Steam Deck officially announced by Valve

NamelessPFG said:
Well, I'll be damned. My order actually went through a few minutes ago. Won't be anywhere near first in the queue, but that's life. I can wait.

Maybe things are easing up after that initial first hour of peak demand.
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That's because after the first 5 minutes it will be backordered until forever. See also EVGA queues...
 
Only thing I will say, it does look ugly. Suppose aftermarket grips can make it more ergonomic. I see they tried to make it better than the almost entirely flat Switch.
 
Expecting the servers to get flooded, I added funds to my steam wallet, figuring that's one less step to check out. Opted for the 256gb version, order went thru at 10:04 PST. Have no idea how you guys that got in before did it, I hammered mine as best I could and still got in 4 minutes after. Grats to those that got in. Sorry to those that had issues and gave up.
 
Did anyone check out that api link that was going around? It apparently was reporting your queue position and also how many reservations of each model in different regions.I think the 512GB model was around 60K reservations for NA before the link stopped working.
 
defaultluser said:
MUST BE FIRST TO TOUCH NEW SHINY THINGY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
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To be fair, I am still in queue for the 3090 since last year, the 3080 since last year, the 3080 Ti since this year and the 3090 Pin from this year…. The 3090 was the only late launch reservation, everything was within 16-30 minutes.

If my order really went in at 1001, I will probably get this before a new GPU. But really….

I bought this in hopes (it is written no where) that it will accelerate Half Life 3’s release.

Edit I withdrew from all queues except the 3080 Ti, hoping to grab it for my old troop. However, none of my queue positions have been hit yet, they are possibly months to years/4000 series releases away from happening.
 
Well, Steam crashed when I tried to check out. I did manage to pre-order the 512GB model about an hour later. So probably 2022 will be the ship date for it. I'm looking forward to this little mini-rig. I'm also looking forward to using it as an emulator.
 
defaultluser said:
Absolutely the plan for me, if I can stand the bulk :D But I will have to start carrying around a murse/backpack more.
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Here's the solution for you...

1626462148804.png
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm honestly surprised this is as popular as it is turning out to be.

I didn't think there was such a demand for mobile PC gaming.
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It is actually fun. I bought one of those Razer Kishi Android XBOX controllers and it worked surprisingly well with streaming XBOX Game Pass and my Google Pixel 3a XL other than the screen was a bit on the small side. The Steam Deck seems like the next logical step up from that.
 
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Axman said:
Real mobile gaming has been in huge demand for a couple of years. The death of mobile gaming on the phone had people getting into gaming laptops well before the troubles, and even more so since, because gaming laptops remain priced correctly, for the most part.
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Huh. When I was a kid mobile gaming appealed to me more as I was often dragged places with my parents and was bored to tears needing to pass the time. The good old gameboy was a savior.

These days I'd rather just wait until I have my alone time in my office at my proper desk. The game experience is so much better that there just isn't any point in playing games anywhere else to me.
 
defaultluser said:
MUST BE FIRST TO TOUCH NEW SHINY THINGY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
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Yeah, there seems to be a lot of people with extremely poor impulse control and no sense of delayed gratification these days, and they are all trying to outbid each other resulting in these crazy shortages and scalping.

It's kind of s sickness.
 
kirbyrj said:
That's because after the first 5 minutes it will be backordered until forever. See also EVGA queues...
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We'll see. I'm sure the Valve Index was like that too upon initial release, even when the full kit was significantly more expensive than a top-trim Deck.

Now you can get one shipped out in a matter of days, if you've got the coin. Everyone already got their Half-Life: Alyx itch scratched, and perhaps there's less incentive to buy into high-end, PC-based VR if you can't get the GPU to truly enjoy it (read: as powerful of a single GPU as you can sensibly afford, ideally RTX 3080 or better).
 
Pass

I have enough digital bs in my life. Im 40 and need to get rid of everything but my single gaming pc. Even my smartphone is about to go away. Getting tired of phones.

Been focused on survival, food, supplies, power, solar, etc... far far more rewarding than another digital tether
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Yeah, there seems to be a lot of people with extremely poor impulse control and no sense of delayed gratification these days, and they are all trying to outbid each other resulting in these crazy shortages and scalping.

