I have a ROG Ally and a Steam Deck. The Steam Deck experience is miles ahead. Windows is such a limitation on these handheld devices (and dare I say PC gaming in general). SteamOS is the real MVP behind the Steam Deck, it makes everything feel seamless.
The Ally feels like a crappy ASUS launcher stapled on top of an unoptimized Windows desktop, since that’s exactly what it is.
Also, the ASUS ROG Ally controls are nowhere near as nice as the Deck’s. The Deck sticks feel better. The touchpads allow for mouse control.
I haven’t used other handhelds, but what you say is what I’ve seen from other discussions and reviews. Yes, there are more powerful systems with better screens, but the SD’s OS is miles ahead (but not without a lot of quirks as well). The touchpads are incredible - I couldn’t imagine trying to use a handheld PC without those touchpads. Also, the custom control configuration abilities built in to steam OS are incredibly versatile and detailed.
Hopefully Microsoft releases a handheld mode instead of just experimenting with it. Besides the interface, they also really need to optimize for performance. Even though, with the steam deck, proton is converting draw calls it still outperforms the same deck running windows with native driver support. This really shows how the mountains of extra crap running on windows hurts gaming performance on these low power devices.
Hopefully Microsoft fades into irrelevance. I’m glad the Steam Deck is doing something about Microsoft’s control over the PC gaming market. I’m also glad Microsoft is losing in the handheld gaming PC experience. Let Windows die already, it’s long overdue (especially given the continued and intensifying enshittification of the OS every release cycle).
Hopefully this “you will own nothing and be happy” BS also fades into irrelevance. I hate how everything has to be a subscription these days. No. Just NO.
I refuse to move to subscription based platforms. It’s anti-consumer lock-in. Unfortunately, right now, gamepass is cheap because they’re still in the growth phase and need a compelling product to get people to switch from buying their games to subscribing. However, believe me, in time the enshittification will come. What subscription-based platform hasn’t once it captured the market?
I mean, they’ll have to make some big changes to Gamepass before it becomes worse value than buying all those games outright. Most subs are still pretty good value now for the level of content, available, they’re just not as cheap as they were when they were driving users.
That’s exactly the point though. Until they corner the market and start “deprecating” actual game sales entirely, they have to keep gamepass appealing. If they get to the point where enough people have adopted gamepass that they can stop selling games outright, then they’re free to raise the prices all they want. What are you going to do about it, buy the games instead? Not an option anymore. Buy the games, keep your rights as a consumer.
Fuck no, moving to a console is the opposite of consumer freedom lol. Steam seems to be the levelest of heads in the gaming space, making an open platform OS and “console” and not tying people into nasty subscriptions to be able to play their games. Plus, regular sales with usually quite good discounts. While they still offer DRM and allow it on their store, they have plenty of DRM-free offerings and don’t discourage you from running third party games/launchers on their machine.
Although I would love to see it, as long as DirectX is the de facto graphics API, I don’t see Microsoft fading into irrelevance when it comes to the PC gaming market.
Both are great options! Just to counterbalance arguments against:
I can’t buy a Steam Deck in Australia, but I can buy the ROG Ally.
Windows can be clunky, but that less-than-stellar experience is limited to navigating and launching games. The stock launcher works fine, it’s just bare-bones. You can set Steam to launch into big picture on boot at which point it’s the same experience as the Steam Deck anyway.
All games install and run, there’s absolutely no dicking around required compared to some experiences on Steam Deck.
Touch controls are nice. 120hz VRR 1080p screen is a better draw imo as it’s universally applicable to all games. That screen makes sub-60fps experiences much nicer and has better colours and contrast and uniformity (not to mention resolution).
ROG Ally cooling system is really great, and really quiet. I don’t feel like there’s a desktop machine wedged between my hands.
The ROG Ally performance isn’t what ASUS sold, but it’s still a good bit faster than Steam Deck, and most games I’ve tried I can hit a visual and performance fidelity roughly on par with an Xbox Series S. Which ain’t bad at all.
