Aren’t all consoles like that, though? They all run mainstream operating systems, and are basically locked down PCs in a fancy box. If anything, the Steam Deck is further from a PC than an XBox/PS, due to being handheld, with an embedded screen and controller, while XBox and its friends require a display and an external controller (like a PC).
I would say an OS being locked down to prevent normal forms of productivity like Office work or even web browsing at times would be a requirement to be considered a console. They are usually at best a media and game system by design due to the locks in place. So I wouldn’t put Steam Deck in the category of console for the spirit of the discussion.
Consoles are more and more like PCs, with many multimedia, productivity and utilility apps and even web browsing, so the Steam Deck IMO perfectly fits the discussion.
Out of the box it has a strict console-like UI and limited functionality for everything else other than gaming. You need to take special steps to use it as a PC (reboot in desktop mode, attach peripherals, etc)
No not really. Steam Deck I can actually use fully as a desktop replacement, since it is a full Linux desktop and can have Windows OS installed on it too. Can’t do the same with a Switch or PS5 or Xbox. Doesn’t matter what peripherals you attach. Console hardware being locked down holds it back. Even jailbroken ones.
A phone is closer to a desktop equivalent than a console. Especially Samsung with stuff like Dex.
No not really. Steam Deck I can actually use fully as a desktop replacement, since it is a full Linux desktop and you can fully run a desktop Windows OS on it. Can’t do the same with a Switch or PS5 or Xbox. Console OS and it being locked down holds it back. Even jailbroken ones.
A phone is closer to a desktop equivalent than a console. Especially Samsung with stuff like Dex.
There is no strict definition of what a console is. Just because the linux OS is not restricted and the hardware can be used as a pc with extra steps are we excluding the SD from the console topic?
I just consider Steam Deck more PC than console. Even getting games to work requires more tinkering sometimes having to switch proton versions. Console tends to just work in comparison.
I just go by what traditional consoles have been capable of. And only console that comes to mind that even came close to the full functionality of the Steam Deck productivity potential was the PS3 with Linux support before they removed it.
yeah psr could run it if you have an exploited console.
the only console to officially at some point allow for it was the PS3 though.
Alternatively, any xbox one/series is technically capable of running windows in the cloud so you could theoretically get a very expensive cloud pc running on it.
I would say the Steam Deck is excluded. I specified against PC knowing people would either mention the Steam Deck or the Henry Cavill preferring PC meme.
I feel like otherwise Steam’s old Steam machines could also fit under the definition of being a console.
I suppose the unique portable hardware does make a good argument but the way I look at it game developers, for the most part, aren’t making games for the Steam Deck. They are making them for PC and I feel like that’s a big reason why I don’t consider them consoles. I also feel like that’s why devices like the ROG Ally and Steam Deck are considered handheld gaming PCs and not handheld gaming consoles.
I’d still say that’s bypassing the restrictions of the console so it can be something else. It’s like installing DOOM on a smart fridge and calling it a gaming console.
I disagree. It’s a gaming console. It is marketed as such. It’s primary purpose is to run games. By the way, you can browse on the Xbox. And because it has a full-blown browser, you can even use Office365 if you attach a keyboard and a mouse. So lets disqualify that too? :)
Can it run movie editor, code, blender, etc? How many people could be given an Xbox that doesn’t intend to game with it and use it for productivity?
By that loose definition Windows is a console too, since Steam can be launched with big picture mode so the device has a simplistic UI at launch that can be navigated by a controller.
Yes, it can run all that. You may have to jump through a few hoops (just like in the case of the Steam Deck, just different hoops), but it can run all that.
I’ll also turn your question back to you: how many people use the Steam Deck for productivity, rather than for gaming, which is its intended purpose? And does it matter?
Like it or not, the steam deck is a gaming console, even if you can run non-game stuff on it too. Heck, even stuff like the Game Boy had (official!) accessories like the Game Boy Camera and Game Boy Printer, which were both useful outside of gaming. Does that stop the Game Boy from being a (retro) gaming console? There’s an ongoing project to provide productivity apps for the Game Boy (though, arguably, it did not ship yet, but you can extend the game boy with a cartridge in whatever way you can imagine).
Or, you can use your SNES as a MIDI Synthesizer (www.supermidipak.com)! No modding or anything necessary, it’s just a regular cartridge. Can it be used for fun? Yes. Is it a game? No. You can do a lot of stuff with an SNES cartridge that has nothing to do with gaming. There was even a cartridge that let you play online games on the SNES (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBAND) - but not only games, it also let you read and write messages to other people. You didn’t need to go into “desktop mode”, nor install a browser, nor do anything special. You plugged in the cartridge, and it worked. It was far less locked down than the XBox or even the Steam Deck! Does that disqualify the SNES (or the game boy) from being a gaming console?
By your definition I don’t see why PC wouldn’t be a console, since being to do some things doesn’t exclude it. And why exclude PC as console just because it can do a lot of things.
Wikipedia that you referred to before calls Steam deck a handheld gaming computer. If Steam Deck is a console why wouldn’t a gaming PC fall into the category of console.
