With the current rise of PC ARM processor (Apple silicone, Snapdragon X), anyone feel like Steam missed the opportunity when developing Deck with x86 and now they have to stick with it?
I tried Apple MacBook Air M2 with a bunch of games and emulators and it runs amazing while being extremely efficient.
I can run Switch emulator Ryujinx with Mario Kart Deluxe 8 at 60FPS and it only need 12Wh, compared to my PC (i5, 1070) need ~150Wh to do the same thing.
I do think that the future of handheld devices is ARM or RISC-V, but the software support isn’t there yet and would severely limit what could be played.
The fact that almost no PC games support ARM is stopping them. When lots game developers start releasing ARM or RISC-V versions, then Valve may consider an ARM or RISC-V Steam Deck. They will still have to have an emulator to run the older x86 games though.
This is where I’m confused. Games for Mac seem to run fine on both Intel Mac and Apple silicone Mac, and run even better on the later.
The only downside is Apple has dropped support for 32bit so it broke a lot of old games.
If Valve can make Proton to bridge the gap between Windows and Linux, I’m sure they can do something to make x86 games run on ARM (just like Apple did and they’re not even focused on gaming, Apple hates gamers)
Someone on Lemmy said that would require Valve to completely rewrite the Proton layer (which they’ve invested tons of time and money in) and probably the SteamOS would require significant overhaul too. And all the backwards compatibility would be thrown out the window.
Or in other words, that would require Valve to completely redesign the Deck from scratch.
Considering the trend seems to be a move towards ARM (see Mac M1, Windows on ARM + Window’s ARM translation layer) - I wouldnt be surprised if they do exactly that, eventually.
There’s already some work that might lead to it. As ARM gains prevalence, I think it’ll happen sooner rather than later - once all of those dependencies do all the hard work. The efficiency of ARM for mobile devices like the Steam Deck really just scream for it
Short Answer: it’s complicated, but yes
Something might but it has to meet a bunch of criteria. A lot of these handheld have flaws or drawbacks and none of them are perfect:
- powerful APU to run latest games
- OLED screen
- VRR
- Front firing speakers
- comfortable to hold
- back buttons not in the way, but easy to reach
- hall effect sticks and triggers
- trackpad(s)
- good software for device control
- large battery
- lots of fast ram (24gb)
- full size nvme expansion
Most handhelds I see meet a bunch of those but not all of them.
Nope.
The big thing is that the Deck uses Linux which allows Steam to provide an amazing interface.
All the “competition” still tries to use Windows, and the experience is appalling.
It’s almost everything. You can play most games on Linux. You can’t bolt-on the quality of life features that Valve has on Windows.
There’s a reason most Steam Deck users don’t install Windows on it, even though you can.
This is just my experience, but I have had next to zero issues running games on the Deck that were related to the platform. Most problems I’ve encountered are along the lines of the game being KBM-centric and it being difficult to play with the controller inputs.
The only Linux-specific issues I can’t think of are related to trying to install or mod games outside of Steam (Skyrim in particular is far more difficult to mod on Linux than I expected).
The big thing is that the Deck uses Linux which allows Steam to provide an amazing interface
For most people, i think it’s just that it has a good UI. They don’t bother whether it’s linux-powered. Maybe it’s possible to create a good UI in windows as well, but it will be bogged down by 100s of unwanted processes.
No, Microsoft don’t allow it. As part of the distribution licence you are not allowed to customise the OOB interface.
People don’t know it’s Linux, but it’s absolutely because of Linux that it works.
I think sometime in the next few years an ARM based portable gaming PC could challenge the Steam Deck. ARM is a more efficient architecture, so it could have significantly more battery life, the only hurdle is getting x86 emulation performant enough.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
While other vendors continually push out new handheld pc models, sticking similar internals into different shell designs and gradually bumping up RAM or the Processor, the Steam Deck just keeps selling like hot tasty cakes.
There’s multiple other devices out there now that are in a few ways more powerful than the Steam Deck, but that hasn’t seemed to matter a whole lot to Valve.
Especially since the release of the Steam Deck OLED, which was a pretty huge upgrade, it’s constantly a global top seller for Valve.
When compared with other vendors like GPD, AYANEO, ASUS and all the others, Valve of course have the Steam store to back it up.
Other vendors don’t really have anything like that, so Valve are in a more unique position to stick to one main model.
You only have to look at the new built-in Game Recording feature to see, and the upcoming SteamOS 3.6 that recently moved from Preview to Beta that again brings in some big additions.
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