News Before Steam Deck Launch, UI Now Prominently Displays Game Size

[Admin]

Steam client UI ups like this appear to be targeted at the upcoming influx of portable users, but they are features we can all benefit from.

Before Steam Deck Launch, UI Now Prominently Displays Game Size : Read more

 

[cryoburner]

Users can expand with an SD card, but they won't have the relatively cheap 1 or 2TB HDDs that some PC gamers are used to.

It does have a USB-C port, so connecting external drives should be possible. It sounds like a powered USB hub might be required to run drives that use any significant power draw though, so that would be more of an option for accessing an expanded library at home.

 

[artk2219]

This is good news for lowspec gamers since basically every new steam game may have to be validated for the steam deck, meaning more games should have low end options for weaker hardware. At least thats the hope, we will see how that goes.

 

[mac_angel]

I'm really hoping they release the OS for PCs.
Sadly, I really doubt it would work on my system, now that I think of it.

 

[cryoburner]

This is good news for lowspec gamers since basically every new steam game may have to be validated for the steam deck, meaning more games should have low end options for weaker hardware. At least thats the hope, we will see how that goes.

I have some doubts that it's ever going to make up enough of the market to cause any significant number of AAA developers to go out of their way to make sure their games run well on the system. Steam certainly isn't going to require games to run on the hardware. And a developer designing their game to impress on the new generation of consoles and higher-end gaming PCs isn't going to limit it in any way to support a device that only a fraction of a percent of its potential customer base will have.

Realistically, I don't see the device selling much more than a few million units, if even that, while the consoles from Sony and Microsoft combined tend to sell in the vicinity of 170 million units each generation. If any gaming hardware encouraged developers to support lower-end hardware, it would be the Nintendo Switch (or its eventual successor), which has moved over 100 million units over the last five years, though there's no guarantee that the PC port of a game will see the same level of optimization. The same goes for the previous generation of consoles, which many games are still designed to support, though that will be less the case as the install-base of new consoles grows. Games built specifically for the new consoles will likely be a lot less friendly to the Steam Deck than the multi-generational titles that make up most of the current market.

Phones are another potential market that developers may want to target, and there are some examples of good games designed for mobile that also see decent PC ports. Again though, that's a far larger market than the Steam Deck will ever be, so I don't think the Steam Deck itself is likely have that much of an effect on support for lower-end hardware.

 

[CrEdge]

It does have a USB-C port, so connecting external drives should be possible. It sounds like a powered USB hub might be required to run drives that use any significant power draw though, so that would be more of an option for accessing an expanded library at home.

Indeed. I'd expect portable SSD options as well if getting something like this.

 

[Old Molases]

I think playing MOBAS here would be a little difficult.

 

[artk2219]

I'm really hoping they release the OS for PCs.
Sadly, I really doubt it would work on my system, now that I think of it.

They already have, and it should the requirements are pretty generic, you can download it here:

https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown

Although I do take issue with the non alphabetical listing of GPU vendors, also does this mean that it will work with an Intel i740 or Nvidia NV1, Riva 128, or RIVA TNT, what about the good old Geforce 256?

https://imgur.com/a/afVpDov

View: https://imgur.com/a/afVpDov


Let us know how it goes

 

[cryoburner]

They already have, and it should the requirements are pretty generic, you can download it here:

https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown

I think that's still a much older version though, from some years back when they were trying to push their "Steam Machine" ecosystem. The opening paragraph describes it as being based on Debian 8, which came out in 2015, while the new SteamOS is based on Arch Linux. Valve announced that the new SteamOS 3.0 will be freely available, but as far as I know, they haven't released it yet. They will probably do that soon though, perhaps shortly after the Steam Deck is released.