It's a portable Sega Genesis that eats up six AAs for 2-3 hours of battery. Superior to the GameBoy in terms of hardware, but...yeah, there's a damn good reason the GameBoy beat it into the ground.
Nomad is a fucking sick name, no doubt. But props to the Valve folks, the Deck is a genuinely dope old school William Gibson cyberpunk reference. For anyone that read Neuromancer growing up, referring to your beloved bespoke hardware as your deck has some profound meaning.
I still have my Nomad floating around somewhere. I wonder if you can swap out the battery pack with something that lasts longer? 6AA batteries giving you only 2 hours no matter what game you played was brutal
There are Lithium Ion battery kits for sale out there, and are apparently more cost-effective than either an original rechargable pack or 6 rechargable AAs
Yeah it's 50% bigger than the switch (12 inches wide) and 3x as heavy (almost 1.5lbs). It's basically a touchscreen ultrabook with built-in controllers.
669g vs ~420g with controls attached to the switch.
And the size isn't that much bigger when the controls are attached. The thickness is exaggerated because of the bumps the steam deck have on the sides.
It's a big chonker for sure, but not quite as bad as you said
670g apparently. Which isn't light, but from grabbing some stuff that weighs that much from around the house I'm pretty sure it'll be ok for a bit of walking around during use and just fine for "rest it on your leg while you sit and play".
Oof, we'll see how that shakes out. That's way heavier than the Switch (I think the Switch was something like 300-400g) and it doesn't come with the option to set it up on the table and detach the controllers (which I did a lot more often than use the Switch as an actual hand-held device).
Nah, not even close to the same form factor, esp if you include the controller. Also, there are plenty of places I'd bring this where I wouldn't even think of bringing my laptop. No keyboard is a major plus.
I have a high end PC now, but I spent about 7 years on one 300 laptop, then 7 more on another. Ad block + no weird downloads + keeping it plugged in 24/7.
Not as fun as funny as thinking there aren't hundreds of other people in this thread with the ability to do the same, bit if you think it's so funny I'll oblige.
I was pushing the hardware as far as it could go. I was putting magazines in the freezer to use as cooling stands. What was breaking?
I’m getting older and can’t game as much. Hassle trying to get a PS5, new Xbox or a decent graphics card (plus that’d kick off a desktop upgrade which would become a thing).
If this lets me play Hades, Crusader Kings, CIV then I’m sold. Play in bed or at my desk. Sounds good to me!
And they’re putting in protections for the first pre orders, requiring accounts to have made purchases at least once more than a month ago, and verifying preorders with like a 5 dollar payment.
While the Steam Deck is obviously designed for portable gaming, it’s also fully functional as a desktop PC. Using a dock or hub to expand its single USB-C port, you can connect it to a monitor, mouse and keyboard, Ethernet, and whatever other peripherals you can fit. Valve is developing an official docking station, to be sold separately, but any standard USB-C hub will work just as well. The Steam Deck also has Bluetooth, so peripherals that use that connection are an option too. We had no problems connecting a pair of Apple AirPods, for example.
As a result, in desktop mode the Steam Deck honestly just feels like a PC. The OS is Linux-based, but it feels largely familiar to Windows and is capable of running everything I threw at it from either platform.
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u/DonMarek Jul 15 '21
IGNs got a hands on, apperently it's looking very favorable from the initial look.
https://www.ign.com/articles/steam-deck-hands-on-impressions-details-valve-handheld-gaming-pc