Community MetaSteam | November 2023 - I'd Buy That For A Dollar...during a Steam Sale

[FunnyJay]

It's making me a bit worried that they are seemingly "abandoning" the original Deck now. What happened to make sure there are spare parts available? How long will SteamOS keep getting updates on the original Deck?

I've only had mine for a year and it's my favorite gaming device... Not really feeling like getting a new one already...

 

[Alextended]

How long will SteamOS keep getting updates on the original Deck?

It performs virtually the same with the same featureset and they're still calling it "first generation" so I assume they'll be supported the same length of time (and probably forever really, so long as there's no paradigm shift on OS like when they abandoned WIndows 98 and so on for regular Steam). They keep selling an LCD model as the cheapest option even outside the rest that are getting discounted while stock lasts (though I guess that may stop depending on sales).

You're safe as long as Deck 2 isn't a thing and as long as when Deck 2 does come it doesn't also happen to have hardware support for some all new featureset a la DirectX 13 (and equivalent for non Windows machines of course) and as long as such a featureset also isn't something that'd improve the OS itself.

So, a long time, I wouldn't worry.

 

[Mivey]

It's making me a bit worried that they are seemingly "abandoning" the original Deck now. What happened to make sure there are spare parts available? How long will SteamOS keep getting updates on the original Deck?

I've only had mine for a year and it's my favorite gaming device... Not really feeling like getting a new one already...

As Alextended has already said, the new line-up will still include the LCD model for the lowest tier, and unless Valve says so, I assume all parts will continue to be available in ifixit.

I am also not woried about Valve not supporting the LCD model. Even when looking at hardware that Valve stopped selling: the old Steam Link got updates for like half a decade after Valve stopped selling it.

 

[Dinjoralo]

Gonna aim for getting that limited edition colorway... already lined up to sell my current Deck to a friend.
I hope an HDR deck means Steam as a whole will start having better support for HDR across all platforms. Like, fixing up the colors for the overlay on Windows.

 

[FunnyJay]

Thanks guys. That feels reassuring

 

[Knurek]

It's making me a bit worried that they are seemingly "abandoning" the original Deck now. What happened to make sure there are spare parts available? How long will SteamOS keep getting updates on the original Deck?

I've only had mine for a year and it's my favorite gaming device... Not really feeling like getting a new one already...

They are still offering the 256 GB version, so I wouldn't worry there.

 

[Li Kao]

Hmm, to anti-glare or not anti-glare.
That is the question.

 

[Amzin]

That is legitimately 100% of what I wanted for a Steam Deck improvement. Better battery and OLED. The extra storage is a nice bonus for trying out some bigger games or for people who want to use it handheld and docked more.

 

[jads653]

When Richard looks so happy you know you have a winner. Time to save up for an upgrade.

 

[d00d3n]

Just a reminder for people. If you actually want to buy the OLED Deck on release day, you better transfer the full purchase amount (or possibly less if they go with some kind of reservation fee system) to your Steam account beforehand. Credit card charges did not work for a lot of people for the original Deck release. I was first in line updating the Steam pages, but failed several attempts at credit card charges, and ended up getting my Deck later than most people who were there at release day

 

[didamangi]

Cheap OLED monitor waiting room. Even in sdr video and screenshots you can tell the difference.

 

[Dragon1893]

Damn, Rich is really impressed by the new deck.
I wish I could afford one.

 

[Alextended]

He oversells the improvements imo (but I have no Deck, lol), especially when he says it's so much more than the screen, but really, it's all about it. Most people won't get much better download speeds as they don't even max WiFi5, and that 2-9% "faster" deal is like 2 fps or something and won't make already unplayable games playable. When he spoke of how it's been top to bottom overhauled or whatever I though there'd be form factor/interface/button differences but that looks the same too. It's probably easier to be impressed when you receive it as a freebie and can chuck your old one away without issue or anything of course.

