Not gonna lie. That is hella hype. Although it does make it harder to target hardware as a game dev. It does however make the whole ecosystem way better.
Hope they introduce some minimum hardware requirements that a hand-held has to have for it to be steamos compatible. That way devs can target that hardware and it will run on any steamos verified device
Minimum hardware requirements are likely to be performance (at relevant minimum resolution) and battery life at least on the same level as the current Steam Deck.
I don’t think that’s feasible. The current set of handhelds have the OG Deck at the bottom end of the performance tier anyway, that’ll only become relevant if and when a Deck 2 releases, and at that point it will be the same problem to solve with or without third party hardware.
You are assuming that all non steam deck handhelds are going to be better than the steamdeck performance wise. While this may be the case with the ROG Ally I don’t think it holds true with all handhelds so there is possibility for a hand-held with less performance than the steamdeck to be verified
It’s 100% true of all Windows handhelds released after the OG Steam Deck, yes. This is not because the Deck is bad, it’s because they all are running the same two or three APUs, all built on the same AMD architecture. If it came after the Deck, it’s a 6800U with a 780M or slightly better than that, and no new handhelds going forward will launch with anything significantly worse than that.
So beyond retroactive support for first-gen AyaNeo or GPD handhelds that are older than the Deck, I don’t think this is a major concern. And if you’re on one of those, which were incredibly expensive at launch compared to the Deck, I think you should be pretty well used to underwhelming performance by the time SteamOS verifies them, if ever.
It’s really not a realistic scenario. Our floor for performance is well established and this is coming so far down the line that we shouldn’t expect to return to it at this point.
What about someone targeting a handheld spec that actually fits in your pocket? Surely that would be weaker.
Would it?
The GPD Win 4 is roughly the size of a thick PSVita and that ran on a 6800U as well and they released newer ones all the way up to 8800U without increasing the size. Ditto for the Ayaneo Flip, which is still chunky but it’s clamshell, so I guess you could cargo pants it.
Ayaneo also makes the Air, which is supposed to be exactly that, and I think there is a model that targets a smaller APU and is super thin, but the next in line already jumps to the 7840U and is comparable to the Deck. I have to imagine that even small PC handhelds will match that performance going forward.
There are pocketable handhelds out there, but they’re generally Android-based, which makes a lot more sense. I think for PC we’ll see people trying to hit this level of performance in a compact form factor, but I’d be shocked if people tried to go back to sub-6800 performance on PC on new devices.
Again, the point of the Deck is standardized performance, and it quickly became exactly that. Things will get messier once the Deck is replaced by a higher spec, but in the meantime, if it’s certified for baseline Deck you’re either probably fine or in such a tiny niche (you own 5840u version of the AyaNeo Air? Who are you) that you probably know what you can do with it.
Hi. I’m the guy that wants a low-spec model that fits in my pocket. I exist. Just gimme something that can run my favorite 2D indie games and I’m happy.
I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus last year and ended up loving it far more than my Deck, which is actually just gathering dust still. And now I dream of seeing SteamOS in that size.
But nothing you’re describing will fit in that kind of form factor. So if you want to enforce minimum specs, you’re really telling me I can’t have my dream handheld.
To be clear, I’m not advocating to enforcing a minimum spec. I’m saying that there isn’t a need to add a performance rating to a SteamOS certification or to the SteamOS compatibility badges because if they’re all based on Steam Deck performance they will be valid for all the other certified devices by default. At least until a Deck 2 is released.
I love small handhelds. The Retroid Pocket Mini is great (shame about the bad scaling on the screen). But those are typically Android handhelds for a reason. I don’t think a PC handheld in that form factor is worth it. You can just run Linux on ARM and get the form factor without the whole thing running like a hot potato for 15 minutes before it dies. There’s a lot of native ports of small PC indie games in that space and ongoing work for per-game port support, too.
Now, all that could change if the upcoming mobile chips we get are great at running at very low wattages and somehow get amazing power management options on the software side out of nowhere. But… I just don’t think that’s a priority for anybody specifically because ARM chips already have a well established ecosystem to give you basically what you want without having to tie the X64 platform in knots for the sake of running this over Steam instead of Android.
I would not be shocked to find that people are willing to go back to sub 6800 performance in exchange for something the size of those Android devices. There are tons of 2D and low spec 3D games that are very popular that they would run, and pocket sized handheld x64 machines are a niche to fill to stand out from the Steam Deck.
