Latest Comments by CatKiller
Steam Deck hits South Korea retail via Electromart on June 1st
31 May 2023 at 11:13 pm UTC Likes: 2
The US has loads of money, and it's where Valve are based, so they've got to sell it there. Canada is just a few miles away from Valve HQ, and they can reuse the US distribution, so that's easy enough. The EU is a 450 million person single market, so it would be silly not to sell it there. The UK has 70 million people, is a hugely influential gaming market, had harmonised all its laws with the EU so that part's easy, and you can reuse your EU distribution if you remember to put a different plug in the box, so you might as well. And... that's it: that's everywhere that Valve can be bothered to sell it. The Asian countries it's being sold in are because a logistics partner is doing all the actual work of selling there. Australia (and Switzerland, and Norway) are too tiny to be worth taking it all on just for them, so you're waiting on having a logistics partner. Good luck!
31 May 2023 at 11:13 pm UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: RC2225It's neither of those things; it's just a tiny market and Valve can't be arsed.Quoting: TheRiddickAt this point it's obvious Valve is deliberately avoiding the AU/NZ market.Or it's for tax reason. As an example, it's not available in Switzerland.
I bought one in the store in Osaka recently, and got of course a defect one. Unfortunately, my holiday was too short to get a replacement and since it was tax-free, I could not get a refund. :neutral:
The US has loads of money, and it's where Valve are based, so they've got to sell it there. Canada is just a few miles away from Valve HQ, and they can reuse the US distribution, so that's easy enough. The EU is a 450 million person single market, so it would be silly not to sell it there. The UK has 70 million people, is a hugely influential gaming market, had harmonised all its laws with the EU so that part's easy, and you can reuse your EU distribution if you remember to put a different plug in the box, so you might as well. And... that's it: that's everywhere that Valve can be bothered to sell it. The Asian countries it's being sold in are because a logistics partner is doing all the actual work of selling there. Australia (and Switzerland, and Norway) are too tiny to be worth taking it all on just for them, so you're waiting on having a logistics partner. Good luck!
Nintendo blocked Dolphin emulator release on Steam
27 May 2023 at 1:42 pm UTC Likes: 7
27 May 2023 at 1:42 pm UTC Likes: 7
Quoting: SeegrasBasically, Dolphin shared a 16byte secret key, which Nintendo dislikes. Nothing that DeCSS hasn't done also.Emulation isn't copyright infringement in the US. Including specific names, numbers, or incantations in your software that are the same as those in other software to allow interoperability isn't copyright infringement in the US. The particular quirk of the DMCA is that it prohibits "circumventing a technical measure" to bypass DRM even if the use isn't copyright infringement (and no matter how trivial the "technical measure" is); the Library of Congress has to regularly issue short-term (two or three years, IIRC) exemptions for particular applications.
In the end, it's a quarrel over some DMCA provisions, and you can argue either way whether this is legal or not in the US. In most of the world there is no DMCA, and what they're doing is legal anyway.
HDR and Colour Management for AMD / Steam Deck and KDE Plasma coming along
24 May 2023 at 1:23 pm UTC Likes: 7
24 May 2023 at 1:23 pm UTC Likes: 7
Hopefully Nvidia & Intel won't drag their feet so we can have a vendor-neutral solution.
Immersion Corporation sues Valve over Steam Deck and Valve Index haptics tech
19 May 2023 at 7:47 pm UTC Likes: 1
19 May 2023 at 7:47 pm UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: F.Ultraedit: ok so reading up on it a bit more I think maybe possibly that just asking for a injunction is temporary while they would have asked for a "permanent injunction" if it was to ban them outright from selling the product again.Yep. And they probably won't get it; if Valve ultimately prevail time off market would be unfixable, but if Immersion ultimately prevail then "infringement" can be fixed by more money. But they've gotta ask, to keep the pressure on.
FX Technology tease their upgraded screen for Steam Deck
19 May 2023 at 1:45 pm UTC Likes: 3
(As a point of comparison, my desktop monitor has very good colour reproduction (Dell UP3017), but I do almost all my gaming on the Deck)
19 May 2023 at 1:45 pm UTC Likes: 3
Quoting: GuestWell, I suppose that an IPS screen still means good color reproducion in the range of the reproducible while still very low gamut.You should endeavour to see one in person, playing games. It's fine, but not great; but you definitely wouldn't want to sacrifice the other aspects of the display I mentioned for a better gamut. Constrained technology like this is all about compromises.
This ensures good reproduction at low brightness levels, but still, at low brightness having more gamut helps, because saturation is clamped "by design".
Btw, it is not just skin tones. At least for me, the inability to show saturated and vivid colors is a serious issue.
I repeat, my personal and biased opinion, don't shoot me.
(As a point of comparison, my desktop monitor has very good colour reproduction (Dell UP3017), but I do almost all my gaming on the Deck)
FX Technology tease their upgraded screen for Steam Deck
19 May 2023 at 11:44 am UTC Likes: 11
19 May 2023 at 11:44 am UTC Likes: 11
Quoting: GuestIt seems the deck has an ips screen, not tn, right?The Deck has an IPS screen, yes. Which means that off-axis viewing is fine, which wouldn't be the case with a TN screen. But the colour gamut isn't great as far as IPS screens go - less than 100% sRGB. It seems to be one of the "painful" choices Valve made to hit the price point. In actual use, though, it's not that much of an issue: you aren't using it to see skin tones - games make up their own custom colours. If you hold it side-by-side with a good IPS screen you'll see the reds being slightly orange, but solo you'll only notice the high DPI, fast response, and ability to show a good image even at very low brightness, which are admirable traits for a battery-powered gaming appliance. There is space for a Deck with a better screen but the process of replacing it [External Link] is not a lot of fun. And replacing the screen with one that can't run at an arbitrary refresh rate between 40 & 60 Hz (which the Deck's display can) would be a functional downgrade.
Immersion Corporation sues Valve over Steam Deck and Valve Index haptics tech
19 May 2023 at 12:43 am UTC Likes: 4
19 May 2023 at 12:43 am UTC Likes: 4
Quoting: F.UltraImmersion also want the court to forbid Valve from selling more Steam Decks and Index:es.They want Valve to be prohibited unless they pay the tithe. Some fee on the units they've sold to date is much less attractive than the fee on the (15? maybe?) millions of future units, plus the fees on Deck 2/Index 2/Controller 2 in the future. They want to just kick back and collect rent; the threat of an injunction is the stick to make everyone get a licence.
FX Technology tease their upgraded screen for Steam Deck
18 May 2023 at 5:47 pm UTC Likes: 7
18 May 2023 at 5:47 pm UTC Likes: 7
Can it do the timing tricks that the Deck's screen can do to run at 40 Hz?
Mundfish remove graphics options from Atomic Heart on Steam Deck (updated)
18 May 2023 at 1:56 pm UTC Likes: 9
18 May 2023 at 1:56 pm UTC Likes: 9
Removing the graphics settings in Atomic Heart on Steam Deck was a hard decision for us to makeYou chose... poorly.
Valve tries to improve Big Picture Mode on Linux for NVIDIA GPUs
18 May 2023 at 1:23 pm UTC Likes: 5
18 May 2023 at 1:23 pm UTC Likes: 5
Quoting: silmethno idea how the log-out or Steam caused this… or if something else happened simultaneously and broke the BT device settings…).On the Steam Deck Big Picture Mode has to manage Bluetooth (and power settings, fan curve, refresh rate, and all the rest). Valve didn't isolate Steam Deck things from Big Picture things before they rolled out the new Big Picture to people where all of those things are managed by something else.
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