Probably, but I know that at least in the past, their philosophy was to uphold Windows as the one gold standard at all costs, and I doubt that has changed.
It might be one of those non-authentic quotes, but I heard that Steve Ballmer supposedly once said, that they’d rather have people pirate Windows instead of using another OS. No matter if that is an authentic statement - there is a real synergetic effect: If everyone is used to how Windows works at home (even if pirated there), then any potential employer will want to have Windows licenses for their IT and office stuff, which is where the main money lies. That’s one of the reasons Microsoft has been so furiously anti-competition, because their main advantage is being the de-facto standard, and being the only proper gaming system became a part of that strategy, with attempts to further lock-in any gamers into their ecosystem if at all possible (some of which thankfully failed).
So I think making an app for Game Pass for Linux won’t be in their interest any time soon, unfortunately.
It might be, but the point of the Microsoft handheld is to grant access to Game Pass and games with lousy anti-cheat on a UI that doesn’t suck like desktop Windows does.
The imagine if their cloud runs the game using proton. The provider with the lowest overhead would have lower costs and thus a cheaper service. If Microsoft doesn’t do it, someone else could.
I think the issue here is DirectX, so unless there’s meaningful changes to how DX works internally, DXVK at this point can always be a step ahead with all the changes it can make without tech debt to worry about. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why Series X despite being stronger than PS5 on paper, struggles to match performance in non zero count of games.
In less demanding titles like Dead Cells the difference is absolutely insane jumping from 2 hours 47 minutes on Windows to 7 hours 8 minutes on SteamOS.
Considering how indie friendly the deck is, this is a huge loss for MS. All other things equal that difference would easily make me drop windows.
How big is the battery on the legion go? The deck’s battery drains so quickly I wouldn’t be surprised if it couldn’t last 7 hours even in the home screen.
So 7 hours on that battery would be approximately 5 hours on the deck.
I’ll download dead cells here to see how long the deck can run it in one charge, but I doubt it’ll reach anywhere close to five hours with the default settings.
I wonder if this same concept would apply to desktops. If you could install both SteamOS and keep windows for when you wanted to run something other than a game. This could be huge.
Dual booting has existed for a long time. Microsoft keeps making it more annoying to do. For my next PC, I’m not even keeping a dual boot around as a safety net; I’m just doing Linux.
I haven’t tracked the performance in Proton for a long time, because I already used that information to make my purchasing decisions, but single digit percentage improvements in performance when running games via Proton has also been the case on desktops for a long time. If there’s any further improvement to be seen from SteamOS’s game mode rather than regular desktop, you should see it in Bazzite as well.
Playtron can keep their GameOS, anything associated with Cryptocurrency is a hard pass. I remember a lot of cryptobros were financing the fuck out of Playtron. Naturally, this is a product I consider dead to me. I will buy a Steam Deck from Valve, as they aren’t actively trying to scam their potential user base with Crypto nonsense.
I’m probably going to get the middle tier of Steam Deck as it does provide a decent value; as I play a lot of farming sims and cozy games, the Steam Deck fills this purpose well for me. Better than my Switch ever could. I was also considering the Lenovo Legion Go S, but waiting for hardware and software reviews for that device is a smart move. As it could be an amazing device, or it could be fucking shit on launch.
OLED made some minor improvements, but $150 more for the next step up is a huge ask. You act as if there are plenty of easily available cheaper handheld PCs out there. Not that I’ve found. Prices for old technology are going up, not down.
3.5 years old isn’t that old lol. My desktop CPU was almost 10 years old before I noticed any bottleneck in AAA games.
And speaking of AAA games from the last few years, all like, 2 of them, probably won’t be missed by most people.
The deck is a solid computer and it’s a good product that’s built well and is pleasant to handle and use and playing desktop games on that OLED with HDR support is a joy and on top of a decently polished UX (as polished as you can get in PC gaming really), the tinker potential is endless, you can do with it as you please because it’s yours and you own it - and it certainly feels like it. No adware, no enshittification etc.
I think there is a “graphical plateau” to gaming; a universal constant a bit like Moore’s Law. And while it’s not certain, it’s very possible the Steam Deck has mostly moved beyond it.
I definitely don’t think there’s an infinite bound to the detail games can add, especially within the resolution displayed on the Deck. Plus, many formats of games have not been well-served by that sort of extra detail. When a fringe hit like Liar’s Bar, REPO, or Lethal Company comes along, it never really needs the extra horsepower of top consoles. There’s a few rare PS5 exclusives that may struggle on it, but given Cyberpunk 2077 runs on it, I don’t even think we need be too worried.
I understand what you are trying to say, I feel like it’s not that old of a device in comparison to a Switch or Switch OLED. It’s still going to be a decent buy at the price point; I’m not overly worried about spending that much on a Steam Deck OLED. It wouldn’t take but a month of casual saving to afford a Steam Deck and given a lot of the games I buy are Deck Verified…It’s not a bad deal. This thing will likely be good enough for a few more years of play, particularly with indie games. Given that there is plenty of time for further consideration, I am leaning towards waiting for reviews of the Legion device I mentioned…On the off chance it is the better buy.