You won’t be shocked, though, because like I just told you there is already a couple of those and they didn’t do well, only to be replaced by 7800U variants in the same form factor (plus a tad of battery chonk, perhaps). This is not a hypothetical.
Seriously, man, just read what people are telling you. If somebody is threatening to tase you unless you’re immediately contrarian irrespective of the information being presented to you blink twice and we’ll send someone.
Definitely not with the AYN Loki. So I do see your point.
This is cool, more options are better.
It does, however, make me REALLY want Valve to add official third party library support. I have thousands of games on GOG and hundreds on Epic. I don’t need them to officially support all of them, but at least I need a better approach to integrating them than fiddling with Heroic or Lutris in desktop mode.
Playnite integrates all launchers into one with a controller friendly UI but it’s only available on Windows.
Yeah, there are a bunch of alternatives. I don’t even think it’s as much of a problem on Desktop Linux, where having Steam and Heroic/Lutris going at the same time isn’t a big deal.
But all the hoops to integrate other launchers inside Steam Game Mode and the friction in trying to use them reliably in that environment are just not mainstream viable or functional. As long as that works the way it currently does I’ll default my handleds to autobooting into Windows Big Picture instead.
Which, by the way, is totally a thing you can do. People always act like there’s a much bigger gap than there actually is between those two options. You mostly only lose the well integrated display and power controls, which may be a bigger or smaller deal depending on what your Windows handheld uses instead.
I 100% agree with you on your first 2 paragraphs. I really love my Deck, but God damn is it annoying getting things like Battle.net, GOG, and/or Epic games working inside of it in Game Mode sometimes.
Apps like NonSteamLaunchers or Heroic help a lot, but they don’t always work smoothly. Like I had the itch to try out WoW again this week after not playing for numerous years (I’d heard War Within was really good). Getting battle.net installed and working within Game Mode was a major pain in the ass. I’d done it a few months ago for Diablo 4 without much headache, but somehow when I tried launching BNet last night, it wouldn’t. NonSteamLauncher’s BNet integrator also wasn’t working for whatever reason. So I had to do a few workarounds before I got one that worked.
It’s scenarios like that where I truly wish Valve would try harder to work with companies like Epic or Blizzard to get better native integration. I know Epic is a competitor, but really it’d be beneficial for both companies to have good integration between each other. I’m much more inclined to buy games on Epic if I can easily play them on my Deck, and I’m more lore inclined to stay within Steam’s ecosystem if I’m not constantly encountering these annoying obstacles. It will likely never happen, but I can dream
As for your last paragraph, are you referring to wiping your Deck and just installing Windows? I’ve been hesitant to do that due to how often I use the sleep mode function in games. I’ve tried using sleep mode on my desktop PC like that when I can’t save a game and I need to stop to do other stuff, and it’s really hit or miss if a game will resume without issue after waking. Have you had any problems? Also, how is your battery life impacted? The Deck has crazy good battery life, and I attribute a lot of that to how efficient the underlying OS is with power management, but maybe I’m wrong. Also, do you have issues with drivers? The APU on the Deck is a custom AMD chipset, but have people ported the drivers for it over to Windows now?
Oh, no, I’m talking about Windows native handhelds, which may be getting SteamOS support in the future, as per the original post.
I think a lot of people (reviewers included, weirdly) assume that you need to navigate those with a mouse replacement every time, so you get a lot of complaints about how bad using Windows without a mouse is compared to Steam OS on Game Mode. But you can absolutely set up Steam to a) autolaunch on boot, and b) launch straight into Big Picture mode. At that point once you unlock your Windows handheld you’re straight in the Steam fullscreen mode interface and can do everything (within Steam) with a controller.
Not that I think tapping the Steam icon to manually open it up is that much of a hassle, anyway.
I do have a Deck, but they never made good on their early promises to make it easy to use with Windows. Which they did make, I remember. But nope, if you have a Deck you should probably stick to Steam OS. Valve should just find a better way to integrate third party launchers.
Ahhh, I misunderstood your earlier comment, my bad. Yeah, if I had a windows handheld, setting it up to boot straight into Steam Big Picture would be a no-brainer for me, just as a minor QOL thing.
