I love my Steam Deck, as any regular reader will know. It's my favourite gaming device but it could always be better right? And with competition hot (hi Nintendo), I hope Valve have more plans.
Now, I'm not dumb enough to think that the Steam Deck is in actual competition with the Nintendo Switch. That's just not a reality. The Switch has sold over 140 million units and continues to sell millions, it's in stores everywhere, people buy it for their children, for themselves and yeah — you get the idea. But still, for us PC fans the Steam Deck (and specifically us Linux lot) and other PC handhelds are simply awesome.
We all knew a Nintendo Switch 2 would happen, there just hadn't been any real proper confirmation, until now. Writing on social media, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa posted on May 7th:
This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year. It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015. We will be holding a Nintendo Direct this June regarding the Nintendo Switch software lineup for the latter half of 2024, but please be aware that there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during that presentation.
So sometime before the end of March 2025, the Nintendo Switch 2 will be revealed.
That leads me to think about the future. The Switch 2 will no doubt sell by the truck-loads once again. So let's just set that aside because it's a different market overall. Still, we have other handheld PC gaming vendors appearing often like the ROG Ally, Legion GO, MSI Claw, various devices from OneXPlayer, GPD, Ayaneo and more on the way so there's really a lot of these devices now.
To me, handheld gaming like this is the future. You may think I am heavily biased, and in many ways I am (obviously, I run this website) but I'm a tech-fan. I have a PlayStation, a Switch, an Xbox and more. But it feels increasingly weird to have a dedicated solid box permanently attached to a single TV. I actually don't like that at all now. Being able to take a much smaller device with you to play anywhere, and additionally have the ability to hook it up to a TV whenever you want just feels so much better. Nintendo definitely had the right idea, as did Valve.
We've seen in the past that Valve have said pretty clearly they had plans to keep going, and with the Steam Deck still continuing to sell constantly, it would be crazy if Valve didn't produce a Steam Deck 2. Even though you could argue the Steam Deck OLED is such a ridiculous improvement it might as well be a Steam Deck 2, I want more. A lot more.
The current shell design is just fine, I don't think Valve really need to do many changes there at all. The OLED design gave us enough improvements inside to various parts so thinking on what they should add in for the big number 2: a newer generation AMD APU to bring performance up, with a slightly higher resolution screen and I honestly think I would be ridiculously happy. It doesn't take much. Performance being the biggest one and with more new AMD chips on the way, give it another year for the generation after that (or their refresh) and we could be looking at a really fun performance boost.
So, let's say a Steam Deck 2 announcement in late 2026. Make it so, Valve.
What do you think? And what do you now want from a Steam Deck 2?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: PenglingI'm currently preparing for an emulation-heavy approach to gaming in the future until things right themselves again
That's basically been me these past couple years, a mix of emulation and generally older titles I missed out on. It's a good life; you'll probably never run out of good games, and your backlog will remain enormous for years to come. There's nothing especially important in getting the latest and the "greatest" of games if you think about it, once you wrap your head around that concept and ditch that FOMO feeling, you realise time doesn't amount all that much to art, and graphics aren't even close to being everything in a game.
Last edited by Pyrate on 9 May 2024 at 9:41 am UTC
Quoting: PyrateThat's basically been me these past couple years, a mix of emulation and generally older titles I missed out on. It's a good life; you'll probably never run out of good games, and your backlog will remain enormous for years to come
I have the same idea, although my Steam Deck is mainly an emulation machine at this point. The problem is, I don't enjoy many retro games and I feel like the games I do enjoy have only recently started to come out. Thank God for indie games, though! Even where they're not my taste, I can appreciate the vision behind them. For example, I'm not into the sniper gameplay of Children of the Sun, but I can see the appeal!
Quoting: PyrateThat's basically been me these past couple years, a mix of emulation and generally older titles I missed out on. It's a good life; you'll probably never run out of good games, and your backlog will remain enormous for years to come.Same here!
Modern gaming has offered me relatively little for an extremely long time - and it's not that my tastes are all that unusual, it's just that they're not what makes headlines and social-media buzz about DLC and subscriptions so that the publishers can milk people for more money.
My favourite series is Bomberman (it's the one and only series where I'm there for launch, because the games are dependable and complete, and I know what I'm getting), and the modern entries have proven themselves to be profitable multi-million sellers, but being brutally honest here, I accept that if Konami doesn't step it up with the marketing sometime soon*, then even that series will go away sooner or later, given what's likely to happen in the gaming space. I don't want that to happen, but I would be a fool if I didn't prepare for that possibility.
