Valve’s Good Guy Image Makes Up For The Steam Deck’s Problems
Valve has a secret weapon up its sleeve when it comes to the Steam Deck.
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isn’t the Deck also just like… better than those devices? like obviously they have more compute power and whatnot but everything i read about the ASUS one was that the extra hardware power meant nothing when everything was bogged down by Windows and other issues
The main problem with any sort of discussion like this is that "better" is going to mean different things to different people.
Is the one with longer battery life better?
Is the one with more powerful hardware better?
Is the one with trackpads better?
Is the one that can play non-Steam games with less hassle better, even if its UX is overall clunkier?
Is the one with a smoother UX better, even if you might not be able to play every single game you own on it?
Deck is going to be better in some ways for some people, and the Ally (et al.) will be better in some ways for other people. At the end of the day, the entire market segment is better for all of us because competing devices exist. Trying to turn this into a zero-sum turf war is only going to be detrimental to everyone. (Not saying that that's what you are doing, just speaking in general about what tends to happen when comparisons like this get brought up.)
Yeah, honestly I pre-ordered the Deck and felt like it was a real gamble at the time. Like, "no way it's going to be able to play many major titles - especially given the dearth of AAA games on Linux - but I want to support the idea and am willing to give it a shot".
Then I got it and frankly I was amazed, not just at what portable hardware can do but also at the amount of work Valve has contributed towards the software side, Proton in particular. A year since I got it and award-winning AAA games run nicely. Not always out-the-gate but that's an issue for many systems.
Even if the Ally is better hardware (and I can't say one way or the other) Valve was the first to make a real investment in a hardware ecosystem for real portable PC gaming (no, I'm not counting cheap Chinese systems running dodgy software).
Also, kudos to AMD for the chip powering the thing, as it's a pretty damn good balance between power output and consumption.
Same, I saw it as a gamble. I set my preorder, and saved up for the following months until the device released.
I had been looking into this space for years wishing it would get better and cheaper. It's the only thing that I have been willing to preorder and be a "beta" tester for in several years
The OS makes the steam deck better than any other handheld since all the others just ship with windows and I cannot imagine using windows on a gaming handheld like this. Yes I would love it if my deck had USB4 andother fun up to date hardware, but the OS is the best part about it for now anyway.
The OS makes the steam deck better than any other handheld
Agreed, but with the addition of "for me" at the end there. What makes it better for you and me is going to be a drawback for someone who only plays, say, Destiny 2, Fortnite, or things that are on Game Pass Ultimate.
Yeah, that theoretical person is going to have an absolute garbage time navigating the OS itself, but that's what they have to put up with to be able to play the games they want on a handheld PC. They might very well find that trade-off worthwhile, and it's not for us to tell them they're wrong.
Thats what remote play is for. If you wanna play those games seriously then maybe just keep using your computer.
The Ally is better at all the things that don't really matter, in my opinion.
in my opinion.
That being the key phrase.
My opinion pretty much aligns with yours, but the point is that no one can make sweeping objective statements about which is better (like this article and so many others try to do) since different things matter to different people. A variety of different options in the market is only a good thing.
Sure I understand and agree with you. I was just elaborating.
Performance on the Ally is incredible. I benchmarked the CPU against my 5900X desktop and the Ally won (single threaded)!
It's all down to the awful software experience. Every time I pick it up, there's something annoying about it. Armoury crate has crashed, the battery died while it was sleeping, it doesn't recognize controller input, it hasn't detected a game is running and is still in power saving mode, it's being finicky about the USB-C adapter and throttling (only the included adapter seems to work, anything else, including 100W and PPS etc. adapters say they aren't powerful enough), the RGB lights are freaking out, it needs a restart. It's just perpetual troubleshooting and annoyance.
When it works, it's amazing. The whole experience is gorgeous. It's super fast, the display is smooth, etc.
Combined with the microsd card overhearing issues, I just don't think it's a good purchase. I'll definitely be sending mine back.
How is the sleep/resume functionality? I've heard mixed reports about Windows-based handhelds ranging anywhere from "it doesn't have anything like that" to "it works perfectly fine just like Deck/Switch".
That is pretty much the killer feature of the Deck for me, and as far as I'm currently aware, that's enabled by it using Linux/SteamOS. If I can't sleep/resume a game on a handheld, I'd be much more inclined to just play on my desktop and reap the benefits of improved performance and graphics.
Ya, I've had it work once or twice where it just comes back and the game is able to resume. Generally though, the system is either dead or shut down or hibernating and not usable. I generally don't even try and use the suspend option. I save and exit out of the game to avoid messing up my save games.
It absolutely does not work as well as the Switch. It's one of the various constant annoyances of using the Ally.
Me too, I always ask about this, and this is always suspiciously missing from every single review. I assume it just doesn't work, otherwise we would have seen someone mention it, the steam deck's reviews all mentioned that since it's one of (if not the) most important feature for a handheld. For example (just rewatched it to be sure) LTT's review doesn't mention that on the ROG, but on the Deck the quote is
[About the sleep and come back to game feature] An Xbox, sure, but I would like to see a Windows PC do that.
So even back then they acknowledged that windows was not capable at that time of doing that (remember they had other handhelds at the time), but they never brought it up on the ROG review, which is very suspicious, almost as if Asus is trying to find a fix and preventing reviewers from talking about it. But that might be too much time hat on my side.
