Interesting. I've got an 18 year old account with somewhere north of 1000 games. There's a bit of selection bias, since I've been on Linux for the past 5 years, but my verified or playable percentage is closer to 2/3. When you say Steam Deck ready, are you only referring to verified? Because if you've got a very old game with small text or poor controller support, it's unlikely you'll ever see it switch to verified, but it may still be a good experience on the Deck.
the only thing I‘m missing is a convenient dual boot setup
Microsoft could release a customized Windows installer USB image that handles repartitioning and installs a touch friendly bootloader. Just like they’re not interested in releasing a GamePass client on Flathub, they rather support competitors like the Ally that come with Windows by default.
It’s hard for me to imagine there are too many improvements left to be had in the hardware, other than the obvious eventual future improvements in power, efficiency, and energy density.
I can personally imagine a better screen, speakers, controls, ergonomics, cooling, another USB C port, slimmer and lighter, etc.
I know that most of these things are already good, but they can always be improved. We’ve already seen other handheld PCs do some things better so I imagine Valve can improve as well
Good. I was really worried about the steam deck. On paper it seemed too good to be true, and Valves track record with hardware is abysmal.
I ended up getting one and its honestly one of my best gaming purchases. Pretty tempted to grab an OLED
They still sell the index, they pivoted the link into being sofwltware you can install on anything, and the controller got killed by patents trolls. Steam machines weren’t made by valve so I can’t pin that one on them entirely.
To be fair selling (hardware) worldwide is much more than just enabling shipping to every country. Even some very established companies can’t do it. Sure you’ll have some crappy companies offering to just ship you the product and then everything else is on you but that’s not the right way to do it.
I mean...of course they have a roadmap. They had a roadmap well before the first unit. Their work and investment in Proton wasn't just for desktop Linux users.
There are a lot products from steam that got discontinued like the big predecesor, the steam machine. I think a commitment like that is something good.
True, but they got discontinued because they weren't selling, long after the market itself had given up on the product. It's not exactly like Sega where they came up with a bunch of platforms only to cancel them after a few years.
Steam Machines were more of a collaborative product, not something that Valve really put effort or resources into like Steam Deck. That said, I think a console-PC sold and sponsored primarily by Valve could work.
(After that, I think the initial Steam Machines project - which was imo intelligent - could have some value.)
If you check out The Final Hours of Half-Life: Alyx, you can see a timeline of all the stuff Valve worked on since they started with hardware. Work on Proton started basically immediately after Steam Machines launched, in response to its library problem. So in a way, this is still that same commitment.
I’m tired of companies building expensive headsets with processors built into them. It makes no sense. They’re too heavy, uncomfortable, and inefficient. Just stream the video. Whether it’s from a local machine or over the internet, I don’t care.
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