As for your other point, I don’t remember them saying that, but that’s pretty crappy they fell through on delivering on that promise. I’m just hoping as SteamOS/Linux gaming continues growing in popularity that developers just start putting more effort into native support.
I have tried it but Big Picture mode in Windows is extremely limited because
- Cannot change system settings (Power usage/fan-curve/FPS/Refresh rate)
- Cannot add Bluetooth device (controller/headphone) within Steam; need to switch back to Windows
- Floating windows interfere with application focus since there is no gamescope. You need to use the touchscreen from time to time which is annoying
- No Decky Loader
The current way to play Epic/GoG/Amazon games on the Steam Deck is
- Switch to desktop mode
- From the app store, search for Heroic Launcher and install
- Launch Heroic
- Put login credentials for Epic/GoG/Amazon
- Wait for your library to get populated
- Install the games
- Add Heroic as a non-Steam application
- Switch back to Big Picture mode
- Launch Heroic
- Play games
While the number of steps seems like a lot, if you compare against the Windows equivalent, it’s not a lot simply because Windows has no Big Picture/console mode. I personally hate the desktop mode in Windows because I’m forced to use the touchscreen constantly.
What would you like to be changed in this process?
I am aware of the set of steps, but a) I’ve had issues getting it to work in the past, particularly getting new games to install under Steam as opposed to adding them in Desktop mode every time and b) what I want is an official way to install and launch third party games, or at least third party launchers from within Steam, the way GOG Galaxy or even Heroic itself supports.
Right now, I play those on Windows handhelds instead, where the steps are:
- Boot the device
- Click on the launcher you want
Which is similar to doing this on Linux desktop, where the steps are:
- Boot the device
- Click on the launcher you want
Oh, and for the record, as I said above, Windows absolutely does have a Big Picture mode. You can set up Steam to launch on boot straight into Big Picture. If all you want is to play Steam games you never have to use the Desktop on Windows either. Because I do play a ton of GOG games and emulation over Retroarch I prefer to boot into Desktop where my launchers are pinned to the taskbar, so it’s literally one tap to open whichever launcher I want. But Steam absolutely goes into Big Picture after that. Like I said earlier the only functional difference is that the settings button brings up the proprietary screen and power manager instead of the SteamOS Game Mode alternative, but otherwise the Steam interface is much the same.
Why do people not realize this is the case? Big Picture was available on Windows (at boot, even) long before the Deck happened. I’ve been a longtime Steam-on-TV user, this isn’t new.
what I want is an official way to install and launch third party games, or at least third party launchers from within Steam
While I think this would be great for everybody, but I think the money-oriented guys inside Valve would think it’s a bad idea. If you present an easy way to install other launcher to the masses, people will be swayed away from buying from the Steam store. Valve wants publishers to stay on their store; that is their trump card. I remember someone tried putting an alternate store on Steam Store and it was quickly removed to avoid legal troubles.
Windows absolutely does have a Big Picture mode. You can set up Steam to launch on boot straight into Big Picture. If all you want is to play Steam games you never have to use the Desktop on Windows either
BigPicture in Windows is extremely nerfed compared to Bazzite/SteamOS which I have detailed in this comment and further elaborated in this post. The tl;dr version is “yes you can use BigPicture but you still have to deal with a lot of Windows shenanigans”
Source: I’m a user of both Steam Deck OLED and ROG Ally.
Yeah, man, I have a bunch of Windows handhelds and both Deck models. I… may have a problem, but I know how it works.
And yeah, I do realize that the Deck and SteamOS game mode doubles as an attempt to complete Valve’s dominance over the PC market. I just think that sucks. If GOG can allow you to integrate Epic and Steam then so can Steam. And until they do that, the Deck is less useful to me than a Windows handheld because I keep as much of my gaming library as possible within GOG.
For the record, your posts kinda misrepresent how Big Picture works in practice. Like I said, yeah, you can’t change power and screen settings (and bluetooth) directly on Steam, but most Windows handhelds have a shortcut button with those options in it that is, let’s be honest, just copying the Steam version. Depending on your brand it is more or less useful, but it’s not like you have to whip out a mouse to do those things. I still think most of those implementations are worse than SteamOS’s fully integrated version, and Big Picture over Windows is overall a bit laggier and less responsive… but I mean, it’s close enough and it absolutely beats being cut off from several thousand games.