Both are convenent and versitile systems, I think probably Steam Deck is more convenient whereas ROG Ally is more versatile.
I really bought the ROG Ally to experiment with Linux on it. I think it is getting there. I have Arch Linux with chimera kernel on mine as well as gamescope-session which allows it to function very similarly to the Steam Deck, but at the moment it seems TDP control isn’t working so games don’t run as well as they should. I also can’t get the ROG button to work as a Steam button even though that should be working according to ChimeraOS. I wanted Arch because it allows for dual booting vs. Chimera which does not, as well as for development purposes. I think the hardware of the Ally is solid, though I still hold that the Deck’s controls are much better. Once the Ally is better supported on Linux I think it would be a better option, as I refuse to use Windows anymore except for testing/reverse engineering purposes.
Handheld Companion are doing good work implementing better controller options (including gyro) and power management (including autoTDP) and I believe will have napping to the OEM keys sorted out eventually. If that sort of stuff could go into a distro I could see Arch or ChimeraOS being really interesting options. Hopefully the ROG Ally sells well and there’s a community to support it in this way, it could be great!
The Deck’s power management features are a solid selling point. There’s no reason they couldn’t be implemented elsewhere, and it would be a boon for other portable devices for sure.
I haven’t used the Ally, but the Deck’s touchpads are just intuitive and functional, it seems so obvious in hindsight that it’s actually shocking that nobody had thought to put them on a portable until now. They work great for replacing a mouse in mouse-focused games, and for navigating desktop mode. Much more effective than navigating with a joystick.
I would have loved to see something like that on the Ally. It’s very situational, but I can imagine in those situations it feels great (I own a Steam Controller, so I’ve used something very similar).
I think if you had a chance to see the Ally screen in person you might have a similar feeling. It changes the experience a lot.
For example, Diablo 4 with upscaling and the right settings is a 1080p experience, so text is crisp and UI elements are clear. At those settings in 15w I get mostly 60fps in dungeons, when things get hectic and the frames drop to 45 or 50 the VRR makes it hard to notice. Fan noise and heat aren’t really notable either, I just wish there was a little more battery to round that all out.
I feel like the Deck’s 800p screen is plenty for the size, and it helps it perform better. But maybe that’s just my boomer eyes that can’t tell the difference. Though a bigger screen would have been amazing.
1080p is a more flexible choice though. You can always just set it to 720p for better performance. Or upscale to 1080p or drop the internal render resolution so the UI remains 1080 while the game itself renders 720. You gain many options and lose none (other than just battery).
All of those are visually worse than rendering at native resolution though.
I think battery life is an important factor since these are high-drain portable devices. Any additional battery life you can squeeze out of it is a big plus.
Not really. A screen of that size is really forgiving. I’m not sure if you have seen the Ally in person? In a lot of games you can turn some GPU intensive settings down or upscaling on and it’s not nearly as noticeable. The sharpness really stands out though.
Anyway, you seem pretty thrilled with the Steam Deck, which is great. I’m just pointing out that there are some pretty sweet perks with the Ally (there’s plenty of downsides too). All the best!
I wouldn’t say I’m thrilled, I still use my PC a lot more. I’d say the dual touchpads are probably the best feature for the form factor. And I think the power management features are great, but that’s just software, and I think the other platforms should implement similar systems.
Fair enough. I can’t even buy a Steam Deck in Australia so I’m pretty happy the ROG Ally exists and is what it is. Maybe we get the Steam Deck 2 done day, I would be keen to check it out.
Ive used the Ally and I would agree. The hardware is great and feels good in hand, but Valve is going to have much more to gain by supporting the software of the deck as much as possible.
The steam deck definitely shipped undercooked, but Valve has made amazing strides to make it my a reliable and versatile experience.
I use a steam deck dock to hook it to my TV, but A LOT of the time im using it in desktop mode in this setup. I get crisp 1080p out and its a fantastic experience for playing youtube and twitch from the couch.
