News Steam Deck Is Reaching Its Limits in Games Like Plague Tale: Requiem

[Predictable]

The reason I never liked Steam Deck is the fact it was built around graphical performance.

The Steam Deck is bulky, big, heavy, noisy and has poor battery life.

When I buy a handheld I want:
-long battery life
-low weight and portability
-no noise or loud fans

❤‍ my Switch.
👎 Steam Deck.

I've had a Switch for years and a Steam Deck since October 2022. Obviously the Switch is awesome if and when the games are worth it (once or twice a year). I'll never try to convince someone who isn't interested in a Steam Deck to buy one, but I do always just pause at some of the complaints - particularly the noise. I genuinely have no idea why people still bring this up, and I'm not being rude. It's just not an issue. Seriously. I didn't think it was an issue before they updated the fan driver, and I definitely don't think its an issue since. As for battery life, it is definitely not going to last as long as the Switch, but it's not like this thing dies in an hour. Honestly, I've never wanted to play the Deck for any period longer than the battery lasted. Perhaps if you weren't going to be able to charge it on a weekend trip or something it would be an issue. But I've traveled with it multiple times. Lasts just fine on 3-4 hour plane flights. Last just fine in a hotel room, and I've used it for 2-3 hours on car rides. Sure you can burn the battery down if you try to, but if you just drop a couple settings when you know you can't charge it quickly, it does just fine. The low native resolution of this thing makes low settings on games look great. It's strange and pretty neat, actually. The initial critic reviews of the battery life, in my opinion, really made a much bigger deal than is practical.

*Edit, I had to go back and check. I actually received the SteamDeck in the first week of September 2022.

 

[sundragon]

I'm selling my Switch, it's been collecting dust for months now. My Deck gets used regularly. I love the comments from people lauding 2013 technology because it has a little longer battery life. I can play the same games on my Switch and also play much better versions of games that are also ported to the Switch but dumbed down and look like fresh dog poop on hot day... Enjoy the battery life while the ancient tech putters along playing pong like graphics 😆

 

[watzupken]

There is a limit to what you can play in such a small form factor. I think buyers should expect this. If they are really serious about playing AAA games with high quality graphics, then the only way is to stream it.

In any case, with GPUs getting very powerful of recent years, games are also pushing the graphic boundaries. I believe developers can either try and improve graphics/ eye candies with the hardware legroom, or they can just choose to not optimize the game as much as they used to. So iGPUs and low end GPUs will feel the brunt.

 

[chrisdpratt]

The reason I never liked Steam Deck is the fact it was built around graphical performance.

The Steam Deck is bulky, big, heavy, noisy and has poor battery life.

When I buy a handheld I want:
-long battery life
-low weight and portability
-no noise or loud fans

❤‍ my Switch.
👎 Steam Deck.

And, you probably don't actually own one. The Steam Deck is undoubtedly large, but it's extremely well balanced and designed from an ergonomics perspective. Despite its size and weight, it doesn't feel unwieldy and playing on it for hours at a time is not an issue. It's not noisy. This was a problem at launch, but between tuning the fan profile and changing the fan being used in it, that has largely been resolved. A lot of games don't even push it hard enough for the fans to be audible, and even when they are, even the speakers at half volume are enough to drown it out. Poor battery life is not really accurate at all. For the performance and capabilities it has, the battery life is actually pretty excellent. Saying that a Switch can last longer is kind of meaningless. The Switch isn't pushing anywhere near what the Steam Deck is, so in comparison, Switch battery life is actually kind of crap for what it is. It's not even really that different. If you play a game that is particular taxing on the Switch's hardware, you're only going to get a couple of hours out of that too. Conversely, many lighter indie titles and such on the Steam Deck can easily get 4-5 hours of battery life. Even older AAA titles can get 3-4 hours. People just always talk about the absolute most demanding titles. Sure Cyberpunk 2077 may only get 1.5-2 hours, but the Switch couldn't even dream about running that at all.