While I don’t agree with you on the usability of Big Picture on Windows, I certainly agree with you on one point; it would be great if other game launchers could be seamlessly installed on the Steam Deck.
However I’m happy that other launchers are available for those who go through the slightly lengthy process.
PS: I don’t agree there are 1000s of games not able to run on the Steam Deck, it’s mostly these games on the list. (https://areweanticheatyet.com/)
Gamers are used to fiddling, so that shouldn’t be a big deal for now
“Gamers are used to fiddling”?
No. Gamers are largely playing on Switch. And PS5, sometimes.
The residual amount of people playing on PC are annoyed by fiddling, with very rare exceptions.
Hell, I fiddle. I’ve been known to fiddle in my day. And I’m here complaining about the fiddling. I’m a representative of extreme tolerance to fiddling and I’m annoyed.
I like fiddling. Sometimes i fiddle and then never actually use what I was fiddling with once it’s working. But even I would gladly welcome not needing to fiddle at all.
Lol I literally did that twice yesterday with two seperate games…
But yeah, I also have a PS5, and it’s great to just hit X and go.
Fiddling with things and actually using things are entirely independent hobbies.
As any midde age nerd who briefly got into restoring retro gaming hardware will tell you. Not that I would know anything about that.
I went nuts with retro restores and collecting in the 2010s. Now it’s just a bunch of shit in my bedroom that annoys my wife. It’s nice to have it all though. Here recently I’ve been using my Genesis 6 button arcade stick on the Steam deck and playing classic mortal kombat. I hardly ever have to buy hardware because I have everything that was made between 1980 and 2005.
It’s like the kid in me who only got two games per console and had to borrow the rest or rent them just exploded. I have a game shelf that my 12 year old self would sit before and cry. I don’t have time for any of it which would make him cry some more.
The thing is, I play a ton of retro games, but I mostly mediate that through RetroAchievements. Since they keep adding new games and have leaderboards and so on it’s a great way to have something to follow to help you prioritize your time, instead of standing in front of a wall of boxes paralyzed between replaying Sonic 2 or trying some obscure thing you got seven times in bundles.
But I still love having original hardware in working order plugged into a CRT. It’s just almost an archeological pursuit. A shrine to what all these repurposed games I play on modern hardware used to actually look like. And it’s fun to fiddle with them for maintenance.
I feel you there. It’s funny, you described me last night exactly and I played about 10 minutes of sonic 2 haha. Everything is plugged into an old Apple color monitor. I love that thing and I’ve had it all my life.
I’m gonna check that out. I had never heard of it.
PC represents more than half of the market at this point, which we’ve seen in investor reports from the likes of Ubisoft and Capcom, even if many PC players are annoyed by fiddling.
Not true. Or very incomplete, at least. By the newest reports the market is 49% mobile, 28% console and 23% PC, but that’s by revenue, not player counts.
See, if you wanted to torture stats to shoo me away, you should have gone by the market share of GOG, which is quite small. Technically by the numbers they’d be smarter to prioritize getting Roblox and Fortnite working first.
I definitely don’t consider mobile to be the same market, for what you must find to be obvious reasons. I’m not sure where GOG comes into this discussion at all.
I swear, online contrarians don’t even bother to read what they respond to now.
GOG comes into play because you’re arguing about the necessity of Steam offering third party store support in SteamOS game mode. Welcome back to the conversation you’re actually having.
In an online forum, where you can write a paragraph, the replies you get may or may not pertain to the entire conversation and instead only one part of it. I responded only to the size of the market used to fiddling, and that’s the conversation you and I were having. However, you seem like an extremely unpleasant person, or maybe someone who just had a bad day, so I’m not interested in continuing that conversation.
I want SteamOS on desktop 😅
Check out Bazzite. It even has a GNOME variant.
I second Bazzite. It’s been a phenomenal experience on my laptop.
Interestingly, I was messing with BoxBuddy a week or two ago, and looking at what distroboxes were available to install, and there’s a SteamOS container on there. Not sure if it’s official or what, but I was able to run games on it (though absolutely unnecessary).
How is bazzite as a daily driver?
Pretty solid on desktop. Most issues i have are upstteam and not bazzite related. Main annoying thing is you can’t install fedora packages and have to mainly rely on appimages and flatpaks
What are you hoping to get from SteamOS that you aren’t able to get from any other Linux distro?