Who? I seriously have no idea who you’re talking about.
I honestly think that the main reason this has kicked off is that up until about a week ago it wasn’t really advertised. I didn’t even know that it started the petition up again, I knew the original one failed because parliament closed and for some reason that meant the petition had to end.
PirateSoftware (Thor) is a streamer and a game developer who is a narcissistic asshole. He’s been very against the SKG petition since I think the start since if it passed he would be forced to keep supporting his games once they fail (it’s happened before) and made a video trying to torpedo the petition some months ago by spreading disinformation that’s easily disproven with a halfway decent level of reading comprehension. Recently the guy who runs the SKG petition announced that Piratesoftware was successful, which caused a lot of big streamers and Youtubers to catch on and call PirateSofware out while endorsing SKG, including MoistCritikal. Since then the number of signings have skyrocketed.
I wish lawmakers had some balls on this subject. If there’s gambling, they should have to register as a gambling company and comply with all the other restrictions on gambling advertisements in each jurisdiction.
The problem here is that Baltaro does not have gambling. It just uses cards and chips as the basis for playing the game. Like Magic the Gathering or Inscryption.
They also base it on poker, yeah cards can transform each other but it’s still quite literally a poker game. This isn’t MTG. (Which is just real life loot boxes)
But poker is only a gambling game because when you play it you “give up” something of value in the hope of winning more through playing and randomness. What makes it gambling is not the cards or the chips it’s the gambling aspect. Balatro uses card and poker hands, and so does “yatzhee”, but it does not use any gambling mechanic. Lootboxes on the other hand use gambling mechanic.
Although you may be right about why they did it, I feel like imagery of gambling is not meant to be ‘something that is in any way related to something that happens to be gambling’, it’s when gambling is shown but you’re not the one gambling. If someone in game is gambling that’s imagery, if a game uses cards for something that is not gambling it’s not imagery.
There used to be ante in MTG. You’d play for cards in each other’s decks and were to keep them if you won the game. Plus, there were a number of cards actively interacted with the ante’d cards and added or changed what’s in the ante
Quest Master. Mario Maker meets Zelda dungeons, done well. It deserves way more attention than it’s currently getting, and it’s pretty fun with huge potential despite being early access.
I like this stuff and I wanted to get either this or Super Dungeon Maker.
But kinda hard to pick a side since they both look like they have overlapping small communities. And games like this, communities are the only reason to play.
I do enjoy games like factorio, satisfactory, now jagged alliance 3, dyson sphere program, witcher (1+3, 2 not so much).
The thing that I liked about minecraft was that it was so tough to get into and the mechanics we‘re pretty obscure. if you didnt spoil it for yourself by looking it up you could really watch your brain working.
I made a server where players really needed to think to get going but most new players gave up frustrated because it was too hard.
And thats ultimately what bothers me. Minecraft in its infancy was cool for me for totally different reasons than for others (especially now) and I‘m probably just fed up with being the oddball all the time.
It sounds like the discovery of the mechanics was more rewarding for you as making progress and winning.
I‘m probably just fed up with being the oddball all the time.
Don't be. It is the oddballs of the world that are actually the agents of change.
Having read this I would suggest you have a look at Kerbal space program. On the surface it is a fairly simple game but the mechanics of actual space flight are very complex.
I’ve been served PirateSoftware’s shorts long before all this controversy and it always bugged me how confidently wrong he was about systems and network things. He seems to be under the impression that he understands these things on an advanced level due to his experience as a checks notes QA tester for Blizzard, and a… indie software developer lol.
There’s a group with a petition to “Stop Killing Games” which seeks to legally remedy the issue of game developers making games that are later turned off and left unplayable even in the case of them being single player.
Thor of PirateSoftware owns a development outfit that makes indie games and he also does a lot of streams. He’s against Stop Killing Games, but doesn’t seem to even understand it, and has publicly spoke out against it, going so far as to spread misinformation about it.