It's kind of s sickness.
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It's hard to blame people individually for this. Societal conditions are what have incentivized people to act this way. Many of us just want to return to monkey. But since we can't do that and we have to live in this modern hellscape, Steam Deck will have to do...
 
Hakaba said:
To be fair, I am still in queue for the 3090 since last year, the 3080 since last year, the 3080 Ti since this year and the 3090 Pin from this year…. The 3090 was the only late launch reservation, everything was within 16-30 minutes.

If my order really went in at 1001, I will probably get this before a new GPU. But really….

I bought this in hopes (it is written no where) that it will accelerate Half Life 3’s release.

Edit I withdrew from all queues except the 3080 Ti, hoping to grab it for my old troop. However, none of my queue positions have been hit yet, they are possibly months to years/4000 series releases away from happening.
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I'm not talking about queues for reviewed high-end standard items, I'm talking abut a genre of products that is rarely successful, and preordering one

Given how many compromises the Switch has to make, do you really expect to love this thing sight-unseen?

If you hate the controllers, there is no easy replacement. if your hands get tired after fifteen minutes of heavy-lifting, that's a deal-killer. if those touch-pads are in an awkward place for your fingers - there's nothing that can be done without attaching a dock on-the-go (making it just as bulky as a traditional 11 inch pc).

One might expect that these things are perfect o-the-go, and will magically only require docking at-home...but that rarely ever happens for something this custom!
 
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defaultluser said:
I'm not talking about queues for reviewed items, I'm talking abut a genre of products that is rarely successful, and preordering one
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It's $5, and it will let me play Skyrim in bed while my wife watches historical British melodramas about dead people.

I've spent many times more on video games I still have never played because they went on sale and I was drunk. Because I had to listen to historical British melodramas about dead people.
 
TheGeekFreek said:
Im really hoping that STEAM announces that its locked to the purchasing account for like 1 year just to fuck the scalpers. Would be hilarious.
Instead of exclusive games per system.. Exclusive accounts per system! lol
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I understand not wanting to support scalpers, but do you really want Valve to ship a PC with some sort of DRM that prohibits resale? Im sure it's illegal in most markets, and definetly goes against consumer rights.

They can only do so much to prevent reselling. I'm happy with the steps they took.
 
Registration went through on a 256 GB model. Luckily enough, the EVGA queue has made me a very patient man.
 
Viper87227 said:
I understand not wanting to support scalpers, but do you really want Valve to ship a PC with some sort of DRM that prohibits resale? Im sure it's illegal in most markets, and definetly goes against consumer rights.

They can only do so much to prevent reselling. I'm happy with the steps they took.
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I didnt say it was a good idea.. I said it would be hilarious to see scalpers heads explode because they suddenly mostly cant immediately re-sell the device unless they give up the whole account. Which is again their TOS anyways which would likely get the account closed. But you wouldnt even need any device-side DRM to do that. Could be handled server/app side.

Anxiously awaiting the bots to hit EBAY to harass the scalpers.
 
Krenum said:
I went ahead and ordered the 256GB version. It'll do for what I need it for.
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I think it's safe to say that a lot of people will have 512 gig drives to sell after they swap them out for something even bigger. Even then, I'm fairly confident the 256 gig drive will be more than adequate with a 1TB SD card.
 
... just when I thought I was out they pull me back in!

I had some steam wallet funds anyway so what the hell, I'm in the queue for the 256GB one. Worst that'll happen is I decide no and the $5 will go right back to wallet.

Besides at this point in the queue it'll be late 2022 before I hear from Steam :D
 
Axman said:
I think it's safe to say that a lot of people will have 512 gig drives to sell after they swap them out for something even bigger. Even then, I'm fairly confident the 256 gig drive will be more than adequate with a 1TB SD card.
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Yeah, 256GB is good for me. I more than likely wont be installing any PC games on it (Well maybe some World of Warcraft Classic we'll see :))and like you said the expandable storage is more than enough for my needs.
 
Axman said:
I think it's safe to say that a lot of people will have 512 gig drives to sell after they swap them out for something even bigger. Even then, I'm fairly confident the 256 gig drive will be more than adequate with a 1TB SD card.
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SD Cards are pretty slow though...

I wonder if the eMMC models still have an open M.2 slot, or if the slot is missing unless you otder it with an m.2 drive.