This all seems arbitrary. It is all subjective anyways. You can see steam deck as different from PC. I’ll look at Steam Deck and PC as the same. So to me both are either console or PC.
You can also take it up with valve for their it’s a pc comments. Even the reveal they did with ign calling it a handheld gaming PC.
All Steam Decks (both LCD and OLED) are powerful, portable, PC gaming devices made for comfort and a console-like experience.
At best described as “console-like experience”
Steam Deck has a user-friendly interface specifically designed for its gamepad controls. Its software and operating system are tailored for Steam Deck, making it the easiest way to get into PC gaming.
This is also a nice watch of Gabe talking about the openness of the PC ecosystem and how if you want to you can install epic game store or run oculus quest on the Steam Deck. Take what you will from it but I feel like Gabe and the people who worked on the Steam Deck see it more as a PC than console.
They all run mainstream operating systems, and are basically locked down PCs in a fancy box.
I feel like Xbox is the only console running a mostly mainstream OS. The Playstation series is based off of FreeBSD and but I think that’s at a base level and a majority of what’s added is custom proprietary code. Considering gaming on FreeBSD really doesn’t surpass Quake I’d say it’s quiet different.
I’ve seen the Switch’s OS described as
Proprietary OS, derivative of Nintendo 3DS system software (partially Unix-like via certain components which are based on FreeBSD and Android)
I don’t think it’ll grow on you as you play it more. It’s one of those games where you can kind of immediately tell whether you’ll like it or not.
I also think it’s pretty repetitive (not even different interiors for each moon) but I’ve been finding a lot of fun with the goofiness of it all. Playing with friends, laughing at each other’s demises, and screwing around with the funny gadgets you can buy is where all the fun is for me.
Yeah I meant more like, each moon doesn’t have its own unique interior. So you see a lot of the same corridors (especially if you’re bad like me and can’t afford to visit the later moons).
A lot of games allow you to adjust the difficulty mid game. I’ve played several games on “ultra masochist hard” only to lower the difficulty for the bullshit final boss (looking at you Kena).
That’s actually what I tend to do, but would be nice (for laziness) to have two different settings. Or for cases where games don’t allow adjustment after starting.
Funny you bring up Kena, because that is actually probably a prime example for me too. Loved the rest of the game, but the boss fights were a bit too difficult imo!
Not having 60 fps might be an issue for a shooter or anything that is built on fast reactions, but it doesn't really sound like an issue in a city builder.
Exactly. I still don’t get 60fps on the first one, a now 8 year old game on top of the line hardware. I don’t care. People here act like performance optimizing is just turning a knob they forgot, but it’s hours of detailed work finding anything and anything that may be able to shave nanoseconds off.
If the game is playable, I’m happy. It’s not a twitch shooter. It’s a city simulation.
I don’t get much FPS on CS 1, and it’s not pleasant. It’s probably somewhere between 20-30. But the news above mean that I shouldn’t even dream about running CS 2 with this hardware, because it runs much worse than the first game, but also compared to other games.
Honestly I was expecting that CS 2 would run better than 1. I have a little hope that they will fix their shit, but now I don’t expect significant improvements over the first game’s performance.
It is indeed much easier to argue against things you made up and not what was posted.
Where as I stated no such thing, you already have the answer. But, no, I do not believe the straw man you put forth to claim I intended.
I see no justification for why CS 2 is this resource intensive.
It’s a heavy city simulation game, so high CPU usage is kind of expected (though I think it could be better), but what about the RAM and GPU requirements and actual usage?
And I said nothing about justification. But, the RAM is easy to figure out as that is where the variables are stored and manipulated. A "heavy city simulation game" is going to have a great many variables and lots of formulae.
The GPU usage is likely to get the picture to be very pretty. But you could argue against it. The RAM, no, it is required by the genre.
You said that it is a resource intensive game, in a tone that implied to me that it’s fine to you.
But, the RAM is easy to figure out as that is where the variables are stored and manipulated. A “heavy city simulation game” is going to have a great many variables and lots of formulae.
But not this much. CS 1, which is also a “heavy city simulation game”, was totally fine with less, and while I agree that because of the new features it is expected that CS 2 uses more RAM, it is not expected to use this much more.
Also, you are talking as if every vehicle, pedestrian, building object each should cost 1 KB of RAM or something like that. Normally that’s not the case.
The GPU usage is likely to get the picture to be very pretty.
Unconditionally loading 8k textures for all the existing models won’t make the game “very pretty”.
As in every sensible game, texture resolution and such should be configurable, and the game should not load textures not in use. At least one of these is very clearly not happening if the game requires multiple gigabytes of VRAM even on a new, basically empty save.
My fps is also around that in CS 1 and honestly it hasn’t bothered me that much unless I look at the fps counter. While it would be nice to have 60 FPS, I don’t think much about it while actually playing.
Yeah I play a lot of rimworkd and dwarffortress and to be honest the only difference between playing it on my of the line pc and my 10yr old laptop is that it takes way longer to do stuff at max speed, which isn’t really how I play games like this. This review kinda sold me on this game.
