anymore now that I have my Switch library on it
Ok, so ignoring the legality of emulating switch games (it’s not exactly simple to dump a switch game without owning your own switch), are you seriously going to claim that someone who wants to play Zelda and Mario legally should get a deck? I own both, I love the steam deck, it doesn’t play switch games 60fps, no fuss, it plays an emulated version of cemu breath of the wild at 60 fps and I would tell anyone who wants to play Nintendo games to get a Nintendo console. Heck, PC games which are verified on deck aren’t always great to play on the hardware, especially older games that weren’t made in mind for consoles. The second thing I bring up is how freaking large the steam deck and other pc handhelds are versus something like the switch. If you’re on a couch or hotel room, no big deal, but on the train? In a coach seat on a plane? That size does matter. I pretty much the deck the same places I’d bring a laptop, while the switch is much more a portable bring anywhere type toy. Regardless, this isn’t a battle, I own a console too (gaming pc’s in my opinion are dying out due to cost and lack of exclusives), but buy a steam deck because you want to play pc games, not because you want to play other consoles games - unless you’re someone with the inclination to want to tweak and configure emulators.
Can’t say anything bad about this. They made a good product that people want, it doesn’t have a walled garden, and it’s supporting the Linux community at the same time.
I hope they continue to keep hold of the values that gave them this success.
I really like Valve. They have done a few things that really annoyed me (usually owing to their refusal to sell stuff outside of the US)… But you can’t argue with their excellent support of the community and loyalty to their customer base.
They likely will until Gabe either sells his shares or someone else inherits them and sells them. (Though maybe whoever inherits his shares might continue the legacy, who knows). At that point Valve will probably either get acquired or go public, and become another shitty tech company, beholden to quarterly growth above all else.
Valve is a great example of a private company not becoming another cog in the machine, but that probably won’t last forever
I’m seriously considering giving up my gaming desktop in a year or two and switch to a Steam Deck instead of building a new battlestation. I’ll likely keep my desk and get a docking station for it.
The fact that it’s open and let me run games outside of Steam (I have many games bought on GOG) is a major selling point. Plus almost all of the apps I rely on are available in Flatpak format, which should work great when I’m not gaming.
The Steam Deck is nearly everything that the Steam Machine and the Steam Controller wanted to be, somehow in a single package.
Valve’s work into Proton and the Steam Deck are the best things to happen to spur Linux adoption in the gaming sphere and support from devs. It’s made enough noise that putting intrusive DRM, anticheat and things that would make it incompatible with Linux would shut devs out of a sizeable demographic that will pay for good games that run well on Steam Deck. Previously Linux and their <1% share of users were an afterthought if anything. Honestly the main reason I preordered my Steam Deck was to support this, even though I’ve used mine just on and off and not much lately.
Also, I have a Steam Controller and now a Deck, and the touch pads and gyro on the Deck are better in every meaningful way. It’s just a better experience all around.
And I felt better shelling out the money, because I knew at least some of that would wind up as a development investment in the Linux community.
They’re so user friendly we opted to get my brother’s girlfriend’s 10 year-old sister one instead of a Switch. So instead of having 2-3 $40-$70 Switch games she got access to my Steam library through Family Share (limited to ~60 age-appropriate games), and 20 Switch games emulated through Yuzu setup by EmuDeck.
We’re also teaching her how to do all of this which will give her a huge advantage when it comes to using computers in the future, and allow her to emulate any games she would like going forward.
I’m excited for what comes out in a year or two. Maybe a Steam Box 2.0 with console-like qualities but tinker-friendly? A hardware refreshed Deck? Anti-cheat compatibility with more games?
If you pay attention to the Deckard rumors, the current guess is a console+wireless vr combo. A physical device that matches Valve’s patent has been seen in “Half Life Alyx: Final Hours” on a shelf behind someone in a vr helmet.
There are SteamOS-like alternatives for other handhelds though, like ChimeraOS and Bazzite, and in many ways they even work better (due to faster updates, more software/frontend options etc).
People buy a Nintendo console to play Nintendo games. As good as the steam deck is (and I really do want one, but GabeN has decided that Switzerland does not exist), you ain’t going to be playing Splatoon on it.
Not everything has to be a contest. Let people like things that they like.
I’m so sorry, I was sleepy when typing out my question. I meant to ask how well it ran Switch games! But thank you for this, I have recently ordered mine and I’ll keep this in mind!
Mario Wonder runs pretty bad. Frequent stuttering and microfreezing. I’m pretty sure that’ll be fixed in Yuzu at some point but right now it’s “meh”.
Rayman Legends Definitive Edition runs perfectly. Absolutely flawless. Also very kind on the battery life, lasting nearly as long as Hollow Knight.
Mariokart 8 Delux runs really smooth as well. Haven’t encountered any real issues, but it’s more demanding on battery life, so expect it to last around like Breath of the Wild.