*They are seriously missing a trick here - they've got trademark filings covering merchandising and a streaming-show, both of which the series in its modern form is perfectly suited to, and yet they're not doing anything of the sort!
Quoting: PyrateThere's nothing especially important in getting the latest and the "greatest" of games if you think about it, once you wrap your head around that concept and ditch that FOMO feeling, you realise time doesn't amount all that much to art, and graphics aren't even close to being everything in a game.You're preaching to the choir, friend!
I was never fooled by that whole attempt to paint the "AAA" label as representing good quality, when it's self-evidently always represented buggy, unfinished experiences, and I've never had any fear of missing out, because an awful lot of games simply aren't aimed at me anymore (and for the sorts of things that I like, as long as good art-direction is in play, the graphical requirements really haven't changed in 20 years and rightly have no reason to).To be quite honest, even way earlier than that I was never impressed by "It's 3D! And you can RUN AROUND IN IT!", either - it takes more than that to make a good game, regardless of format. And don't even get me started on folks who say that they want to get into the games industry and then proclaim "I've written the story and come up with all of the characters already!" but then give you a blank look when you ask about their dream game's rules, mechanics, and goals, or how everything will be structured and balanced.
... Man, now I sound like I need to go and tell a bunch of damn kids to get off my lawn.
Anyway, hopefully this stuff will lead to more activity in the emulation section of the GOL forums!
Last edited by Pengling on 9 May 2024 at 12:10 pm UTC
Quoting: PenglingI was never fooled by that whole attempt to paint the "AAA" label as representing good quality, when it's self-evidently always represented buggy, unfinished experiences
That's not at all what it means. "AAA" means "likely to make money" by analogy with the bond market. Blockbuster big-budget games with a variety of well-established mechanics, ideally as a tie-in to a popular brand or a sequel to a previously-lucrative game, are the safe bets that the industry has discovered over the years, since they'll draw in the widest audience. And since some people get addicted to gambling (which is very lucrative - ask the mafia) having mechanisms to hook some whales is also a safe bet for making money. And, yes, when you're min-maxing revenue you'll want to maximise non-refunded sales for the minimum of QA outlay. The term has never meant good quality.
Quoting: CatKillerAye, I'm aware.Quoting: PenglingI was never fooled by that whole attempt to paint the "AAA" label as representing good quality, when it's self-evidently always represented buggy, unfinished experiences
That's not at all what it means. "AAA" means "likely to make money" by analogy with the bond market. Blockbuster big-budget games with a variety of well-established mechanics, ideally as a tie-in to a popular brand or a sequel to a previously-lucrative game, are the safe bets that the industry has discovered over the years, since they'll draw in the widest audience. And since some people get addicted to gambling (which is very lucrative - ask the mafia) having mechanisms to hook some whales is also a safe bet for making money. And, yes, when you're min-maxing revenue you'll want to maximise non-refunded sales for the minimum of QA outlay. The term has never meant good quality.
That's why I said "that whole attempt to paint the "AAA" label as representing good quality" - and that certainly is a thing that happened, regardless of the term's true meaning, and there remain plenty of gamers out there who believe that it pertains to quality.
preludelinux May 9
Edit:
Am a ***** Only just realised you can like articles
Last edited by pete910 on 9 May 2024 at 2:49 pm UTC
Quoting: pete910Ok, not read the whole thing or posts but how many SD's has Valve sold to date?Only Valve (and probably their suppliers, and that guy that trudges around delivering them all) know for sure; we can only guess. I guess around five million.
Pictured: Steam Deck delivery.
Last edited by CatKiller on 9 May 2024 at 3:43 pm UTC
Quoting: CatKillerOnly Valve (and probably their suppliers, and that guy that trudges around delivering them all) know for sure; we can only guess. I guess around five million.
Pictured: Steam Deck delivery.
Finally, the reason why Steam Decks aren't sold in Australia: they haven't built the zipline yet.
Quoting: sarmadWhat I think should be included is improved APU, memory, and screen, VRR, and just more anti-cheat compatibility.I feel Valve has done pretty much everything they can for anticheat compatibility. The issues that remain are the Hall Of Shame (Epic, Riot, Electronic Arts, Roblox, Bungie, etc.) that refuse to make the AC work because of whatever excuse they made up that day.
Ultimately, I hope the day of rootkit anticheat ends soon. Kernel-level nonsense has been tried before, and it broke computers and eventually finally died.
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