The only exciting thing is the form factor. Spec wise its an underperforming laptop with integrated graphics delivering below 8 year old GTX 760 level of "performance".

1280 x 800 at up to 30 fps.

From what I've seen it's 60 fps. Where did you get 30 fps from?

The only place where I've seen 30 fps being mentioned was when they said that you can switch Portal 2 into 30 fps mode to get longer battery life (which is a Portal 2 feature available on PCs from the very beginning).

Yeah I mean it's a PC. Depending on the game it will run at 10fps, 30fps, 60 or 1000fps. No idea why OP would say 30fps specifically. There will be games which run at that, there will be games which runs a lot better.

This APU is a ~Ryzen 3 5300G at 1/4 the power limit. The most powerful AMD desktop APU now, 5700G is at the level of GTX760 performance.

....yes? It will still run something like CS GO at 500fps+, and I imagine some modern games it won't run smoothly at all. I'm just saying that giving an arbitrary number like "runs games at 30fps" is super unhelpful.

Count the frames on the Control gameplay, the game Valve decided to plaster in every single shot on the website and in the IGN "hands on". Its running at 30fps with drops all the way down to 10.

Which is.....exactly what I said? I feel like we're talking past each other.

5300G has a vega graphics with 6 compute units. Steam deck is rdna2 with 8 CUs.

The Nintendo switch has the same screen resolution and way worse specs and sold like crazy.

Its because when it comes to gaming consoles hardware doesn’t matter. Only games do. Nintendo has proven this over and over. You can add rtx it still won’t sell unless there are some great titles that run like native (usually this means custom ports because ui and other elements in 99% of games are not created with small screens in mind and usually are not usable at all)

Well, hopefully Valve can make/get some games for this form factor.

If they sell enough of these, some developers will naturally just start adding active support in their games for it, even if only as a switchable feature.

[×] Use settings and textures specially optimized for this device?

Well, it's chicken and egg if

Sales = f(game quality)

game quality = g(sales)

That's why if I were valve I would set about throwing money at some medium-appropriate game dev up front in addition to discounting the hardware.

OTOH I just learned the switch's battery life was not as good as I thought; it's no M1 idling. So that helps.

The Switch has the SoC of an Android tablet from 2015. That's how Nintendo can sell the switch at 200 bucks.

There's no way for valve to discount the deck, which uses a cutting edge SoC cut from the same cloth as the PS5, at anywhere near that price point.

Flagship hardware has flagship prices. If valve would have built a cheap but underpowered device to reach the price point of the switch nobody would have been interested. Gamers are into the deck because of its cutting edge specs.

When I said discount, I mean Valve is supposedly selling at least the low-end tiers at a loss.

Well that's the beauty of the deck. Devs don't need to do shit, as it's basically a gaming PC in your hand that can run the same games you have on your steam library on your gaming rig but on lower graphic fidelity.

You don't need to changes things, but you probably want to. It's a general purpose computer and I could run e.g. StarCraft, but I would get slaughtered with controls like that.

The traditional business view is the casual gamers are growing, and the elite PC gamers are stagnant. Valve is trying to wreck that dichotomy with hardware like this, but I think that goes with making sure there are games that fit the form factor. You can't just sell this to people who rather play on their main gaming rig but are sometimes stuck without this.

Making games for this form factor != a retreat from the principle of general purpose computing.

Also half again as cheap.

That’s not even remotely true if you’re comparing the new OLED model switch to the base model steam deck. $349.99 vs $399.99.

You’re comparing the top of the line switch to the bottom of the line steam deck. Switch starts at $200.

My bad, I thought the oled model was meant to replace the standard switch. The lite does indeed start at $199.99, but that can’t do docked mode so it’s not really a fair comparison to this steam deck. The base regular switch is $299.99.

Though the Steam Deck notably doesn't come with a dock. The dock isn't for sale yet, but will be sold separately later.

Sure but it’s also compatible with any generic usb c hub. I know I already have one that works with my Mac and switch that I’m sure would also work with this. Probably cost me all of $20 on Amazon.

The IGN review says it plays Control at medium settings at 60fps. That's roughly double the performance of a GTX 760 I believe (which is around 30FPS at low settings @ 1080p).

I didnt hear them mention 60 fps, in fact they said they were unable to see fps numbers anywhere during this "hands on". They did say Control "felt playable". This is how you make Control playable on APU https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/control-graphics-perfor... everything on low and you reach 30fps 720p.

I just went back and counted frames. Control was running at 30 fps with drops to ~10 (3 frames of 60 fps video per one screen update).

Hmm interesting. I suppose I could have read too much into the IGN review saying control played at “smooth frame rates”. I suppose we’ll have to wait for proper benchmarks to know for sure the performance.

Pretty bold claims for not having seen even pre-production hardware yet

Yeah except it's the size of a TV remote.

30fps gives longer battery life.

IGN clarified 2 tflops "in the ballpark of xbox one or ps4".

Finally, someone thinking outside the box! :D

Or, more accurately, thinking inside of many tiny boxen.