 

[ExistentialThought]

He oversells the improvements imo (but I have no Deck, lol), especially when he says it's so much more than the screen, but really, it's all about it. Most people won't get much better download speeds as they don't even max WiFi5, and that 2-9% "faster" deal is like 2 fps or something and won't make already unplayable games playable. When he spoke of how it's been top to bottom overhauled or whatever I though there'd be form factor/interface/button differences but that looks the same too. It's probably easier to be impressed when you receive it as a freebie and can chuck your old one away without issue or anything of course.

Massively better screen, better battery, runs cooler and quieter, updated WiFi and Bluetooth, better touchscreen, better sound, and so on. It honestly takes all of the complaints folks have had for the device and fixes all of them aside from performance and if you happen to not like the size of the device (though it did get lighter). EDIT: Oh and HDR on Linux!!!!

For me, I am not 100% sure I will rush out to replace my current Deck, but gosh dang am I tempted. I use my Deck every single day and the list of changes and impressions seem to fix every little nitpick I had with it (though I am still hoping the overall build quality is better, but even the fact they are replacing the old screws with torx screws gives me hope they are thinking about these things).

Hmm, to anti-glare or not anti-glare.
That is the question.

Same boat. I have an anti-glare screen right now and it is nice since I sometimes play by a sunny window, but I feel like an OLED really shines when it can have some gloss on its screen. I wish some of the reviewers touched on this.

 

[Durante]

As Alextended has already said, the new line-up will still include the LCD model for the lowest tier, and unless Valve says so, I assume all parts will continue to be available in ifixit.

I am also not woried about Valve not supporting the LCD model. Even when looking at hardware that Valve stopped selling: the old Steam Link got updates for like half a decade after Valve stopped selling it.

Yeah, I think software support at least really shouldn't be a concern given Valve's track record (I say 5 minutes after turning off my Steam controller that I just used to play Lords of the Fallen ).

He oversells the improvements imo (but I have no Deck, lol), especially when he says it's so much more than the screen, but really, it's all about it. Most people won't get much better download speeds as they don't even max WiFi5, and that 2-9% "faster" deal is like 2 fps or something and won't make already unplayable games playable. When he spoke of how it's been top to bottom overhauled or whatever I though there'd be form factor/interface/button differences but that looks the same too. It's probably easier to be impressed when you receive it as a freebie and can chuck your old one away without issue or anything of course.

I agree that people are getting a bit too hyped about it. I want one because I really love OLED screens (and I can justify it for myself since I really use the Deck a ton), but it's not like it's a fundamentally different device.

 

[TheTrain]

The problem is that with the glare one you lose half a tera of SSD
For someone who does not want to bother changing it is a pretty big deal :/

 

[Kyougar]

watched the first chapter of Alan Wake 2.

• some of the rooms are impossibly dark like pitch-black dark, even for a game centered around the darkness concept. And those were just normal hotel rooms.
• the mind space room and detective work is awesome
• on the other hand, the "intuition" thing is just straight-up bullshit magic, how can you intuit that the pair found a necklace from the murderers without any context whatsoever. Yes, Alan Wake is kinda (heavily) magical, but the "intuition" thing is just a major let-down from a gameplay perspective.
• some of the voices/voice actors feel strange or off. Casey seems like a parody and that might be intentional, but other character voices are also sounding like "one take is all we are getting here" The voice for Saga is fine.

Now, I just want to play/watch a detective game like this without the magic bullshit.

 

[Cacher]

Yeah I want the new deck but don't need it. My original one is still doing fine and I am happy with it. Going to wait for the next upgrade instead.

 

[Kal1m3r0]

some of the voices/voice actors feel strange or off. Casey seems like a parody and that might be intentional

Casey was 100% supposed to be Max Payne (given their new expanded universe) but Remedy doesn't have the rights for the character

 

[Dragon1893]

I have a decent wage and my wife is also employed though she makes less than me, and I can't afford to buy fuck all, not even games unless they're on sale. I want to upgrade my PC, I want a deck, I want to replace my living room tv which is from 2009. I can't do any of it.

