As expected really, Valve said they don't really expect to see a true next-gen Steam Deck for a few years yet. Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun, it's clear Valve are very happy with the first year of the Steam Deck.
Talking to Valve's Lawrence Yang and engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais, it seems it has been blowing their minds. Something of a surprise though, even to me, is that Yang mentioned how they've noticed that "of the people who've purchased a Steam Deck, 42% of them end up spending the majority of their Steam gaming time on Steam Deck – preferring it over their other devices".
So not only is it still selling like tasty sugar-coated hot doughnuts, with it being in the top 10 of global sellers (based on revenue from SteamDB) where it's up against games shifting multiple millions, plenty of people are sticking with it and even shifting over to it.
One sticking point is more games coming out that don't perform well, and while the Steam Deck is impressive, it all depends on developers actually optimising for the hardware, as Griffais said "it'll depend on how developers approach it" and that "If high-end current-gen titles are able to scale to Deck and be a great experience, it also enables smoother performance on a wider variety of PCs, and improve the experience for the whole playerbase". Yang also mentioned how they've "seen a number of recently released demanding titles perform well on Steam Deck, due to developers targeting and testing on the device.".
As always, the problem is in numbers. If the Steam Deck continues selling well, developers won't be able to ignore it. I've seen many games perform brilliantly, even surprisingly so, when they've clearly had a lot of optimization done on them. Then I've also seen the opposite myself, with games that you would think would also work well simply don't (often these bigger AAA games that primarily seem to target consoles…).
When it comes to a true Steam Deck 2, we're clearly in for a wait, as Yang said "a true next-gen Deck with a significant bump in horsepower wouldn’t be for a few years".
Valve don't exactly need much to make the Steam Deck 2 a success — or do they?
Need some more games for Steam Deck? Check out the new Humble Heroines Bundle overview.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
BlackBloodRum Mar 10, 2023
Quoting: mr-victoryThat may be so, but it doesn't change my experiences. Life experiences are what make you who you are, and in this instance, this life experience put me off consoles.Quoting: BlackBloodRumSony royally screwed me overUhh, we have a PS3 (3xxx model, slim) and 2 Dualshock 3's, neither has failed yet but I heard horror stories from others. The PS3 is around 10 years old but used lightly. I also set up RPCS3 and that single PS1 game bought from PSN so I can keep playing on PC in the future.
I was a Linux user at the time (exclusive) and let's just say Linux gaming was hard to come by, so the consoles were my only method of gaming, thus quite heavily used.
Thankfully, that's changed and I can play almost any game I want on Linux now
StoneColdSpider Mar 10, 2023
Quoting: BlackBloodRumI do have a deck, well who doesn'tAnyone in Aus.... Since Valve are scared of Spiders and Snakes they still have not released the Steam Deck in Australia.......
according to vg charts:
ps1 has 2706 games.
ps2 has 3565 games
ps3 has 1904 games.
if you pick the ps3 model wich had backward compatibility, then the full catalog of PS3 at the end of the generation was 8175 titles.
Steam deck currently have 8147 (verified+playable) with an average of 20~26 games beind added each day.
in other words, in just a few days, it will be the platform with most games, even if we only count the games that received some form of Q/A!
SD already have more games than any Nintendo console, all sega consoles combined and Xbox Series (including an total backward comp with xbox, xbox 360, and xbox one), ps3 was the only one left!
now aside from mobile (where most game suck anyway) and old pcs that are hard to count the number of games (eg: pc98) linux is the thirdy platform with most games with some form of curation / QA.
and, if we count total games on steam it should soon surpass mac too.
if we count all games and not just verified+playable it do have more games than mac already (at least on steam)
https://steamdb.info/instantsearch/?refinementList%5BappType%5D%5B0%5D=Game&refinementList%5Boslist%5D%5B0%5D=Steam%20Deck%20Playable&refinementList%5Boslist%5D%5B1%5D=Linux&refinementList%5Boslist%5D%5B2%5D=Steam%20Deck%20Verified
as for consoles, keep in mind that vgcharts isnt perfect and their list of games is not perfect
Last edited by elmapul on 11 March 2023 at 4:10 am UTC
InhaleOblivion Mar 11, 2023
Last edited by InhaleOblivion on 12 March 2023 at 3:39 am UTC
Last edited by Appelsin on 11 March 2023 at 5:21 pm UTC
Quoting: elmapulaccording to vg charts:Keep in mind that many games are counted twice, or sometimes three times as it was re-released for different markets (US, PAL, Japan) so the actual numbers are quite a bit smaller!
ps1 has 2706 games.
ps2 has 3565 games
ps3 has 1904 games.
if you pick the ps3 model wich had backward compatibility, then the full catalog of PS3 at the end of the generation was 8175 titles.
P.S. When you look at it, GoG is even worse that way. The ratio of rudimentary crap (old and young) to desirable titles is much higher on GoG, for their numbers. Again, YMMV.
Last edited by Grogan on 11 March 2023 at 6:18 pm UTC
Quoting: BlackBloodRumThe thing is, they don't have to target the hardware. They only need to ensure it works in proton or SteamOS (which, most of the work has already been done for them).
Even if the hardware changes, it doesn't break or change any of the developers previous or current on-going work.
I don't want to leave this hanging without acknowledgement. Of course that's right for the most part. The thing is, it's not me you have to convince.
First of all, customer disappointment. The clientele here is a bit different than iPhone customers lol
Secondly, right now they all have the same hardware and things are reproducible.
I'm sure I don't have to elabourate further, but these are more human conditions. Butthurt users, and devs that might throw up their arms and ridicule the platform for being so "unstable" (subject to change).
Quoting: KimyrielleI belong to the 58% who still plays mostly on the desktop, but I am not parting with my Deck. It has become the device for gaming on the sofa or in bed and filled a gap for me there (I don't own a "proper" console and don't want one). I am still surprised how many recent games it can run just fine (including Hogwarts Legacies). Yes, that's probably going to change in the next few years when newer GPU generations become more widespread, but I expect the Deck to run most if not all the games I am playing for years to come.
I do not own Deck, but I fully understood. I known many people, who do not upgrade/exchange one's PC, because these people are using mobiles (smartphones). They told me, they do not need PC. I do not understand these people - I prefer work near my desk with my laptop. I even like KDEConnect, because it allow me to read notifications from phone and do a lot of stuff, like composing sms on my laptop, etc. I own laptop, but I work on desk with it, seldom move it out my desk.
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