Lies of P is excellent on Steam Deck, and I will check rest of them. Having these fests with demos is really great.

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It feels nice to see actually very good product (which Steam Deck is) getting marketing push it deserves.

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Nintendo USA has notoriously big army of lawyers who will attack anything mercilessly what appears in their spotlights. It is just what they are. I wouldn't tempt faith with this. It is good that emulator exists and will grow and evolve.

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Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: melkemindNeither is committed to this the way Valve is.

they did this with netbooks and where an sucess.

Errrr, it clearly was not. They lost to Apple and Google. Microsoft just dropped their mouse and keyboard production. I don't expect them also having follow up to XBOX Series S/X. They are prepping for big fight of "AI supremacy" (whatever marketing nonsense it means).

Edit: I will throw other responses to your posts if you don't mind :)

Brazil (I understand you live there) is special case, it has very expensive tariffs for both hardware and software. That's why no one sells there. Not really Valve's fault not wanting to touch that.

I don't see reason for price drop for SD, because they are not selling it for profit. They might do some reshuffling of versions and having two models instead of three, with corrected price tags.

They are still selling on brand. Steam is much bigger than ASUS is.

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Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: MohandevirIf so, I'll wait for the Steam Deck 2, in this case.

smokescreen or not that might kill the momentum that the deck have.
microsoft is famous for doing (among other stuff) vaporwares, promisse something, never deliver, but manage to kill the interest on the competition product, kinect was an good example, i was one of the ones fooled by the milo demo and one who thought "purchasing 4 wii motes to play with 4 persons is worse than purchasing one single kinect to play with a lot of people) not to mention xbox360 had better graphics than the wii.
luckly for me i was too poor to purchase any, otherwise i would regreat.

Ohh yeah, Microsoft does that, and I can surely detect something of that here - although to be fair there have been quite a few people wanting Windows handheld they could latch on to.

However, this is Valve we talk about. They have no shareholder responsibility. They have Steam as platform. Despite everything, Microsoft does not have that kind of pull.

Also thing is Microsoft is really well known for their BS these days. Their XBOX lineup is very problematic right now and they are not exactly swimming in good will.

Overall while it is interesting development, I see it as a phase of fight rather some kind of decisive blow.

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Quoting: melkemind

Quoting: MohandevirJust speaking about the value of the Ally... From what I read from different sources, I'm totally unconvinced... Like most of the PCGamers, I already have a more powerful PC... That's why I use my Steam Deck in handheld mode 95% of the time. The other 5% is for couch coop gaming and these games are not usually resource huggers. In my case, battery autonomy is make or break. If all this raw power is wasted because you need to cap everything to gain minutes of playtime... What are you getting? A little more powerful Steam Deck with less input options, unreadable 3rd party apps, crapy os interactions and still worse battery autonomy (the Steam Deck's autonomy is already to the limit)?

If it's a handheld as long as your power cord (who first said that? 😉), It kinds of defeat the purpose and makes it feel like a big marketing smokescreen, to me.

If so, I'll wait for the Steam Deck 2, in this case.

It's totally a big marketing smokescreen. Asus and Microsoft have a ton of money, and they partnered together to release what is unquestionably a monster in terms of performance. They know it'll look good on all the bar graphs and that enthusiasts with money to burn will run out and buy it just to say they have the fastest handheld. A year from now, Asus will have moved on, and the promise of a Microsoft Windows that's handheld friendly will have taken a back seat to whatever new Xbox announcement pops up. Neither is committed to this the way Valve is.

Essentially this.

Microsoft history is littered with such one shot projects, either with aim to test waters, or try to nab competition just because they can.

I wanted to throw my two cents in though - official SteamOS compatible label still would be welcome and wouldn't cost vendors that much. It could be modified approach to Steam Machine program.

Still not sure I need Steam Deck 2, but I understand people wanting more powerful device.

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Quoting: ObsidianBlkI feel the biggest risk to the Steam Deck is the ROG Ally actually being in a store. As far as I'm aware, Steam Deck is only available from Steam (at least in the US). That means most customers would either have to already be familiar with Steam or (to a much lesser extent) be willing to "risk" the Steam eco-system sight unseen. The Steam Deck had a *HUGE* amount of positivity after it's release (definitely a key benefit to not over-hyping your hardware before release), so Steam Deck saw converts who were not normal PC gamers.

But ROG Ally will be in a store. This means it will be *A LOT* easier for (grand)parents to buy the Ally for their gamer (grand)child's birthday or as a holiday gift. This is a huge deal! Even if the ROG Ally is only half as good as the Steam Deck (and more likely it'll be, all around, on par) that could lead to more ROG Ally units in gamers hands after a year than Steam Deck units.

I feel Valve *really* needs to find a way to get at least the base-line model Steam Deck on store shelves (including Amazon, Walmart, etc). Otherwise, I fear the Steam Deck (and more directly, Steam OS) will be drowned out by more easily purchasable devices.