It’s rather interesting to me how nobody puts any value on the Deck trackpads in comparisons like these, and yet they are basically essential if you want the device to be able to play anything but console-optimized games / games that are built for gamepads first.
Playing something like Skyrim on one of the alternative portables can certainly be done, but being able to comfortably play games like Against the Storm, Anno, Civilization, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Homeworld, Northgard, OpenTTD, Stellaris, etc is where the Deck really shines and where all the “alternatives” fall completely flat.
Edit: Not to mention that trying to run Windows without any kind of direct mouse input is really painful, and all the “alternatives” keep doing exactly that.
Yeah, it’s weird they all ship with windows instead of SteamOS. It’s not like Valve would’ve said no to anyone trying to use it, they’ve been trying to find partners for ages.
Yeah but they're already spending so much on hardware just to edge the Deck on performance alone. They're ignoring all the other stuff that makes the Deck great which is decent performance but fantastic flexibility.
games like Against the Storm, Anno, Civilization, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Homeworld, Northgard, OpenTTD, Stellaris, etc
Note that none of those games are "Steam Deck Verified". They are at most "Playable", and often the controls is not the only issue Valve warns about (many also have small text that's hard to read). So playing them, while technically possible, is not really that great of an experience.
The issue is that not everyone wants to fiddle with controller settings, and sadly there's very few games that do take advantage of the trackpad and actually have proper first-class support for the Deck, with seamless idiot-proof integration.
And I say that despite being a Steam Controller owner (and I'd love a SC 2). The experience with "Verified" titles is much more seamless than having to check your controller mappings to understand what you need to press (or having convoluted layers / combinations for the more keyboard heavy ones... like say, ToME).
It's a bit sad that the trackpad is not getting much love from game devs. I'd have hoped that at least some games started allowing simultaneous input for gamepad and mouse, just so that they can earn a "Verified" badge. But that's still a problem, though some engines handle it better than others.
Eh I don’t think being verified means all that much because in my experience there are games that are verified that just don’t play well on a deck because the game doesn’t lend itself well to deck controls and there are others where the control factors keeping them from being verified are trivial but not addressable given valves strict definitions of ‘verified’. Example: Noita sucks on the deck and it’s verified. It’s like 10x more difficult to aim on the deck relative to a M+K setup and makes it feel clumsy as hell. Meanwhile, Against the Storm, Soulstone Survivors, Dwarf Fortress, and Civilization all have great experiences on the deck and I’ve happily played multiple hours of each chilling on my couch without a thought about the controls and none are verified.
Something similar occurred with the Steam Controller, which I loved. I’d show it to people, and they’d be like “OnLy OnE aNaLoG sTiCk, WhAt ThE hEcK?” and completely miss the point of the trackpads.
I can play strategy games with a freaking controller from the couch. That was always the appeal. You aren’t gonna be able to do that with a DualSense.
Also, the virtual trackball haptic on the Deck was developed for the Steam Controller. It’s surprisingly intuitive feeling.
And people wonder so many people never read the article. Usually clickbait with an overly long article and an ad-ridden page — I’d rather just read the headline and the expert commentary in the comments.
I habitually started skimming the first paragraphs of many articles because for SEO or AI reasons a lot of them tend to recount generic stuff about the subject matter with many key words first and only get to the meat in the bottom. And not even in the way where you need to know some stuff to understand what the actual news is about, it's often just trivia and worse, something that doesn't even has that much to do with the matter, just something that will improve SEO. E.g. refering to the currently popular game or movie.
The best thing about a Steam Deck is the fact that with Emudeck, you can make your deck a much better Switch. The only thing you’ll be missing is lack of Internet features and the GUI.
I’m also always happy to try and convince anyone and everyone not to buy from Sintendo and buy hardware that isn’t inferior because I swear Sintendo hardware has absolutely been inferior compared to the competition since at at least n64.
With an USB-C dock/hub you can plug the deck into your TV and multiple controllers. Lots of wireless controllers are also supported OOTB, including joy cons.
I do get the impression that Nintendo has consistently had worse hardware for a long time… And I appreciate it. Instead of cranking up the hardware, they make games that are fun and run on weaker hardware, often with neat stylization.
While I agree that not chasing further hardware demands is refreshing, it’s also really frustrating to buy a nearly decade old tablet to play games. Many smart phones could run switch games at this point and seeing PCs emulate the switch better than the switch can run natively is exceptionally frustrating.
Those are fair points, I actually bought the switch pretty early on after seeing praise for Odyssey and BotW. I play on PC otherwise, but I enjoyed the experience, playing docked with joycons with motion controls.
I’m not personally frustrated, while the games definitely seem overpriced, I always felt like Nintendo is just sitting in their niche doing their thing, not trying to one-up others and instead providing various gimmicks with their devices. They’re selling consoles and games for a certain price, and it feels like if you think the deal is bad or unfair, you can just pass on it.
