I just realized something…
At some point, Valve will release a Steam Deck 2 - It will be slimmer and even better than the first. Maybe in a couple of years I am guessing
Then that will be it because other companies will be releasing cheaper devices with their Steam OS. Steam simply cannot compete with them on price, and the feature set (other than faster chips) will mostly be locked in.
In short, there will be now Steam Deck 3 - Gaben strikes again
Nah, we’ll get Steam Deck 2 Episode 2, then Steam Deck Alyx
Half Life 3 - Hybrid Action Shooter / Alternate Reality Game.
Is that random person you are walking past in AD 2038 a PMC guarding your local refugee camp after climate change has destroyed the world’s economy?
Now theyre a Civil Protection Officer!
Then the game instructs you to find a real life crowbar and present it to the Steam Deck 3 camera for verification.
HEV suit voice: You know what to do.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
We can only hope this is the start of a trend, as Valve’s gaming-focused operating system brings many advantages over gaming portables (and maybe desktops) that run a full Windows installation.
In an increasingly competitive portable PC gaming market, being able to cut out that significant cost over Windows-based alternatives could be a big deal.
Our review of the ROG Ally highlights just how annoying it can be to have to fiddle with Windows settings on a touchscreen running “an awkwardly scaled” version of the OS.
That comes through in many little ways, like a built-in “suspend” mode, tons of battery-optimization features, and menus that are designed for a small screen and joystick navigation.
That’s a huge change from the desktop-focused “Steam Machines” era of the mid-'10s, when early versions of SteamOS could only run the relative handful of games that developers bothered to explicitly port to Linux.
That’s also a huge change from the Steam Machines era, when Ars’ testing showed that many SteamOS games ran significantly worse than their Windows counterparts on the same desktop hardware.
The original article contains 651 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
As much as I love Valve I think it’d be weird for a 3rd party handheld to boot directly into the Steam UI. I get that there aren’t any viable alternatives atm, so I guess this is where we are. Wouldn’t hurt with a more store-neutral solution, in the end.
That might happen if any other launcher chooses to natively support Linux. Right now Steam is the best option.
Yeah, Heroic or whatever just isn’t good enough. Joe Random doesn’t want that kind of jank on his gaming appliance.
Honestly, I disagree with Heroic not being good enough, I think it’s the only other launcher on Linux that is. It’s very polished and everything has worked out of the box for me. The problem is simply that it’s unofficial, no company would ship it on a gaming device.
If I am not mistaken, you /can/ have that be a thing, as I am fairly sure the actual SteamOS is open source and Valve would /probably?/ allow that to come stock on a potential alternate handheld…
But kind of their whole thing is it is optimized for the hardware set up they are using.
So… you could theoretically have an or multiple competing Not Valve but Yes SteamOS Decks, but from the standpoint of the economics of building a market viable gaming machine, Valve would still probably have a serious edge in that market for a while.
Almost like Valve actually understands the entire tech industry better than nearly any other tech company or something.
I’m fairly sure valve has openly said they plan for SteamOS to be used by other handhelds
It would be better if I could boot up and chose my launcher just like I choose Netflix, HBO, or Hulu from my Roku home screen. Of course, that could be accomplished with a custom front end / explorer in Windows, but since MS is pushing more into the OSX “we own the experience” with tons overhead and reduced customizable UI, and none of the other launchers support Linux, it’s pretty much just a pipe dream.