Sounds like it’s not the game for you. Overcoming environmental challenges is kind of the name of the game, and if the baseline “cold bad but fire hot” thing isn’t something you enjoy then I’m not sure you would enjoy trying to navigate any of the main story areas in the game.
Right? This is the first time ive heard a complaint about not being able to solve the weather problem. How much of a problem would the rest of the game be if you cant solve this.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that people have become less willing to contribute to wikis, now that the likes of Fandom/Wikia and Fextralife are the dominant wiki hosts. Who wants to give away their free labour and time to profit corporations, and have their work mired in cesspools of obnoxious advertising, awkward javascript interfaces, and web tracking?
I think what we need are independent wiki hosts. For example, have a look at bg3.wiki
Simple fact is that hosting costs $$$. And you don’t get something free unless there’s ads involved or you’re so small you can cover the cost yourself.
Perhaps there’s an opportunity here for a nonprofit organization, accepting donations like wikimedia does, to offer hosting to gaming communities?
Edit:
This would not only benefit gamers directly, but also help with cultural preservation, which is increasingly problematic as games disappear from store fronts.
Also, a wiki run by a funded organization is less likely to vanish than one operated by a single person, whose circumstances might change.
I expect you mean terraria.wiki.gg, rather than terraria.fandom.com (which was the first result in my web search). I don’t love the fact that it has a google tracker, but otherwise, it looks nice.
Looks like Pokémon also has an independent (but not tracker-free) wiki: bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net
Pokemon even has another wiki that’s almost entirely dedicated to game data, Serebii, and yes, the design is dated, and yes, it is also the most accurate and concise source of knowledge for the series.
To help your point. Halopedia is still extremely active and will have info from new books within a week. The site has their own software and it’s community run, so people still feel engaged.
Sidenote, I have a feeling that’s straight up illegal under contract law. IANAL though.
Edit: Just so ppl have something specific: you bought access to the service. It’s probably gonna be limited in the User Agreement as “if this service has to be shut down, you agree to lose your access and you don’t sue to get your money back”. But this is a backend migration and I’m fairly sure this is not something they had in their original contracts. That’s why sniff a broken contract and when they don’t refund your money, I sniff broken laws.
I had an idea of a game where you played as a photojournalist documenting the brutality of a near-future totalitarian regime. There would be elements of stealth because you’d have to evade the police to take your photos and you have pretty much no combat ability. You’d use your earnings from selling the photos to gradually upgrade your equipment, maybe starting off with a shitty cell phone camera and working your way up to professional quality full frame SLRs. I’d want it to simulate the workings of a real camera… f-stop, shutter speed, ISO, etc., so you’re challenged with getting good, usable photos in difficult conditions.
You know, that sounds sick actually. Especially if it was more sandboxy than linear, and also had some kind of survival system (pay for food/rent) to add tension and encourage risk taking when snooping around.
This is more or less what I wish Beyond Good And Evil had been. The combat in that game wasn’t good but I liked the idea of having to photograph evidence and getting photos of wildlife on the side to earn some money. It wasn’t nearly as fleshed out as your idea though.
Steam has it tagged as a PvE game. I took a chance on it because of the PvE tag. I thought it would be like WOW where you would be able to opt not to PvP. I should have read the reviews before I bought it. Too late for a refund now.
You can tag it on the store page. If enough people do that, the tag shows on the page for everybody. If that happens with enough games, valve sometimes officially adopts the tag.
It’s clear you didn’t actually read the page, or check reviews, or check any of the communities, or do any basic research before buying the game. Your “complaints” can be summed up as “uninformed consumer”. What do you think an extraction shooter even is?
If this were a review on Steam I’d mark is as unhelpful and give it the 🤡 award.
Strongly disagree. The possibility that someone might at any time choose betrayal adds a lot to otherwise PvE lobbies. It is what creates the positive feelings when they freely choose cooperation. If it is just built into the game that they have to cooperate, it is emotionally meaningless. Having the emotional experience of trust and support from strangers is very powerful, and I think it’s a defining element of AR.
Nah, it’s better than that but this statement still holds true for me - after several weeks I’ve seen everything (i.e. the patterns behind everything), and that’s when it got repetitive. All in all it’s a very nice game.
That’s been my problem with it as well. I still do like dusting it off every now and again. It has the best land to space travel transition of any game I’ve ever played.
I have done everything but finding goddamn freighter modules to improve my stolen pirate ship. I cannot find the bastard things anywhere and there’s no mod to give them to me 😡
IIRC you can get them through the derelict freighter missions (which take forever and are kind of boring after the first one), or by blasting NPC freighters if you don’t care about reputation.
For the latter I’ve heard (but wasn’t willing to try myself to confirm) that you can just shoot the external cargo modules off of friendly freighters without them becoming mad and summoning sentinels.
This was me with Horizon Zero Dawn. I finished my first playthrough without ever fast traveling. Then after the credits rolled I spammed it.
No ragrets. Was fun.
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