Have also been out of the loop too but went through the know your meme page.
Pirate Software made a video a year ago criticizing the initiative on a very surface level and has continued to do so in streams. Guy who created/sponsored/however-that-works the initiative posted a counter-argument video talking about what the initiative would actually do. Pirate Software did the ol’ Internet Doubledown and in general was kind of an ass and kind of revealed some ignorance. Cue Youtube Drama.
Traditionally, yes, but I do want to note that modern takes use it to also argue for cooperation, since working with with others is good for survival and passing on genes. They also are the first to tell people how bunk the alpha male crap is, and the fact a lone wolf is a dead wolf.
Evolutionary psychology. I think there’s real research in the field, but it’s drowned out by charlatans who invoke its name to lend credence to their made-up bullshit without the burden of scientific rigour.
Doesn’t change the fact that the few fans it had can’t play it ever again, game is still killed because it had no support for community servers, just matchmaking.
I for sure would prefer to host my own The Crew and not getting a refund.
I feel it’s rather fair to give them a pass on this one. Games with a player base and longer than a passing fart of time in the market? Sure. This was a failed product. They issued refunds. This is a situation where pushing your luck just backs someone into a corner.
We can hope they’ll flip the assets and remodel into another title.
Yeah, they did handle it correctly. All things considered. Even in an utopian future where the stopkillinggames.com campaign is successful. Personally I would still prefer to keep all games alive.
Honestly, I’m a bit skeptical of StopKillingGames. It feels like a good thing, but it also comes off as naive. Like the whole “just distribute the server” requirement is impossible with the way modern games are developed, and may be cost-prohibitive to implement for most developers well into the future. Besides, some games really are less like a painting and more like a musical; performance art necessarily has to end at some point, so it’s all about the experience and the memories. Nobody complains when the actors take a bow, because that’s the expectation.
“Just distribute the server” isn’t a requirement. It has never been a requirement. Who said that’s a requirement?
It’s just a possible solution. And to me it seems to be the easiest since that is the exact way it used to be done.
What exactly publishers will have to do depends entirely on if the campaign is successful and how the resulting laws are written. And may be as simple as an expiration date on all future game sales.
It’s not meant to be taken literally. Language evolves and boomer no longer exclusively refers to baby boomers, it’s just a general Gen-Z term for older people.
Which is hilarious, because Zoomers are turning 30 now and when I was actually young people over 30 were just one large group of walking corpses. I am curious to see how long Gen Z will keep this “we are the young ones” shtick up. Gen Alpha is where the actual young people are.
Pokemon is about the universe it was created in. It was the perfect on the go game when we were children and it even had a great anime to go with it. When you were home, you watched Ash and Pikachu take on the world of pokemon. Everything looked so vibrant and cool. Then when it was time for you to go with your parents to a house party, you could play Pokemon on your Gameboy.
It’s just a nostalgia franchise now, but that’s okay. Most people are unhappy with how Game Freak is handling the role of building these games, but maybe one day they’ll make a turn.
I agree, but I also think kids nowadays find it interesting too, but hell, they find Fortnite interesting too, so maybe Palworld is gonna be the next big thing for them now (if it survives the hype and the pass of time).
A bit more about nostalgia, I remember I played Pokémon Red and obviously watched the anime too, but then I saw a magazine advertising Pokémon yellow and showing Jesse, James and Meow, I was like WTF I need to have this, plot twist never did (not physically at least) but at least I continued with Fire Red, Ruby (never finished it) Diamond and Platinum, Soul Silver and I kinda stopped there, currently playing Omega Ruby because yeah, nostalgia, oh and yeah I finished Pokémon yellow recently in Anbernic RG351V, so a very good way to achieve it if you ask me.
It would have been interesting if they released more games like Pokémon yellow (making it easier to feel we are in the anime).
I don’t play Pokemon expecting a good turn-based RPG, I just like collecting cool little monsters and making them grow. Similar games like Cassette Beasts, Monster Sanctuary, and now Palworld appeal to me for the same reason.