 

[chrisdpratt]

And that doesn't bode well for the company's claim that a next-gen device won't be focused on performance upgrades.

Seriously wish people would stop perpetuating this nonsense out of context. Valve simply said that they don't see anything on the market right now offering enough of a performance improvement to warrant upgrading the SoC. Remember that the Steam Deck is using a custom SoC, which means Valve has a heavy investment in it, as well as allocation agreements. They may very well introduce a new iteration of the Steam Deck without upgrading the SoC if there's other upgrades to the screen or such that would warrant a revision, but there just as well may not even be a new version of the Steam Deck until there's a better SoC to throw in as well. Saying that the next version won't have performance improvements is just wrong and a bad take.

 

[MiniITXEconomy]

With how massive the back catalog is on the Steam store, though, the first SDeck's obsolescence isn't too much of a concern for me. In fact, since re-entering the world of PC gaming back in September, over half of my 48 games library consists of titles that are over 5 years old. But, as was pointed out in the article, the oncoming generation of new engines calls into question Valve's roadmap for the Deck's successor.

Maybe slapping a prettier screen onto it isn't the right move?

 

[MiniITXEconomy]

When I buy a handheld I want:
-long battery life
-low weight and portability
-no noise or loud fans

❤‍ my Switch.
👎 Steam Deck.

I was looking for exactly the same thing when I purchased my Steam Deck, but I was pleasantly surprised when it breezed past the narrow parameters of a simple handheld console to deliver a versatile experience. The mere fact that I'm typing this whole missive out on a Steam Deck while listening to my Spotify playlist, ensures I'll be picking up a SD2 well before the Switch's successor.

BTW, I had the worst luck trying to get my OG Switch to play Breath of the Wild for longer than two hours in handheld mode, so, you might as well remove "long battery life" from the list. 👍🏿

Now, if you'll excuse me, I got some trolls to wreck in World of Warcraft!

 

[Falkentyne]

I returned my deck for excatly these reasons. I could see real quick while totally awesome atm (july 22) it wouldn't age well for new games. Sadly I look like I made the right call, for now.

I want a hand held portable PC experience but one that will last a good 3-4 years before going belly up on new AAA games. Until Valve or another pull this off... my switch will have to make due for now.

You're never going to get anything like this.
They are just too small. If you put in powerful "BGA" Intel CPU's or AMD mobile CPU's and Nvidia/AMD graphics chips, you aren't going to be able to cool it.

What you want is a gaming laptop, with something like a AMD 7000 series mobile or Raptor Lake mobile CPU, and 125w/150w GPU's.

Look at the best thing you can buy for handheld gaming: AOKZOE A1, GPD Win Max 2 / Win 4 (all which use the same AMD 6800U APU--avoid the Intel ones).
While those give you higher FPS than the Steam Deck and higher TDP, they aren't going to last 3-4 years either. And they cost a lot more, so for the price you pay, the Deck is awesome, as long as you aren't trying to run bleeding edge games on it.

 

[atomicWAR]

You're never going to get anything like this.
They are just too small. If you put in powerful "BGA" Intel CPU's or AMD mobile CPU's and Nvidia/AMD graphics chips, you aren't going to be able to cool it.

What you want is a gaming laptop, with something like a AMD 7000 series mobile or Raptor Lake mobile CPU, and 125w/150w GPU's.

Look at the best thing you can buy for handheld gaming: AOKZOE A1, GPD Win Max 2 / Win 4 (all which use the same AMD 6800U APU--avoid the Intel ones).
While those give you higher FPS than the Steam Deck and higher TDP, they aren't going to last 3-4 years either. And they cost a lot more, so for the price you pay, the Deck is awesome, as long as you aren't trying to run bleeding edge games on it.

6800U chips or better are the closest were going to get. I've actually been eye balling some portables built around that chipset.