The Verge managed to speak to a couple of developers at Valve on the Steam Deck, and while most of it was already known and largely covered here on GOL already (go through our Steam Deck tag) there's a couple of interesting bits to pick out. ICYMI: see my end of year Steam Deck article.
It's quite a nice read overall and a very good article from Sean Hollister, especially for people not constantly reading up on everything Steam Deck.
One of the first points is that Valve said the Steam Deck may never be "Stable" in the way that traditional consoles are, since Valve are "always going to be pushing updates as long as there’s people playing". So expect them to keep on pushing out new features and new fixes for bugs as they come in. Any regular Steam user will know: Valve like to keep on iterating on things constantly, and their Beta branch for the Steam client likes to break things quite often. However, they're moving to monthly stable Steam Deck updates now.
While it's not out yet, Valve are still working towards a SteamOS 3 release for everyone, and Valve are "excited to see other manufacturers making their own handheld PC gaming devices, we’re excited to see people make their own SteamOS machines which could include small PCs that they put next to their TV".
A Steam Controller 2 is something I've been asking for years, I even wrote a bit about the original in 2019 about how much I loved it, and Valve want to see a second happen too, they said "we want to make it happen" but naturally they're heavily focused on the Deck directly right now.
Another feature Valve are working on is a built-in audio mixer for the Gaming Mode UI, so you can easily adjust levels between different applications, games and friends chat to make it all easier. No doubt this will be leveraging the newer Pipewire audio stack that makes this sort of thing easier than ever on Linux.
Something people have been asking for, a lot, is being able to share performance profiles. Valve are also looking into that. They don't plan to let you share graphics settings, but a profile of the options you change in the Quick Access performance menu sounds likely.
Finally, while they've repeatedly confirmed a Steam Deck 2 is planned, it doesn't seem like a "Pro" model will come as they like the idea of keeping everything at a set configuration for performance to make it easier for everyone and plan to keep that a while longer until it will really make a difference.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
"Right now, we’re focusing on the Deck, so it’s a little bit of the same thing as the microconsole question: it’s definitely something where we’d be excited to work with a third-party or explore ourselves,” he says.
They're basically begging 8bitdo or GuliKit to make the steam controller 2 happen. I'm not against this.
) so if they release a new one, gonna grab it! 
buckysrevenge Dec 15, 2022
ExpandingMan Dec 15, 2022
Another issue was that the trackpad behavior was so customizable that it took significant effort to get them optimally tuned for every situation, but, again, this wasn't a problem with the hardware design.
buckysrevenge Dec 15, 2022
I missed the first steam controller (because I'm certified stupidI have 3, the only thing that's been a problem with them is I wore the pads off the analog sticks on 2 of them
(replaced them pretty easily). I'd be happy to buy a SC2 eventually
Personally I hope v2 is just the Deck controls without the screen.
I've got three original Steam Controllers as well. Managed to get a friend in the states to pick up two and ship them up to Canuckistan for me. Cost many Kopeks, but it was worth it. One controller is beginning to wear out, so hopefully this means the other two will last until the new revision comes out.
Personally I hope v2 is just the Deck controls without the screen.
I've got two, one for my family room and one for my bedroom. As someone who has hand issues and uses a trackball instead of a mouse, the steam controller has been great for me when it comes to certain games. If it had a right stick and a d-pad, it would've been perfect for every game, so I'm 100% on board for a controller with all the Steam Deck layout.
Hoped I could win a Steam deck during the Game Awards but no dice, unfortunately. :(
Well at least I can hook up my Steam Controller to my laptop though I am always afraid that it is going to fail someday so a replacement is sorely needed. :)
. Been wanting to buy a second since I've started to use it more recently. Used ones are so expensive on ebay. My brother hates on it , but I've enjoyed it greatly.
My trouble with the original really is that I don't know how to configure it for play outside of Steam, except via SC-Controller which...isn't great tbh. I've seen people mention there are other ways to do it, but I don't know what they are.
I think them finally fixing issues with Nvidia GPUs w/gamemode (new BPM) is a nice step towards getting SteamOS 3.x out as a generic ISO. I'd love to get it set up on my old Steam Machine (currently running Manjaro stable and new BPM), the ease of Valve's updates on the Steam Deck translated to a dedicated HTPC would be nice to have again.what is bananas per monkey and how does it help? I can't find anything about BPM
Big Picture Mode
what is bananas per monkey and how does it help? I can't find anything about BPMBig Picture Mode.
slaapliedje Dec 15, 2022
Well obviously if there are more bananas per monkey they are happier and so their random typing will generate Shakespeare's complete works faster.I think them finally fixing issues with Nvidia GPUs w/gamemode (new BPM) is a nice step towards getting SteamOS 3.x out as a generic ISO. I'd love to get it set up on my old Steam Machine (currently running Manjaro stable and new BPM), the ease of Valve's updates on the Steam Deck translated to a dedicated HTPC would be nice to have again.what is bananas per monkey and how does it help? I can't find anything about BPM
Arehandoro Dec 15, 2022
redneckdrow Dec 15, 2022
Well obviously if there are more bananas per monkey they are happier and so their random typing will generate Shakespeare's complete works faster.I think them finally fixing issues with Nvidia GPUs w/gamemode (new BPM) is a nice step towards getting SteamOS 3.x out as a generic ISO. I'd love to get it set up on my old Steam Machine (currently running Manjaro stable and new BPM), the ease of Valve's updates on the Steam Deck translated to a dedicated HTPC would be nice to have again.what is bananas per monkey and how does it help? I can't find anything about BPM
Or considering the way "modern" computing is going, they'll write a machine-learning AI to do it for them while powering a robot that feeds them bananas!
Lord almighty, I can't stand cloud-powered/blockchain/machine-learning/social experiment/must have every appliance in the house connected to teh interwebs nonsense!
gradyvuckovic Dec 15, 2022
Heck in most games, most games have the same graphics options. So all the API would need to do is specify which of those graphics options are available.
Basically an API call saying, "Hey Steamworks, so we have the following graphics options: Resolution, Frame Rate Limit, Draw Distance, Antialiasing, Texture Resolution, etc... And a couple of custom settings called 'Bell Sizes' and 'Number of Whistles' and here's the custom information about those options."
Then all which would be needed is some kind of API which allows a game to be told by Steamworks "Set your graphic settings to these values".
Then Valve could store graphics settings information with the performance profile when they're changed, shared, and apply them when switching profiles.
Obviously out of the box most games wouldn't support that, they'd have to add support for that, but there's no reason why they can't over time progressively get that feature in more and more games, just like Steam Input.
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me