Just an anecdote, but I have a much smoother experience playing with the original steam deck than I did on my desktop. I mean the frames aren’t as high, the screen is small and resolution is low, but for whatever backwards reason, it just feels so smooth to look at and play with. I guess you see and feel the graphical artifacts better on a large screen with large resolution, and everything feels so uncanny somehow with high refresh rates and 100+ fps. Can’t really explain it though. Weird stuff.
Just finished the last of us 1 remake and 2 remaster with the deck. It just looks so gorgeous, I ran both with mixed medium-high settings, and it was an amazing experience. Before those I played cyberpunk with some crazy 500+ mods, and it was just excellent to play. Same with Witcher 3, though that’s getting old by now, so less surprising it runs so well.
In fact, I’m yet to play any lightweight games on this thing. Or even indie ones. These graphically intensive games have been such a joy to play, I haven’t even had the time or motivation to attempt anything else. I’m finally getting through my dusty, cobwebbed library, especially these more expensive games, and that’s been almost miraculous! A desktop requires sitting down, dedicated time and focus, but I can bring this thing with me pretty much anywhere and play a checkpoint or two or whatever while on a bus, a train, waiting for an appointment… anything. And it fucking runs all these games I’ve dreaded to play on the gaming rig because it just never felt good because I couldn’t hit ultra settings on everything, and the artifacts just were too noticeable and things weren’t as immersive as I’d have liked.
But this small little thing? So enjoyable, it’s so weird.
This is something I want to yell so loud every time I see anyone underestimating this thing talking about playing less demanding, smaller or older, indie, or otherwise more basic games. Thanks to some black magic I can’t make any sense of, the exact opposite is what you’ll want to do I bet!
They were sued in 2019 by a Native American tribe over that, I haven’t heard much about the issue since. It’s likely they are merely being neutral in the situation now, as no one is throwing up a fuss. Still, it’s not cool behavior on the part of Valve.
This will fail. You don’t start with step 1 being enshitification. That’s like step 100 after something is already really good. Like if valve sold popup ads inside steam or some shit.
Coming straight out of the gate with this bullshit is a dumb idea and it will fail. Not to mention, having to make your own OS is no small feat, even if you’re forking a Linux OS.
Anyone who is even remotely involved in developing commercial software knows this.
Step 1 is growing a customer base,
Step 2 is making that customer base loyal,
Step 3 is and in ads, free tiers with more ads, bonus currency and other BS
Everyone knows that if you’re ever going to charge money for your product you charge money for your product day one. You don’t have a free alpha release or something and then expect everyone to pay later on, that sort of misdirect gets up people’s noses. Star citizen is an absolute master class in how to do this well, not morally of course, but definitely done well.
I suspect they don’t even believe in this themselves, this is just a last ditch attempt at squeezing a little more cash out of dumb investors before declaring bankruptcy eventually. Seeing how one of their investors was Square Enix, that might even work.
Me before the comma: Good luck to them, more options can’t be a bad thing.
Me after the comma: I intend to wipe the existence of your useless company from my memory entirely, so I’m just going to point and laugh at your failure in advance and immediately move on with my life.
Through this lens it became clear: stablecoins will become a financial backbone for the $500B global gaming economy.
The people interested in alternatives to SteamOS for Linux gaming probably aren’t going to be the sort of people who are interested in cryptocurrency or more micro transactions. I don’t think they have much of a clue what their target audience likes.
Even giving them the benefit of the doubt, is there any game dev or gamer currently dissatisfied with existing payment systems? Are people in certain countries struggling with the mechanics of paymernt? Like, there are tons of ways to shoehorn in random charges or in-game ownership systems, and I don’t see what crypto brings other than moving the purse-holder.
Again, devil’s avocate: one could argue current platform fees (30%) are very high, but this is more of a monopolization issue than a fundamental payment system one,
At first I was like “Why would anyone want to change OoT’s art and mess with perfection?”, but I do have to admit that I have really been craving a modern Zelda game in the vein of the N64 releases, which is a formula they haven’t touched since Skyward Sword in 2011. And Oblivion just recently showed me that sometimes a new coat of paint really is all you need.
Wind Waker at least is a game that (visually) aged very gracefully and I think can still stand against newer games even now, but I’ve played it to death and just wish we had something new.
Also not to discredit BotW/TotK or anything, I think they are still great games and I also really enjoyed them, but they’re just built different. Zelda is now a franchise of 3 distinct styles, but only two of them (2D and open world) are still getting new releases.
This is the video I didn’t know I was looking for in life.
I’ve been very into Zelda rando stuff lately, but the mod support shown here just seems above and beyond what I’ve seen so far from my limited experience with Ship/2Ship.
gamingonlinux.com
Aktywne