 

[Kyougar]

I have a decent wage and my wife is also employed though she makes less than me, and I can't afford to buy fuck all, not even games unless they're on sale. I want to upgrade my PC, I want a deck, I want to replace my living room tv which is from 2009. I can't do any of it.

I was optimistic when I heard that the old models would be discounted to get rid of the stock, but for only 50 bucks off? nah.

 

[lashman]

 

[Censored]

Warhammer Quest will get delisted soon.

I really liked this game, I was a HeroQuest boardgame fan when I played with my family during young days, this was pretty similar, the concept is nearly the same. HeroQuest was the game that introduced me to gamesworkshop (Warhammer, Bloodbowl...) games.

 

[Mivey]

on the other hand, the "intuition" thing is just straight-up bullshit magic, how can you intuit that the pair found a necklace from the murderers without any context whatsoever. Yes, Alan Wake is kinda (heavily) magical, but the "intuition" thing is just a major let-down from a gameplay perspective.

Really don't want to spoil things but if you talk about the profiling stuff, that is very, very well explained a bit later in the game. It also takes it to pretty crazy places. Liked that idea a lot.

 

[Big McLargehuge]

I'll only upgrade from my current Deck if I can snag the Limited Edition one. That color combination is real snazzy.

 

[NarohDethan]

watched the first chapter of Alan Wake 2.

• some of the rooms are impossibly dark like pitch-black dark, even for a game centered around the darkness concept. And those were just normal hotel rooms.
• the mind space room and detective work is awesome
• on the other hand, the "intuition" thing is just straight-up bullshit magic, how can you intuit that the pair found a necklace from the murderers without any context whatsoever. Yes, Alan Wake is kinda (heavily) magical, but the "intuition" thing is just a major let-down from a gameplay perspective.
• some of the voices/voice actors feel strange or off. Casey seems like a parody and that might be intentional, but other character voices are also sounding like "one take is all we are getting here" The voice for Saga is fine.

Now, I just want to play/watch a detective game like this without the magic bullshit.

With Remedy games, just like the source of the inspiration for them, there's always more than meets the eye.

 

[Arulan]

The Steam Deck OLED seems to address just about everything I wanted in an update, with the exception of VRR.

Attractive though it is, I'm fine with my launch model until the second generation Deck arrives.

I'm also curious about whether we'll hear about a VR headset or console-like box anytime soon.

 

[MonthOLDpickle]

Valve got caught stealing from devs for 8 years.

I turned every extension off and I still can't see whatever this is linking to.

 

[Li Kao]

The problem is that with the glare one you lose half a tera of SSD
For someone who does not want to bother changing it is a pretty big deal :/

Fucking monkey paw !
I want 1tb, but I'm not sure it's worth 100 bucks and a dimmed screen.

Massively better screen, better battery, runs cooler and quieter, updated WiFi and Bluetooth, better touchscreen, better sound, and so on. It honestly takes all of the complaints folks have had for the device and fixes all of them aside from performance

Exactly. It's not a Deck 2. It was never going to be a Deck 2.

 

[MonthOLDpickle]

Can someone give an actual link to the guy I quoted, I can't even see it on mobile or desktop with no add-ons/extensions on lol.

 

[NarohDethan]

Yongyea must have the sex video of some Sega exec because WOW

 

[Alextended]

Yongyea must have the sex video of some Sega exec because WOW

I don't think Kiryu and company are supposed to be amazing singers or anything, they're just having fun at karaoke (even when rated good at it), not going pro.

I play with Japanese VA anyway and never thought they sing great?

Valve got caught stealing from devs for 8 years.

