@BabyCookie I saw this and said … oh another Switch … sigh. Im a huge supporter of Steam/Valve though. I have about 5000 games on Steam … probably played less than half Im sure. One day my son will thank me … or put me in an institution.
2 Likes
I for one am curious about this as well. I have a VM just so I can play games from anywhere. May opt to get this and go with a cheaper VM for the non steam games.
2 Likes
Redlotus: Son, this is what I spent your inheritance on. Behold my mighty Steam collection.
LotusJr: weeps Thanks, pop. looks up number of Shady Pines rest home
4 Likes
In my defense I have been gifted 100’s of games so “most” of the inheritance is in tact 
1 Like
Looks cool but I might use that money to Switch and get some Nintendo games 
Still over here, pushing a potato …
You have to be willing to put up with minimum graphics and draw distance, though. It was a lot better before the foliage/settings updates around the farming release.
Open now, reservation in! 
Took me over a dozen tries to get the payment to go through, they’re clearly slammed…
4 Likes
My account got locked out from making purchases because their system kept failing to let me move on, but my wife was able to get a reservation in. Super frustrating experience, but not surprising.
2 Likes
I was out to lunch with my wife frantically trying to get in from my phone….lots of oops, something went wrong, your account is too new (it’s 16 years old), pop ups blocked…after 30 minutes of persistence I did finally get a reservation through.
2 Likes
Looking at the specs of the 'deck I’d say Boundless will be just fine.
Looking at the specs of the 'dekc I’d say MadManMoon would be just not fine.
I’ve been running boundless at 720p on my potat… on my Intel UHD 620 convertible laptop whilst my new gaming PC went back to the shop (power losses during games 
) and it’s OK on that, this will be able to push much more into the game.
Whilst it is, again (the Steam controller is amazing), another fabulous design, and engineered brilliantly by the looks of things … I’m seriously drooling over those little mouse pads … there’s already much better specc’d stuff that’s been released last year in a similar vein.
And I’m not talking about those little machines that are basically for emulation, either. We’re talking stuff with modern CPUs and TB3 that you can even hook up an eGPU to.
I’m not saying it’ll fail, and more power to you if you want one …
But I feel that if they’re trying to woo PC gamers with it … they’ll think it’s a bit weaksauce … and if they’re trying to woo casual gamers then … hoo boy … they will REALLY have to learn to actually try to reach them like they didn’t do with the Steam link, etc.
I’ll be passing on it, but it’s a nice looking bit of kit, for sure.
Ooh! I’ve actually been wanting to know about that, as I’m going to switch soon, because I’ve had it up to here with Windows.
1 Like
Do you have any examples? We put down a reservation, but if there is something better available, I’d love to hear about it!
As its the ~equivalent of a ps4 in teraflops~ i looked at the amd ryzen roadmap. 6000 series APU is supposed to have 12 RDNA2 compute units (CUs) per CPU. The steam deck itself will have a total of 8 RDNA2 CUs. Weres the other 4 RDNA 2 CUs?
If i were to get it… cheapest version+dock with a usb-c sata + ssd.
1 Like
Probably quite well
It works well on a vita too fyi
Does he mean laptops?
I’m sure iPhone 12 blows it out of the water power wise btw.
A big issue for me is the non-upgradable storage. The cheapest version is using eMMC storage, which operates on a single lane at a max of about 500mbps. The other 2 have NVMe which runs at a much higher 4 lanes @ 4gbps.
So at the very least. avoid the $400 version!!!
The ONEXPLAYER for starters, I’m purely going on half remembered YouTubes and accidental sideline SBC searches.
The 11th Gen Intel (I’m an AMD boy now, FWIW) is pretty much on par (a bit less) in power, but the RDNA 2 architecture and DDR5 RAM will definitely provide a tip of the hat to the Steam Deck for native gaming over the Intel Iris Xe 96 eu (i7).
However I would say that the key power of the ONEXPLAYER is one that I don’t see many people talking about:
Dual USB4 ports running at 40Gbps.
There you can capably run:
- A (gaming?) monitor
- Supply power and an eGPU off the other at home, then game in 720p on the move.
That is, in short … Massive. I’m not joking when I say that I would genuinely consider using that instead of my new gaming PC (X570 AMD 5900X with all the trimmings) and move the RX 6900 XT into a Mantiz Saturn Pro.
That is (essentially) what I thought Nintendo would do with the original Switch, but it was (in true “Nintendo-n’t” 
style) based on an old NVidia Shield, with nothing extra of note in the dock.
It’s got a rather lovely 1440p >8" screen, bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi 6, and … eh … I’m bored of typing, but you get the drift.
Sure, the base specs are relatively comparable, and yeah, the ONEXPLAYER is a lot more expensive (twice the price) … but, again, that returns me to the “who is this for” and I’ll put a “value proposition” on the top of that, too.
What is slightly murky about the Steam Deck (which, by the way, I’m heavily into) is something that I’ve only seen from one comment, on liliputing about the price:
If Valve is trying to launch a new “class” of device, their pricing here seems like it might kill the companies with any experience or inclination to launch devices in the same class.
There are at least 3 major players already operating in this space, but with a magnitude of levels less exposure than STEAM has to reach people. I think a lot of the development of this range of handheld PCs has been driven (but not really for) the (tiny) emulation market that has a TON of way less powerful ‘sbc with a screen’ variations on the theme. So many of the companies can’t compete with a company that essentially blows them out of the water price wise.
Especially when the Steam bloke said something like “hitting that price point was painful” … that says a bit to me on this level.
Still, the same guy also said that it’s about establishing a platform (so ■■■■ you, I guess, to ONEX, AYA Neo GPD Win 3 ) … and … yeah … I know that this is marketing, but it really does look like pushing aside the others quite a lot.
On the flip side “establishing a platform” and other comments mean that this is the first model. This will get more powerful. In that respect I view it very much like the Switch … crucially missing those few features that I’d want … that will definitely come with a second iteration.
Plus (as Gamers Nexus pointed out) the Steam Deck is advertised as next gen hardware, where it is, let’s be honest … current gen or previous gen in a lot of areas.
Still, whatever makes these things more accessible, and smaller, I’m game for. The competition will hopefully bring NVidia back into the game after (what I think) was a mistake in providing a non-competition promise to Nintendo with their own hardware.
Sure I appreciate that they made some Shield mistakes along the way … but the infrastructure that they built still exists and wasn’t completely murdered by Google and MS cloud gaming. So I wouldn’t rule out a return from them in the future.
Oh … and as an added “hmm” … Intel just released their first dedicated graphics card. It’s not blowing the world away, at all, but it’s a half decent start … it means that they’ll be able to perhaps in a few generations come to play with the big boys and also amp up those onboard graphics (which .
So, yeah … in short … I’m clearly not coming here to troll Steam, plus I don’t think there are “Steam fans” that would get butthurt about me pointing out the above … plus … I think the Steam Deck looks and sounds awesome.
I just think I prefer the alternative, even at double the price.
((( Apologies about any oddities in this post … I had to rush it before running out! )))
I guess my biggest argument is I could just simply spend a bit of cash and upgrade my desktop (not that I currently need it with my rig) for this same price and for the $650 price I could technically spend that on a laptop with comparable specs give or take a little bit.
On top of that, I already have a laptop that runs Boundless just fine I don’t see the need for a handheld with a small screen. Sure you could hook it up to a large screen, but I already have a desktop and a laptop that does the same.
While I love Valve/Steam and have used it for a long time, there really is no ROI for me.
I don’t think the target market is current PC gamers. This looks like it’s for console gamers who want a console-like PC games experience.
1 Like