Steam Deck

Had a quick go on a Steam Deck over the weekend (!!)

Sadly not an extended session, but briefly played Skater XL, GTA5 and Borderlands 2.

All ran pretty flawlessly (although GTA5 did take an age to load) without the need to fiddle with any menus to optimise framerate or anything. I was very impressed.

The console (?) itself looks great. It's very comfortable to hold (much moreso than the Switch) and doesn't feel heavy at all.

I didn't have much of an opportunity to do much outside of the 3 games mentioned, but the UI was quick - as you would expect. That said, there seemed to be a huge number of options, menus etc so I can see people getting 'lost'. I assume it's easy to buy/download games but it's definitely easy to browse your library of games and pick one to play.

The only thing it left me wishing was that the screen was a touch larger and brighter.

Overall I'm super impressed and can't wait for mine to eventually arrive

Mine had moved to Q3 as well. Slightly frustrating but to be honest it's just a nice plaything for me so I can wait.

I (think) I was in the Q2 window before, but I might be wrong.

When do they ask for payment? I've got a Q3 pre order which I will cancel unless I run into some money before then.

You might get lucky and drop into Q3. I reserved mine pretty close to launch and have just gone from after Q2 to Q3, so nice to have a vague idea of when to expect it/plan to set the money aside.

Q2 order here. This ticks all boxes for me to board the hype train…

…but I realise what I want most is a handheld device with convenient access to Game Pass.

- Yes, xCloud is available with an acceptable amount of tinkering on the Edge Browser. I’d prefer Remote Play if it isn’t going to be native, but then again Xbox’s Remote Play isn’t as good as it should be.

- Yes, dual-booting to Windows will be an option at some point in the future. Dual-booting to an SD card would be tempting, but then you miss the slick interface and easy access to tweak power settings etc on SteamOS (and no doubt have to suffer a trillion Windows updates for redundant parts of the OS).

Getting native Game Pass access on to SteamOS would be the ideal solution, but it would be too good to be true. Steam would potentially be cutting off a big chunk of potential revenue if they allowed that to happen.

(Does anyone know of a good, readily available Android dedicated handheld device with a 5GHz Wi-Fi chip for <£200?)

I’ll probably keep the order for the sake of its potential as much as anything. Game Pass is particularly appealing because I know that getting more access to the Steam library is going to end up with more choice paralysis - at least with playing from GP there is at least some restriction in the titles I want to play! 😅

Yeah, that would make this the perfect device. There will be workarounds to do it, but I suspect it will always be a hassle. The obvious solution will be to install Windows. Early impressions of doing that have been fairly negative though. Some of that will be driver related and will hopefully improve, but I think there will always be odd quirks that make using Windows on the Deck subpar. I also get the impression Valve have done lots of behind the scene tricks with the OS to get every bit of performance out of the hardware. Performance on Windows seems to be terrible, at least for the moment. Valve are unlikely to look to improve that.

The only hope for a good Game Pass experience on Deck is that Microsoft suddenly decide to create a Linux app or, the perfect solution, put Game Pass on Steam. Neither of those options seem likely. I guess there is streaming (do you need an Xbox for that?) but, personally, that isn't something I would be that interested in.

However, I expect MS are watching the Deck closely. If it becomes a very big success, I wouldn't be surprised to see MS announce a handheld XBox. That's going to be a few years down the line though.

Yeah, I doubt I'll touch windows apart from maybe as a dual boot option for a couple of games like Destiny 2/Diablo 3.
Definitely wouldn't be my choice for a primary OS.

Again on the Odin; this guy does great reviews: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK9-5fdpicg

I see he's left a comment on GamePass too: The reason the ABXY were swapped in the GamePass app was due to the fact that I had mapped the M2 button to the top-left corner as my "Xbox" button. When using the key mapper the controls somehow automatically swap the ABXY to the Odin/Nintendo format. Works great after removing that keymap, and so in that sense Xbox remote play AND cloud gaming are excellent on this device.

Nah, you'd need Windows for the EA Origin client or whatever they call it. Ditto for Ubisoft's subscription.

Curious to see if geforce now will work on it, as that could be another (still not ideal) way around Windows only games.

I just got my "you still want this?" email, so if you're Q2 as well, maybe check your inbox.

When I got to enter my shipping address it said they would only ship mine to Belgium, which would make me think it’s local stock.

Have had mine for a couple of days, it's been fun. Just randomly going through my steam library, there has been a surprising lack of fiddling with settings, and a lot of just playing games. Worst things so far have been the fan which I can hear through my earbuds, and the ridiculously short charging cable that is fixed to the charger.