Good news, following the previous delay and even with the pandemic and global shortages Valve has announced that the Steam Deck is still on track to ship by the end of February.
Writing in a fresh post, Valve said that testing for the Steam Deck Verified program is underway, which we already knew since Portal 2 got recently officially verified. It's also currently still the only one.
Testing for developers directly is important of course, which is why Valve continues to send out developers kits. Another wave has been approved, with "hundreds" being shipped out in the last month and Valve say more continue to be approved and thanked developers for their patience.
So it's all good news and hopefully soon actual consumers will have their hands on their first real devices.
Valve also included this shot showing a bunch of them in the KDE Plasma desktop mode:
If you missed it, we recently took a look at how the Steam Top 100 will play on Linux (and so the Steam Deck with SteamOS 3). Valve and developers still have plenty of work ahead to get the device into a sweet spot. It's not just compatibility with native Linux or Windows builds in Proton, it's also dealing with the screen size for text clarity and gamepad support, both of which we hope to see more developers fix up.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Philadelphus Jan 14, 2022
Quoting: PhiladelphusI'm curious, anyone know what those programs shown on the screens are? Some sort of diagnostics or software update or something?I speculate that it's showing the input. Many bars at the center (analog buttons), and it has boxes for the joysticks.
slaapliedje Jan 14, 2022
Quoting: BielFPsAll these delaysUhm, there has been one delay.
slaapliedje Jan 14, 2022
Quoting: rustybroomhandleI'm still having silly arguments with people who believe that only when 100% of your Steam library works on Linux will Linux / Steam Deck be "ready" for the masses.
Ha, I bet 100% of my library doesn't even work on Windows 10/11. Now that macOS has dropped 32bit, even a smaller amount of the Mac support software works on my m1 mac than normally would...
Let's face it, due to various people in the industry, and the moving target, some stuff simply won't run like it used to as updates come along.
All the Deck needs to be successful is 1) have the right price, 2) support the most popular games.
The thing is, even if the games all launched and worked 100%... there are PC games that simply are not playable with a gamepad / touch screen / etc. Some are just not very playable without keyboard / mouse. So everyone should keep those expectations in check (and if you're going to say 'but you can hook a keyboard/mouse up to it!' sure you can... but that totally ruins the point of it being a portable!)
Quoting: BielFPsValve should also release a new game with deck in mind to show the device qualities, like other "consoles" usually do.
Apparently they are working on such a game called "Citadel".
Unrelated to that, strange that there still aren't any pictures of final docking station for the Steam Deck.
forumcommunist Jan 15, 2022
Quoting: slaapliedjeUhm, there has been one delay.First was predicted to February 2022, now @Arehandoro said:
Quoting: ArehandoroMy order availability now says after Q2 2022.The original release date was Christmas 2021.
Quoting: JuliusApparently they are working on such a game called "Citadel".I didn't knew that, and "Citadel" might be a code for the original name (or maybe something related to Half Life)
Quoting: BielFPsQuoting: slaapliedjeUhm, there has been one delay.First was predicted to February 2022, now @Arehandoro said:
Quoting: ArehandoroMy order availability now says after Q2 2022.The original release date was Christmas 2021.
That's their personal date, not the general release date. Everybody preordering gets a personal prediction when their respective order might actually happen.
Last edited by Eike on 15 January 2022 at 4:30 pm UTC
Quoting: EikeYeah. And lots of those were running way into 2022 even when the general release date was still Christmas. We were talking about that stuff in like the first couple of days of pre-order.Quoting: BielFPsQuoting: slaapliedjeUhm, there has been one delay.First was predicted to February 2022, now @Arehandoro said:
Quoting: ArehandoroMy order availability now says after Q2 2022.The original release date was Christmas 2021.
That's their personal date, not the general release date. Everybody preordering gets a personal prediction when their respective order might actually happen.
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