No system management. A set once and forget it system, ala console style, but with the potential of off the shelf high power components for PC games on the living room is a quality proposition.
Bazzite as HTPC and you can do that already, if you want to test your dream.
Sure, but the support, both technical and reputational that a steam OS compatible machine brings would steer the market for more accessible and purpose made components. Bazzite is awesome and my daily driver, but it doesn’t have the fancy endorsement of Valve, the owner of the largest game store in the world today.
I just think it’d be neat to have a gaming Linux distro, made by a company that distributes games. Maybe it will be a standard distro for game developers to test their games.
I use my Deck docked regularly. In desktop use I see no benefit over Fedora and alike.
I’m hoping to build my first Desktop soon and i’m praying that Valve gets an Official SteamOS release out by then. I’d kill to have it.
I’d kill to have it
US army: Heyyy
I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus last year, just an impulse buy because it was on sale dirt cheap. Ended up liking it so much I wish I’d bought a more expensive model with analog sticks.
Meanwhile, my Deck gathers dust because it’s just too bulky too fill the void left behind by the GBC/GBA/DS I grew up on.
First manufacturer to get SteamOS running on a form factor that fits in my pocket gets my entire bank account. Doesn’t have to be beefy, just needs to run all my favorite 2D indie games.
I bet there will be phones or tablets that will get this through the community.
Let’s see what MS has to say about that. Although they won’t say anything officially, of course. But they’ll certainly try to prevent this sort of thing from catching on from behind the scenes.
Back in Balmers days there would have been a mysterous briefcase men suggesting adjusted prices for all future MS involvement.
And you really believe they’re not doing that any more?
Probably, but back then they were really aggressive and even went after some small school in ass end of the world, because local newspapers had informed that the school was planning to swap computer lab devices to use various open source operating systems.
In went the MS briefcase man and the plans were scrapped in silence.
They’re less open about it but you can bet they’re still at it. Any OEM that sells anything but Windows will be penalised in licensing deals.
This is the only thing that could push me to upgrade from my steamdeck. SteamOS is so slick.
I’m currently running Bazzite but have been thinking about picking up an ROG Ally X for my husband. I think it having steam OS would be better for him in general. Hope this is available soon.
Get him an OLED Steam Deck instead. I don’t know why anyone would get a ROG, especially if you’re just going to put SteamOS on it.
He has the same problem I did. He has games that aren’t compatible with steam os and it’s one of those things where it’s actually easier to dual boot windows than it is to fuck around with compatibility layers for things that don’t run in proton.
He also isn’t a fan of the touchpads. I personally like the ergonomics of the Ally x better but that’s my own preference.
Ngl, even though I am happy about this, ill prob just stick to bazzite, and just move anything else thats “powered by steamOS” to it as well. And Windows. I am simply too much a sucker for the quality of life stuff on it, like ROM data taken from the file
What makes Bazzite so much better to use on a Deck versus SteamOS? It doesn’t seem any different than just using Remote Play/Moonlight/whatever and streaming from your main gaming rig?
Have you visited their website? It explains what it is and it is definitely a lot more than just a way to stream games from your PC. How did you come up with that conclusion?
That’s the first description on the website. It says it’s a cloud native Linux image that comes pre-installed with all the apps for gaming, e.g. Steam, Lutris, etc. I was asking a question as to why it’s better than SteamOS, as when I see cloud native I just assume it’s something designed for and around streaming. I may be misunderstanding its purpose, but that’s the impression I get from the site.
The main advantages of Bazzite versus SteamOS is receiving system packages in updates at a much faster rate, choice of an alternative desktop environment, Waydroid support, layering system-level packages at your own risk without messing with the filesystem, and printing support.
From their FAQ page https://docs.bazzite.gg/General/FAQ/
Pretty much all linux distros have printing support
Except SteamOS, as I discovered when I needed it badly.
Still, I’m sticking to SteamOS on the deck and Bazzite for the desktop.
Yeah, it seems to be a misunderstanding. They are using cloud tools to generate and update the base operating system.
“Better” is always relative. Personally I generally prefer not to use software that comes bundled with the hardware, that way I avoid any vendor lock in. The hardware vendor should not be in a position of deciding what I should or shouldn’t be able to do with their hardware, and software should be open to the customer, so that it does exactly what they want, not more or less.