I will disagree. This is essentially PC handheld. That has always been a niche market. What Valve did was polished a heck out of that thing and built platform based on that.

Parents will buy Switch to kids. There is no way Microsoft or Asus can even touch power Nintendo has in that segment. Not with nonexistant UX and such battery life.

So in reality it doesn't change much, if anything at all. Valve will keep selling Steam Decks trough Steam, because it gives them control over process and they don't have to make deals they are not fan of, and it is where their core audience is. Less, more - it is not that important for them. Again, it is not their primary business line, and they have been investing in this direction for very long time now. I predict Asus will give up quite quickly, along with Microsoft who is looking towards AI hype. Essentially, even XBOX is not that interesting to them. It is not a huge money maker.

I feel this device has drawn attention because a) Windows gaming fans feel threatened because I have never understood why and b) Linux gamers feel that Valve being solely responsible for possibility to game on Linux is very fragile setup, which I totally get.

However again I don't think realistically this gonna change much. People don't buy platforms because of specs only.

Also reminder to myself not to pay too much attention to this because...it's games. Linux had, has and will have games. Also there is loads other stuff to do in life.

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Quoting: melkemind

Quoting: ObsidianBlkI feel the biggest risk to the Steam Deck is the ROG Ally actually being in a store. As far as I'm aware, Steam Deck is only available from Steam (at least in the US). That means most customers would either have to already be familiar with Steam or (to a much lesser extent) be willing to "risk" the Steam eco-system sight unseen. The Steam Deck had a *HUGE* amount of positivity after it's release (definitely a key benefit to not over-hyping your hardware before release), so Steam Deck saw converts who were not normal PC gamers.

But ROG Ally will be in a store. This means it will be *A LOT* easier for (grand)parents to buy the Ally for their gamer (grand)child's birthday or as a holiday gift. This is a huge deal! Even if the ROG Ally is only half as good as the Steam Deck (and more likely it'll be, all around, on par) that could lead to more ROG Ally units in gamers hands after a year than Steam Deck units.

I feel Valve *really* needs to find a way to get at least the base-line model Steam Deck on store shelves (including Amazon, Walmart, etc). Otherwise, I fear the Steam Deck (and more directly, Steam OS) will be drowned out by more easily purchasable devices.

Realistically, Valve just can't compete with Asus in hardware distribution. Asus is a gigantic multinational corporation that makes Valve look tiny. Valve is also primarily a software company. What would be nice is if Valve partners with some hardware vendors like Asus to get more SteamOS devices out there, similar to what they did with the Steam Machines but hopefully more successful.

This is assuming this device is big bet for Asus. It is most likely not.

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Quoting: GroganIt's going to hurt the Steam Deck for sure. Moreover, I'd expect Steam Decks to start shipping with Windows configurations soon.

Also, it's no coincidence that Microsoft is buying up all the big game publishers. It also wouldn't surprise me if Asus was getting near free OS licensing from Microsoft as a carrot.

Microsoft is buying publishers because a) they mostly made terrible bets and game quality has suffered in last few years b) they want that "premium game" window what Sony has. They do it all mostly for XBOX pass.

Why would Steam Deck ship with Windows? Valve is not making money with SD, they are not very interested in direct competition. They are building their platform, and have no shareholders to report. Microsoft in turn has, and has just dropped everything for AI, so I would not hold my breath.

So far it sounds that Microsoft offering has been pretty weak, it feels they want to do something about it - let's be honest, Linux as gaming platform is threatening them - but result has been very mediocre at best.

Microsoft definitely offered huge discount for Windows license to offset costs. Again, we can see how someone who has virtual monopoly and limitless money can muscle other companies. Any other company than Valve would just fold in and move away.

On more realistic side, Steam Deck is just better integrated platform, it is still cheaper, Steam actually has been very good with integrating all bits needed to run the game. None of that is native to ROG Ally. If Microsoft would get serious about this, then we would see UX developed and improved in long run. But Microsoft outside it's lion share markets are not that interested in doing this.

In the end I am more interested to see this device run SteamOS.

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By sounds of it actual position of company has always been "no support because it is difficult and we can't be bothered". Which is fine, but inconsistent message throws off.
I don't think it changes much in discussion of Proton/Wine versus native - this is DRM we are talking about. Which ends up saying more about litigation side of this - there is no evidence DRM being supported or even unintentionally working under Wine/Proton undermines games - but it is more security vendors saying "we can't cover you in this case, so it is your call to block setups we do not support".
Decision making around this always involve producers and these people do not care about technology per se - for them it is about mitigating risks and minimizing QA calls on theoretical level.
They are not first and probably not last company reacting like this. Sometimes gaming and open source and free software spirit of Linux is not compatible and we will have to live with that.

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