But Skyrim is beautiful even with its older graphics and has an interesting world to explore. Grey space metal structures on grey planets just aren’t interesting. Also even more so if the story starts with “you touched a weird rock”, don’t know why but here have my spaceship.
In Skyrim you’re waking up going to be executed next moment there’s a dragon attack.
Right? There was this one guy on Lemmy the other day expecting the game to be like Freelancer… Like, dude, it’s Fallout with a space suit, we’ve known that for years now. I feel like gamers always have the most stupid and unrealistic expectations imaginable.
A lot of the game before you escape the testing track, minus maybe the point you are told about momentum jumps, feel like one big tutorial without even realizing you’re in one. It’s done very well.
When I played through Portal in dev commentary mode, I was surprised at the time to realize they’re basically trying to teach you things through the whole game (or at least heavily signpost). Made me realize a lot about game design, and design in general.
I’m here to say Portal as well, specifically because, once you really look for it, you realise that about 90% of the game is tutorial. Like, seriously, basically everything leading up to “The cake is a lie” is teaching you the skills you need for the final sequence. It’s a massive tutorial followed by one level of actual game, and it’s beautiful, precisely because you don’t even notice that the tutorial hasn’t ended.
Sweeney (the CEO of Epic) says that he wants competition with Steam, but many of his actions point toward that he really just wants to be the guy at the top (ie, he wants to be the monopoly instead of Valve). He’s taken a fair number of anti-consumerist stances, which vary from understandable to clearly anti-competitive.
Epic is known for making exclusivity deals with 3rd party studios in which Epic bribes the studio with money, and in exchange, the studio does not release their game on Steam for 1 year.
At several points, this occurred after a studio already said that they will release on Steam, and the studio would have to walk back and delete their Steam listing.
Iirc, at one point Epic bought out a studio and had them remove the Steam listing for an already-released game, causing the game to be unplayable for people who had already bought the game
Edit: this apparently happened twice (Unreal Tournament and Rocket League), but it appears that the games still work for the people who bought it. I think the concern was actually that Steam players would lose functionality due to not being supported anymore after the unlisting
The Epic Game Store released in a non-functional state, and development on it is extremely slow. The first impression of the broken store likely still influences many people’s impression of the store. But it’s still missing many features that many gamers want to see in a store.
There were various rumors when the store first launched that it contained spyware. My understanding is that those rumors never fully got disproven, especially since some of the claims were supported by at least some evidence
Epic does not support Linux, and Sweeney has openly said that he does not plan to support Linux until it becomes more popular. He did immediately jump on board with supporting Arm though, which caused a lot of Linux gamers to think that he just doesn’t want to support Linux
Sweeney is a pretty abrasive person and iirc he made a lot of concerning statements on his social media. Several of them (as mentioned above) indicate that he wants to dethrone Valve so that he can be the monopoly instead
Overall, many gamers are in support of more competition in the game store space. Unfortunately, many gamers also think that Epic is an untrustworthy competitor, and they believe that Epic has a serious chance of making the gaming industry worse if they become more popular. As a result, many would prefer for Steam remain the monopoly rather than to take a bet on Epic.
It was a while ago, I don’t remember off the top of my head which specific game I’m remembering. Doing a brief search, it appears that this happened to Unreal Tournament and Rocket League, though it appears that the games still work for the people who bought it before the unlisting. I think the concern was losing functionality, especially for server-based or multiplayer games
For unplayable, Rocket League had very good Linux and macos native builds Epic required them to delete support for those operating systems as part of the acquisition of Psyonix
Yeesh I knew Epic was run by dick heads but I didn’t know they were this slimy, I’m glad I’ve only bought one game on their platform (Subnautica below zero), and that’s only because I got the original Subnautica for free from their weekly giveaway and loved it. I’ll continue to get the free games from them as it’s good to take a chance on games that you otherwise might never learn about.
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