I don’t think I really have a point here, just saying my thoughts. I have my issues with Nintendo, but I do feel like their consoles and games provide value that is hard to get elsewhere.
You talk about convincing people into emulation, but can you even do that on moderated websites? I mean, helping them get ROMs without going into “wink wink nudge nudge” communication or risking Nintendo’s lawyers invading that site.
Speaking plainly, I still buy games and hardware the normal way because I don’t want that complication. It’s not worth the effort and hassle just to risk putting viruses on my computer.
I’d like to think Lemmy is still small enough that talking about piracy of their games and stuff is flying under their radar for now, which is why I don’t care. Also, fuck Sintendo. I ain’t afraid of their corporate stasi.
Also, on Steam Deck, Emudeck takes away the vast majority of complications regarding getting multiple emulators set up by having pre-configured configurations for each emulator you install to try and make sure game compatibility and running them is as smooth as can be for most games.
The emulators are generally easy to get. The struggle is in getting the games themselves.
Even if you’re unafraid of Nintendo’s stasi, you aren’t the one assuming risk. Takedown notices tend to go to the hosting / discussing sites, not individual users. It’s not very brave to order Lemmy hosts to battle those notices in court on your behalf.
So, anytime people say this, I’m compelled to remind them: Unlike movie depictions, malware is generally incentivized to not be apparent.
You install something, they infect, and then they do their best to ensure you don’t know that for the next few months, if ever. Meanwhile, anything as subtle as key logging or checking wifi-connected devices can give them info for some other attack.
So, I can only say I hope I don’t have a virus right now - but I don’t really know. And I’m pretty sure those pirating groups have profit incentives beyond littering their sites with ads.
If you’re playing offline with friends, Emudeck has Ryujinx available. All you’d need is to either dump your cartridge if you can (which I don’t know how to do) or get a copy and make sure you got a dock to hook up your deck to the TV. I don’t know what kind of port the GameCube controllers use or if they’ll work, though. I don’t have one, so I couldn’t tell you. I know the 3rd party wired pro controller I have works fantastically, though. Only other thing you gotta worry about it having enough ports to plug in to depending on the number of players and dock you got.
As for whether the game will be as smooth on Ryujinx as it is on switch, that’s something I don’t know considering I’ve never tried it on my deck.
This reddit post leads me to believe that it is doable. I have the official Nintendo USB GameCube adapter and a Steam Deck, and I’d be happy to help you troubleshoot if needed :)
I think a problem is that people are compelled to vote on every catagory to get that sweet, sweet useless gift. Making them vote for the only name they have played and/or heard of in every catagory.
The issue starts even earlier, with the fact that you're encouraged to nominate games that you may not have even played. I think the only game released this year that I've played was Cities: Skylines 2, which I didn't feel deserved anything, so I just punched in whatever games I could find that had released this year.
And then, yeah, I totally just clicked choices for all the votes for awards too. I didn't really care, I didn't play any of the choices anyway.
At least the trolls make it obvious they’re not voting sincerely. Steam awards are a popularity contest where the categories don’t really matter, so I’m just glad less people will take the results seriously this time around.
I don't think there's really any trolling going on (at least enough that it matters), just that people vote for what they know or recognize, like you said a popularity contest. Three of the titles in the Innovative Gameplay section are pretty niche, no matter how good they are. Even Remnant 2 is dwarfed by Starfield sales, so the latter just becomes the default choice for most people.
If there was any other big name AAA title on the list, I think Starfield could have lost.
This year you could skip a category, and it would still count towards the badge / stickers / whatever, but I don't think that was made clear at a glance. It was explained in the FAQ, but who reads that, when you could just click whatever and be done?
Maybe that was just for the nominations though, I don't remember checking for the actual vote.
Yeah, speaking as an electronics engineer who’s going through a new product release at work, swapping the screen to a different model, never mind a new display technology, means dealing with slightly different MIPI and TCP ribbon cable layouts. Unless you have a separate screen adapter PCB daughter board, that means redoing the track layout on the main board.
So yeah, it sucks a bit for the consumer but it’s expected. I’d imagine Valve’s engineers tried very hard to find an OLED screen that would work as a drop in replacement. At least they’re not making promises they can’t keep, which happens a lot: Companies often lie through omission on their spec sheets.
To me it sounds like it would take having a driver board that can run a different display (and is compatible with the rest of the Deck hardware). Some systems do this by having a ribbon cable from mainboard to the driver board then on to the display
It honestly reminds me of some statistics implying that deaths due to violence may be overrepresented in media perception, while deaths due to cancers and heart problems are seemingly underrepresented in coverage by comparison.
Really, he didn’t SLAM anybody? Nobody is OUTRAGED over anything? This isn’t the LAST NAIL IN THE COFFIN for the Steam Deck? I’m not sure what to think, somebody please tell me what extreme reaction to feel about this.
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