I remember that around 2017-2018, I was working in a certain game media. At that time, the most reported news about Valve was that “the senior screenwriter of “XXX” (usually “Portal” or “Half-Life”) left again.” , In addition to making fun of the “number 3” stalk, everyone has more thoughts in their hearts: this company that used to make top single-player games has disappeared, and I’m afraid it wants to rely on Steam to lie down and count money.
They did try a lot of hardware, Steam Link, Steam Controller, Steam Machine… But it’s like throwing a stone into the sea, and after splashing water, there is no follow-up. But what I didn’t expect at the time was that the seemingly failed ending was actually the beginning of the ending of Shuangwen. To give a cheesy example, it could be called “The five-year appointment has come, please ask Fat G to do it!”
The game streaming from Steam Link, the touch panel of the Steam Controller, the Linux system of the Steam Machine, and the store community that has been operating for nearly 10 years, all the skill points that Valve has clicked are not in vain. Created the “dream machine” in the hearts of this PC player.
After a brief half-month experience, this is my feeling (this article does not cover installing Windows, because I think SteamOS is the core experience of Deck).
▍How did I buy it?
No matter what I write, someone in the comments is bound to ask “how did you buy it?”, so I will answer the questions that the masses care about most first. Just like the question “how to put an elephant in the refrigerator”, the answer is surprisingly simple: if you live in the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, you can place an order on the official website and pay $5 to line up, and you will wait until you pay and receive the goods. Can. (If you are located in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong/Taiwan, you can book through authorized dealer Komod )
Specifically for me, I paid $5 on the day of the opening on July 17 last year, queued up for the $529 256G version, notified the final payment on March 28 this year, paid the remaining amount, and sent it to my American friend’s home. California pays an additional $50 in tax. But at the time of the epidemic in Shanghai, and I planned to move, it was delayed until mid-July before I finally received it.
The feeling of grabbing is shown in the figure
The overall price is: 3914 RMB ($579, the machine body includes tax) + 561 RMB (83 USD, China and the United States shipping) + 485 RMB (domestic import tax) = 4960 RMB, which is not cheap and a little tossing, but it is relatively Still more cost-effective than cattle.
Valve also recently promised to increase Steam Deck production capacity . If you have a channel to transfer it back, you might as well spend $5 to queue up first, and you can return it even if you don’t buy it.
▍In the hand, Bigger than bigger
A lot of people, including me, have the same reaction when it comes to actually feeling the Steam Deck: it’s just a bit outrageous. It is more like a shrunken handheld PC than a handheld built for portability. “Can be carried around” is one of the defining characteristics of the product, but it is definitely not a high priority. Its rough and bulky shape is designed to Compromises on grip, heat dissipation, battery life, etc.
Want to get a feel for it? The length and width of my custom Keychron K3 are almost the same. If you have a keyboard with 84 keys arranged in 75%, it will be about the size of the Deck in your hand.
The weight of the whole machine of 669 grams has successfully entered the “one pound club”. The thick body brings an excellent grip, which can fill the empty space of the entire palm, which is very ergonomic. The curve of the back is not abandoned for the sake of lightness, which should be deeply understood by Switch handheld mode players. It doesn’t feel heavy to hold, all the keys are within the reach of the thumb, and the middle and ring fingers of the back keys are just right to press.
The overall workmanship is quite satisfactory. The whole machine uses frosted plastic, which is the nemesis of hand sweat and fingerprints. This is a mid-range piece of hardware, and it is not related to delicate and delicate things. It can only be said to be in line with the level of this price range. My left touchpad even has a little abnormal noise when it vibrates.
The Steam Deck doesn’t look good, it’s even a little ugly. The black edge of the screen and the position of the touchpad look a little weird. It feels like something made by a group of engineers: “This thing can be used here, then Design it this way.” There is really no big problem in daily use. It belongs to the kind of products that have no design and are all for practical services. In contrast, domestic brands that pay more attention to design, such as AYANEO AIR , are really good-looking.
▍ Gaming On Linux: A Mixed Experience
Valve officially calls Deck’s system as SteamOS Holo, the version number is 3.x, based on Arch Linux, a bit like Steam’s big screen mode. The UI is completely designed for handle operation, mainly to solve the problem of lack of keyboard and mouse and poor interactive experience of desktop system, which is also a common problem of many handheld computers using Windows system.
You can switch it to KDE Plasma’s desktop environment, connect an external monitor to the docking station, and treat it like a Linux computer.
Choosing Linux as the system was a mixed experience for me, so let’s talk about what I think Deck is positioned for, which can be represented by the following abbreviated diagram.
Traditional consoles (Xbox / Playstation / Nintendo) use closed systems and hardware with uniform specifications to maximize the smoothness and stability of running games; PCs have a large number of game platforms, open Windows systems, and a huge user base. Although there are occasional individual game optimization problems compared to the host, there are generally official or private methods.
And Deck can be said to be a mixed blessing under SteamOS, let me talk about the worries first.
Translating Windows games through Proton is not well supported for every game. There are a total of 431 games in my library, and 105 are officially certified as “very suitable for Deck”.
When trying to run games outside of the “Great for Deck” category, the issues I’ve encountered include, but are not limited to:
- The game has a native Linux version but doesn’t work on Steam Deck
- Games can be run through Proton translation, but only a specific version of Proton can be selected
-
The game can theoretically run, but requires a third-party launcher to be loaded, which is very unstable
Although Linux is also an open system, there is almost no support you can get in terms of games. If you can’t run it, you can’t play. Does this require manufacturer updates or V Club support? It’s hard to figure out; want to make a Chinese patch? No; the network is not good to open an accelerator? Not in the system. As the picture shows: more open than the mainframe, but not as convenient as a PC .