I don't typically trust LTT reviews anymore. Omissions like that - and no follow-ups for it - lead me to believe they're just advertisers in tech people's clothing.
ETA Prime can likewise be a bit light on criticism at times.
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I was talking about the Ally, not the steam deck.
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This sounds like the PC experience to me but handheld. If it's windows it's an automatic deal breaker for me.
Steam deck definitely went the switch route. Simple user experience. Lower end spec so games can standardise towards it.
I just can't believe that they expect people who bought the Ally to interface with the regular ass Win11 desktop without touchpads. Sure, horsepower and a better display is cool, but not at the expense of battery life and heat. I hope it's successful so we get revisions and incentive for others to get in the game, but it it's not quite there for me.
Has anyone put steamOS onto an Ally yet? I think Windows will eventually come to the party with a decent mobile version tailored towards games, but until then I cant think of anything worse than windows on such a small screen without a better interface than just joysticks and buttons.
While not the official Steam OS, which Valve still hasn't released officially, people have thrown Arch on one to do benchmarking comparisons and there are tutorials for getting Linux on it.
Huh, I didnt realise this iteration of steamOS hadn't released. I remember tinkering with the distro they released (probably in alpha/beta) back in the day when steam machines were going to be a thing,
They switched from a Debian based OS to an Arch based immutable fork for the Deck. There are folks who have built a close version to SteamOS 3, but there would be no need if Valve would just release the official OS. I can't imagine why they haven't. It would only make it cheaper for other hardware manufacturers to release a product. I don't know how much of the Ally's price is just covering the Windows license, but it has to be a substantial percentage of the overall retail price.
So i can fetch AUR packages on the Steam Deck?
Not out of the box. You don't have sudo privileges on the SteamOS 3. Valve made an immutable fork of Arch for stability and to dissuade unskilled folks from punching stuff into the terminal that might cause customer service nightmares.
I think the main selling point of the Ally is Windows though.
There are plenty of people who are scared to touch linux, even with a nice launcher on top that does everything for you if you are happy with a vanilla experience. I personally know people, in their 30s as well, who said a while back that they would rather wait for a windows handheld for "stability". They havent picked up an Ally though.
It's an immutable filesystem fork of Arch, not vanilla Arch. It's as stable as any operating system is, doesn't update in the same way Arch does, and doesn't even allow the user sudo privilege. Also, you don't even need to interface with Linux. The front end is extremely intuitive, but you also have the option of a pretty great KDE Plasma desktop mode if you switch over. Fortunately, it has no Candy Crush, Teams, or Cortana in the Start Menu.
I have both and even with all of the Ally’s jank I’ll take the Ally over the Deck any day. The extra hardware power and the VRR screen means the games I play are silky smooth.
I honestly can’t go back to the Deck.
Choice in this market is good for end users, as is competition. Both of the machines are a compromise in one way or another and different in substantial ways, so it's really just down to personal preference. I can't wait to see how this market grows over the next few years.
Can you suspend and go back to the middle of the game on the ally? If so would you mind uploading a video of it to YouTube since no one credible mentions of it's possible and people who claim it is never provide any evidence of it?
If I can find some time, I’ll record it and reply to you with a link.
You really can, but it’s jank just like the rest of the Ally. The sleep mode is totally borked with some games. It just wakes up a few minutes later and starts draining the battery.
For example, I started a game of Minecraft Dungeons last week and put it to sleep. It kept waking back up, but even after it ran out of power, the game was still running when I turned it back on after charging it a few days later.
There’s also a setting that makes the Ally hibernate after a bit of time in sleep (not sure how long the time is) by default, but that needs the sleep to actually sleep or it’ll just run out of power beforehand.
With that being said, the performance of already-running games after the device comes back from hibernation is pretty bad. If I had to guess, it might be because it has to re-upload all the textures to the APU which is technically distinct from the CPU thanks to it being more of a PC than a console? But that’s pure speculation.
Thanks for the reply, although a video would be cool just because no one has shown it, what you described is exactly what I expected, i.e. it doesn't work in any meaningful way. That's the way it has always been, windows sleep/hibernate is not meant to go back to a game because that involves more stuff than just RAM status. Most programs are not constantly doing stuff, so they can be interrupted at any point, games unfortunately need to be interrupted in a point where they can, not to mention dealing with the fact that you possibly have a frame that took hours to render depending on how the engine counts time. What Valve did is a huge achievement, because games for consoles have signals they receive asking them to prepare to be suspended, but the same game on PC would not have that. Valve had to do a generic way to pause any game, at any point, and they nailed it, I'm amazed that people seemed to have realised how huge that was when the deck came out, but every new portable with slightly more horsepower gets praised when it can't do the most basic thing a portable console should be able to.
I’ve reached the point where “better” mostly means “smoothest experience.” That might include not crashing and low overhead. That almost certainly includes a smooth and predictable UI. That means a well thought out system design that balances performance considerations with size and weight, battery life, controller layout, and little things like fan noise.
Honestly, I’m fine with my Switch. It was my first handheld, and I appreciate the variety of games as well as the convenience. I ordered the steam deck because I have a massive library of unplayed or unfinished games on steam, and it seemed like the right way to go for that. I have a windows PC that is still sitting wrapped by movers and never unpacked.
For my “It just works” low water mark, the Deck looked like my best bet for non-switch gaming, and maybe now I can get past the first town on RDR2.