Got caught as in gave everybody affected the mostly minor amounts deducted due to a glitch, almost as soon as it was noticed, and explained why and how by themselves. Come on, hardly anything like say, Unity wanting to guess and extrapolate install numbers and not openly show how but charge developers for it.

I turned every extension off and I still can't see whatever this is linking to.

This.

 

[Madventure]

There wasn't anything to exploit. It was a bug in steam accounting:

• "customer": pays with stolen creditcard and buys your game
• "customer" refunds your game, now has store credit (to buy something else maybe)
• creditcard company does a chargeback due to complaints of legit card owner
• steam reverses entire transaction, including your game which was already refunded, so they deducted the funds twice from your account (this is the bug)

Someone posted in that reddit thread explaining it a little better than the main post, it wasn't "fixed" for 8 years because it wasn't noticed for 8 years basically because charge backs will get your steam account straight up banned so they're fairly rare in the first place and then once it actually did get noticed they fixed it within 2 months since (this is me speculating) it wasnt easy to go through an entire backlog of 8~ years worth of shit Lol

 

[Alextended]

I need an easy guide to Steam Input because maybe it can solve some of my issues. Maybe it can't. And I just can't wrap my head around it at ALL.

I thought it's deal is that you can make any controller act as any other controller that the game supports or as mkb replacement for those that don't.

I use a DualShock4 with DS4Windows to turn it into an Xbox 360 controller. Some times that results in games that get double inputs as they accept both the DS4 and the virtual Xbox input at the same time, but usually that's not an issue or is fixed with changing profile, whether to the Xbox one or to the DS4 passthrough.

I also have a Fighting Commander connected (Steam Input acknowledges it as what it is, most games treat it as an Xbox pad as it's set to "PC" mode) and a T16000M flight stick too.

Some tiny minority of games randomly choose which controller is the "first" and that means I can't play them with the DS4, whether as a DS4 or as an Xbox pad, or with the Fighting Commander, they only accept Flight stick input. I think two of those are The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors and Wild Guns Reloaded.

River City: Rival Showdown only accepts input from the Fighting Commander.

Other games accept input from any/all controllers at once but do so wrongly and so in Like a Dragon Gaiden it interprets the flight stick's twist axis weirdly and constantly drifts the camera left. The last time this happened was in the original Styx game so I was quite surprised it's a thing.

Also, pressing the home button, which I can map to some things like the RetroArch (and other things, Dolphin too, neither of which I don't use via Steam at all) quick menu, brings Steam in focus (and opens big picture if pressed again) even though in none of the profiles as far as I can tell I have set home button to do this.

Things I've tried are enabling/disabling Steam Input for specific controllers/all controllers/the specific game to no effect.

Which of the above issues could proper Steam Input configuration possibly fix, if any? Naturally I'd also rather not unplug controllers.

All are using default layouts. I've tried resetting everything before in case i've done something wrong as I've tried changing settings but I don't think that's the case, you can't even easily do it, I think it worked that one time I followed a guide that had me delete the local layout files for a do over (nothing changed before/after).

Steam Input doesn't actually show the (dinput, not xinput) flight stick at all. Just lists DS4, Fighting Commander and Xbox pads. I think it used to but not now. Not much changes if I turn off DS4Windows mind, though I'd rather keep it on as not all my games that work with Xbox controller only are on Steam.

At one point I was disabling the flight stick driver in device manager but now I have more devices it's a hassle to even identify it. So yeah I've tried things.

 

[Hektor]

Yongyea must have the sex video of some Sega exec because WOW

I don't think Kiryu and company are supposed to be amazing singers or anything, they're just having fun at karaoke (even when rated good at it), not going pro.

It's less about the quality of the VA and moreso it being an extremely unfitting miscast.

Like compare that clip to what kiryus japanese voice sounds like like at the timestamp


Actual kiryu has an extreme DADDY voice, and you have yongyea sounding like 14 year old me pretending to be an anime character

 

[Dandy]

Also, Yongyea catered to the worst segments of gaming for clicks throughout his Youtube career.

