Valve’s brand new hardware
The engineers at Valve software have seemingly been hard at work creating a new mobile gaming device that has the potential to flip the gaming industry on its head. The Steam deck is a new mobile gaming device advertising PC level power in a Nintendo Switch form factor.
Announced on July 15, the steam deck boasts impressive specs. Using AMD’s previous generation Ryzen 2 architecture, it contains an AMD APU with 4 cores (8 threads) and 8 RDNA2 compute units. There are three models, with the main difference being a variation in storage. The cheapest option starts at $399.00 US with 64GB of eMMC storage. The other two models cost $529.00 US with 256GB NMVe storage and $649.00 US with 512GB NVMe storage.
The Steam Deck’s display maxes out at 1280 x 800px (16:10 aspect ratio). The screen has a average refresh rate of 60Hz and comes with touch screen support.
What’s the big deal?
Unlike the locked down Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck is going to ship with Steam-OS 3.0, which will be Arch-based. Imagine the portability of the Switch, with the software flexibility of a Desktop running Linux. Valve will also be selling a USB-C dock that will enable quick swapping to a full desktop setup.
Practical uses for a device like this include:
- Access to all Linux/Proton supported games in the user’s Steam Library
- Game streaming
- Retro game emulation
- Media consumption (Netflix, Plex, etc)
- Desktop Productivity
- etc…
What about Anti-Cheat software?
Anti-Cheat software has been a major roadblock for Linux Gaming for quite some time. Because the Steam Deck will be shipping with Linux, Valve claims that they are working with Battle Eye and Easy-Anti-Cheat to support that pesky Anti-Cheat software ahead of the Steam Deck’s launch. If Valve is able to accomplish this monumental task, it will have major rippling effects throughout the Linux gaming ecosystem.
If all else fails, the steam deck will have support for Windows, or any other OS the user wants to install.
So, whats the catch?
As with any product, I would heavily recommend avoiding pre-ordering and wait for trusted reviews to be released before purchasing the Steam Deck. Valve has quite the history of starting and abandoning products. The Steam Controller and Steam Boxes are two perfect examples of Valve hardware failing to live up to Valve’s ambitious expectations.
“Valve Time” is also a major issue with the company. Assuming we actually get a release date of December 2021, we may not see Anti-Cheat support for a long time after the Steam Deck’s release. Valve was working with EAC for Proton support back in 2019 until all work was halted shortly after EAC was purchased by Epic Games.
Personally, I believe that as long as there is not any glaring hardware issues with the Steam Deck after release, most of the concerns listed above can be ignored. The Steam Deck is a PC at its core. Even if Valve abandons the project, I expect there will be enough community support for such a unique device to continue being useful for years to come.
One final consideration
Valve isn’t the only company creating Switch-like PCs. Other companies such as GPD have been in the mobile gaming space for some time now. GPD in particular released the GPD Win 3 roughly 6 months ago with similar features to the Steam Deck. The main advantage the Steam Deck has over these similar products is the fact that it will be a 1st party product for Steam and will have the backing from the gaming Goliath that is Valve. You can check out the Steam Deck here.
No matter what happens, this will likely mean a big step forward for gaming on Linux, which is a huge relief because Windows 11 looks like garbage.
Let me know what you think about the Steam Deck/Mobile gaming in the comments.
This was posted late at night, expect edits. Corrections in the comments is appreciated.