Compared with the traditional concept of handheld consoles, it is by no means an out-of-the-box experience of “It Just Work”, and more often requires you to spend some research and toss.
After talking about the worries, let’s talk about the joy it brought me.
After I got the machine, I sometimes lay on my bed and thought, “Is this really a work that can run smoothly on a handheld?”. I used to buy a PS4 to play “GTA5” in my freshman year. I watched this huge trapezoidal object exhale and exhale heat every day, and I could only run to 30 frames. And now with less than 15W of power consumption, I can hold the entire Los Santos in my hand, which is one of the few moments in recent years when I feel happy because of technological progress.
According to the different compatibility conditions, the games on Deck are divided into four types. Although the proportion of fully verified games is currently low, it is guaranteed to play normally. Valve is also constantly testing and increasing the number of games in the list. There are about 4000+ games that have passed the verification” and “playable”. Well-known masterpieces in recent years, such as “The Ring of Eldon”, “God of War”, “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” and “Final Fantasy 7 Remake”, as well as some independent games with better sales are in this range. You can find out how a particular game is running on the Deck through the official Steam page , ProtonDB , Steam Deck Verified Games .
There is also an interesting episode here, showing Valve’s unique understanding of PC optimization from years of experience. The release of Steam Deck coincided with the release of “Ayrden’s Circle”. The performance of the PC version was not good, but the Deck was able to Stays silky smooth.
The main reason is the shader pre-cache, which is responsible for the details of surfaces such as plants, ground, and water in the game. Since the PC is compiled with the game running, if the performance is poor, it will be used the first time you visit an area. It will cause lag. Valve’s solution is to precompile this part through the Proton compatibility layer and push it to players through the network.
This is why Deck is often seen downloading “shaders and cache updates”, and this kind of “helping developers optimize the game” is probably something that only a company like Valve can do with a digital store, hardware and software. If you are interested in this part, you can watch DigitalFoundry ‘s video to understand.
Another surprise to me is the frequency and speed of the system software OTA. It can be said that the amount is large and sufficient. I have already listed “no Chinese input method” as one of the shortcomings, but the manuscript has not been written yet, August 3 The 3.3 update of No. 3.3 has added Chinese input method. Almost every time the version number is jumped, a lot of feature improvements will be added, such as the previously updated lock refresh rate, FSR, TDP control, etc. The attitude of continuous improvement makes me optimistic about the future of Deck. Be confident.
▍This is the “handheld mode” for PC players
The most important thing about the game console is to play games, this part is to talk about my gaming experience.
Benchmarks are all over the web, and here I list a few of my favorites and what performance expectations to keep with Deck.
You can probably see that for 3D works in recent years, you can only choose two out of three in terms of frame rate/image quality/resolution to achieve a more ideal battery life. “I want all of them” is not impossible, but The battery life is reduced to less than 2 hours, which is too bad for a handheld device.
And 2D independent games are very happy, 8W power consumption can be played at full resolution of 60 frames for an afternoon, I personally prefer to use it to play small and medium-sized works, which can balance a smooth game experience while ensuring battery life.
“2 to 8 hours of game time”, this is also the main reason why Deck officially marked the battery life deviation is so large, this is like a car that players can adjust their performance orientation at will, you can increase the horsepower and race crazy, or you can be quiet Quietly go to work and buy groceries. Other equipment officials take care of everything for you, and Valve gives all control to the player.
What is the benefit of this? PC players have a similar idea to Windows, which is also a secondary machine in the Steam ecosystem. They understand the meaning of different screen setting options. On home PCs, they can continue the game progress through cloud archives when they go out.
The downside, as I mentioned before, is that this kind of experience is by no means similar to a game console, and players without relevant experience have a bad experience.
The most important menu in the OS is the performance panel exhaled from the side, which is a bit like a combination of graphics card drivers and performance statistics software. Sometimes you will be amazed at Valve’s attention to the needs of enthusiasts. Nerd makes products for Nerd probably That’s it, after all, who doesn’t want to see the frequency of the CPU, the refresh rate of the screen, and the TDP, so that the power consumption of the whole machine can be adjusted manually?
In addition to Steam, it can also run third-party game platforms. I logged in to Epic and GOG through the Heroic Games Launcher , so that I can play the games that Epic gets for free every week . Don’t be sad, G fat .
However, as mentioned above, Epic does not currently have a Linux client, and will not download the corresponding native Linux version like Steam. In essence, it still runs through Proton translation, and the support situation is also random. If you have to ask me: Can Steam Deck run XXX? (A certain platform/game/emulator), my answer is: if it is not supported natively, it may be possible to save the country through a curve, but it only requires the time cost of tossing, installation and debugging .
▍Make Valve cool again: It turns out that there are companies that really care about users
When we say a company is “cool”, it generally means that they have a rebellious temperament, and at the same time listen to the voices of users to improve products, as if it is a state of “one’s own people understand their own people”. Apple, Google, Netflix… they used to be cool, are they cool now? Shareholders don’t seem to care about this compared to the ability to make money.
Steam Deck has maintained a rare candor and openness in the industry since its announcement. Are you worried that the machine is broken and difficult to repair? The official dismantling teaches you step by step; how to buy replacement parts? All are available on ifixit ; 64G version of eMMC storage is too bad? The beggar version can buy a 2230 solid-state replacement.
Candor, humor, understanding of players and technology is what I feel at Valve through Deck. Finally, I end with a description of Deck’s initial firmware update, “specifically…” “The screen is very technical” “don’t worry, it’s normal”, since the last time you saw the update instructions written in human words How long?
Just in case you’re curious: on the right is the upgrade screen with “the picture is very technical”
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Author: a dog
Editor in charge: Kiririn
This article is reprinted from: https://www.yystv.cn/p/9568
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