 

[Mivey]

Kinda hard for me to care too much about the English VA in Yakuza games. Don't see the point of not playing with Japanese voices. The idea of all these characters suddenly speaking English when them being Japanese is a pretty central point of the games is a bit weird to me. Especially after 7 games where I got used to playing them in their native VA.

 

[ZKenir]

I’ll never play yakuza with english dub

it’s not even a matter of the games being set in japan, it would just be weird

 

[lashman]

Kinda hard for me to care too much about the English VA in Yakuza games. Don't see the point of not playing with Japanese voices. The idea of all these characters suddenly speaking English when them being Japanese is a pretty central point of the games is a bit weird to me. Especially after 7 games where I got used to playing them in their native VA.

 

[lashman]

 

[dex3108]

This Deck OLED announcement it is once again obvious that Valve has same approach to hardware design/development as they have for their games. They start testing as early as possible and think every thing through. When you look at the Deck OLED you really can see that they did things due to specific reasons, not just to beef spec sheet like many other PC handheld manufacturers do. They could have just slapped some higher res mediocre display again, but no they went and added one of the best displays and kept resolution that is obviously good match for hardware.

 

[C-Dub]

This Deck OLED announcement it is once again obvious that Valve has same approach to hardware design/development as they have for their games. They start testing as early as possible and think every thing through. When you look at the Deck OLED you really can see that they did things due to specific reasons, not just to beef spec sheet like many other PC handheld manufacturers do. They could have just slapped some higher res mediocre display again, but no they went and added one of the best displays and kept resolution that is obviously good match for hardware.

Definitely feels like there are anchors for what a good PC handheld looks like, and improvements are made with those anchors in mind.

Other than the SteamOS experience being second to none as far as PC handhelds go, I think Valve’s ability to restrain themselves as far as numbers on a spec sheet goes is to the device’s (and consumer’s) benefit.

No one wants to buy a device that can’t even play the games they want 12 months from now.

 

[Lashley]

Ichiban's English voice is incredible. I wish I could just have that cast be English and Kiryu be Japanese.

 

[Gelf]

With PC hardware prices as they are I can see a future where I just stick with the Deck lineup. Anything too demanding on whatever the current model is at the time will just have to wait however many years it takes until the next one. My current PC is more powerful than the Deck(though it's hardly amazing) but if it still feels outrageously expensive to upgrade by the time we get to Deck 2 I might just stick with that.

 

[Dragon1893]

I'm the kind of person that tends to go with the dub but with some games I just can't imagine playing without japanese voices and Yakuza is one of them.

 

[Le Pertti]

For fun I checked how much it would cost to build a PC... the horror! I know I say this often, but hell my now mac + steam deck + xbox series x combo is the price of a PC.

 

[Lashley]

For fun I checked how much it would cost to build a PC... the horror! I know I say this often, but hell my now mac + steam deck + xbox series x combo is the price of a PC.

Yeah, the price of PC parts is an absolute joke tbh

 

[ZKenir]

 

[Li Kao]

I didn’t have much time to ponder about nuDeck but I’m annoyed by this sudden expanse.
On the one hand, it is an answer to most of what I always moaned about. The LCD screen is full of light leaks or whatever you call it, 256go is not enough, the battery could be beefier, and I have a Delta fan.
So, yeah, great.
But bruh, that’s 600 to 700 bucks, announced not even a week in advance, and with a price cut on current SKUs that will make selling my unit even more difficult.
And I historically don’t use the Deck that much. I have periods of binge use, but it’s not a daily driver.

 

[Mivey]

For fun I checked how much it would cost to build a PC... the horror! I know I say this often, but hell my now mac + steam deck + xbox series x combo is the price of a PC.

I would assume the Mac costs as much as the other two combined, or is it even more?

Really looking forward to Kuro next year. It will be nice to have a new Trails game that offers a fresh start for the series.