Also, I wonder if that slot fits standard length 80mm (2280) drives, or if you have to use shorter ones.
 
TheSlySyl said:
I'm guessing its probably way, way too hopeful to expect this to be built with standard laptop parts to allow breakdown and upgrades in the future?
Cause if I could just take the chassis and motherboard and upgrade to a Zen3 (or zen3+, whatever they call the V-cache) based APU in the future... double the ram (I severely doubt this will be possible) and get turn it into a ramcache... or maybe just put a bigger NVME drive in there...

Hell, I actually wonder how well primocache will work with on this, it can run windows. This is gonna be fun to mess with regardless.
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Problem is this device isn't really aimed at tinkerers. It's not a Raspberry Pi take on a Nintendo Switch. The device is an ecosystem play, and Valve's going to be losing money on the hardware at least initially. The people frothing that it doesn't meet their personal hierarchy of modding/tinkering/modularity needs aren't the target demographic.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
SD Cards are pretty slow though...
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Yeah, they're not great, but some get over 150MB/s reads. In all my experience so far, NVMe only really boosts OS stuff. I know DirectStorage will change that in gaming, but I don't expect that to be a major factor for a mobile device like this; when it does, there will presumably be a Steam Deck II or whatever.

I'm guessing that internally all three models are identical, just from a cost-cutting standard, and that they all use the same slot for main storage. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's not a 2280, just the same. There are a lot of those shorter cards.

My main concern about the SD card is the controller. It'd be a shame if they cheaped out there, and introduced a 104MB/s bottleneck to save a couple bucks on each unit. Especially since card speeds will only increase moving forward. I wouldn't be surprised if there are 180-200MB/s cards by the time these hit the streets.
 
cybereality said:
Also like that Valve is pushing Proton into the mainstream, if this device sells well we could be looking at better Linux ports, or at least developers testing on Proton and fixing bugs. So that is big.

And you could potentially install Windows or Linux and use this as your computer. Think of developing on the go, always wanted a portable system that could do dev work as well (not just gaming).

So it looks so good. I can't wait to try.
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For me this is the biggest thing to this device: the expansion of the incentive structure for native linux gaming and development. It's not about whether it's the perfect mobile gaming hardware, or even about mobile gaming. It's the corollary effects of being another big axe chipping away at Windows' gaming stranglehold.
 
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I mean, people have been locked in their house for over a year and you can't buy anything.

For sure there is a lot of pent-up impulse buyers, just to get something new to play with.
 
DPI said:
This is the biggest thing: proliferation of the incentive structure for native linux gaming.
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This really might be the thing that pushes Linux mainstream. The OS is Arch-based with KDE.

So people using it with the dock will now have a Linux desktop pre-installed and get to see for themselves how well Proton works.

And if Valve sells a few million units, we could see Linux up to like 5% (best case scenario), which means devs might be optimizing Proton profiles or even making Linux ports.

This is it.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
SD Cards are pretty slow though...
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load times should be fine for most games. There are only a few games nowadays, with really long initial loads. Death Stranding comes to mind. Namco fighting games like Tekken and Soulcalibur, have some annoyingly long loads, too.

Even then, it won't be unbearable. And certainly fine, considering the form factor.
 
Krenum said:
Just start wearing Overalls with that big pocket in the front lol :)
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I already wear a Utilikilt with massive pockets, but even that isn't large enough for this thing. I would also worry about it being so heavy my kilt falls right off me.

When your device is nearly 2 pounds in weight, you've gone from "sorta pocketable for the Switch Size" to "needs an entire dedicated compartment in my industrial-strength sweat-pants" sorta setup :D


This is why I say a Murse is the only viable solution! The non-removable controllers sticking out make it even more awkward to pocket!
 
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DPI said:
For me this is the biggest thing to this device: the expansion of the incentive structure for native linux gaming and development. It's not about whether it's the perfect mobile gaming hardware, or even about mobile gaming. It's the corollary effects of being another big axe chipping away at Windows' gaming stranglehold.
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That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. I mean, there is still a huge performance deficit moving to Linux on most titles, but if a linux based steam OS becomes more popular, with it without the Proton compatibility layer, maybe the right pieces will move to make that history.

I certainly wouldn't mind no longer feeling the need to have Windows installed.
 
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