Quoting: CyborgZetaI made my reservation late in the afternoon the day Valve started taking reservations, and my shipping timeframe is "Q2 2022". I don't expect to see mine until Spring.

Which is fine. I'm in no particular rush. Gives me time to get a few good size microSD cards.

What! I was on within five minutes of reservations opening, then spent over an hour fighting overloaded servers until I was finally able to get mine in, and my expected date is "After Q2 2022". There's just no justice in this world, I tell yah... :tongue:

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Sounds like a pretty cool idea. But yeah, even if we take "Steam Deck shipping in February" to mean February 28, that's not a lot of time for developers to integrate this new tech into games, no matter how easy Valve's made it. And of course games vary wildly in terms of save systems and how well they might work with this, so I predict we won't see all that many games with this implemented by the time regular consumers start getting Decks in their hands (maybe some Valve games, or if they've been secretly working with some developers to have it implemented at launch). Hopefully that number will increase over time, though, as devs get familiar with the new APIs and start adding it.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI still don't really get what the audience for the Steam Deck is. I kind of want to buy one, but then I remember I have no use for it. I can play games in bed with my laptop. I have 4 GNU/Linux computers already. If I'm outside, I don't want to play games, otherwise I wouldn't have gone outside.

I guess I don't really understand the portable gaming idea to begin with. I did play Pokemon a lot as a kid, but those days are long gone. I played a lot of mobile games when I was younger, too, but that was mostly the novelty of it rather than them being any good. I don't think that phase lasted very long.

I guess it doesn't help that a lot of the games I play involve using Textractor, copying text to the clipboard, looking it up in a J-J dictionary, and creating an Anki card. Not really the type of gaming suited for a small, portable device without a keyboard.

I just have no idea what to think, because I am clearly not the target audience for this.

A few years ago I'd probably feel similarly; I already had a buff gaming rig and a body that could handle sitting in front of it all day, why would I need anything else? As I get older the idea of playing less technically demanding games (in my case, a significant fraction of my library) while lounging on the couch or in bed sounds better and better, and I've personally never found laptops comfortable to play on in those scenarios even back when I used to have one. It'll also be nice for my annual multi-week trip to visit family in another state, both as a way to access my library and for general web-browsing. But if you don't feel an inclination for it, that's fine. Life situations are different (and change over time, as I discovered).

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Quoting: GuestI'm beginning to think that in their rush to appeal to end users, Valve might have forgotten to put as much effort into appealing to developers.

Because they don't really have to, I don't think. This isn't some new console where they need developers to make games or no one will buy it; when the Steam Deck finally gets in people's hands it's going to have more games working on it Day 1 than any console launch in history (probably by an order of magnitude or two). Thousands of games will "just work" (either by being native or working fine in Proton). It'd be nice to get more developers on board to expand the selection that works, but Valve probably doesn't feel the need to prioritize it as much. (Whether that's the right attitude or not remains to be seen, as we'll have to see how much lack of <Popular Game X> is actually a factor in people buying the Deck or not.)

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyAll in all, I think I'll probably be sticking to previous versions--I REALLY hate the idea of not being able to do anything about Sprawl.

Just to point out, the first bit you quoted says there are ways to reduce Sprawl (just not totally mitigate its penalties). :smile:

Quoting: anewsonI'm split between thinking this is strange because it feels like a balance patch for a single player game, and thinking it's strange to dramatically reshuffle the mechanics five years after release.

Single player? This feels to me primarily like a multiplayer anti-snowballing balance patch—getting bigger is now no longer the single, degenerate, strategy for competition. (Well, in theory anyway, we'll see how it goes in practice.)

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What perfect timing, I finally got my gaming desktop delivered yesterday after four months in transit so I can finally play Stellaris again! Think I'll give this beta a try. :grin:

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Quoting: seanbutnotheardFinally, a civilized fighting game! (Seriously it looks pretty fun)

For some reason this made me think of:

"I have something here for you. Your father's Steam Deck. This is the device of a true gamer. Not as locked-down or as proprietary as a console. An elegant device for a more civilized time." :grin:

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Obviously it doesn't ultimately matter what games Valve chooses to mark verified first, but it's an interesting mix, not entirely consisting of popular AAA games. Really happy to see Noita on there, and Webbed is an interesting choice seeing as it's a relatively small game that only released last year. (It's a fantastic game, don't get me wrong, just interesting to see it in this first batch.)

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I'm curious, anyone know what those programs shown on the screens are? Some sort of diagnostics or software update or something?

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The question remains though: exactly how many will actually stick with their reservation?

From a purely selfish perspective, every person that punts means I and everyone else who actually wants one gets theirs faster! :whistle:

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