Its because when it comes to gaming consoles hardware doesn’t matter. Only games do. Nintendo has proven this over and over. You can add rtx it still won’t sell unless there are some great titles that run like native (usually this means custom ports because ui and other elements in 99% of games are not created with small screens in mind and usually are not usable at all)

Well, hopefully Valve can make/get some games for this form factor.

If they sell enough of these, some developers will naturally just start adding active support in their games for it, even if only as a switchable feature.

[×] Use settings and textures specially optimized for this device?

Well, it's chicken and egg if

Sales = f(game quality)

game quality = g(sales)

That's why if I were valve I would set about throwing money at some medium-appropriate game dev up front in addition to discounting the hardware.

OTOH I just learned the switch's battery life was not as good as I thought; it's no M1 idling. So that helps.

The Switch has the SoC of an Android tablet from 2015. That's how Nintendo can sell the switch at 200 bucks.

There's no way for valve to discount the deck, which uses a cutting edge SoC cut from the same cloth as the PS5, at anywhere near that price point.

Flagship hardware has flagship prices. If valve would have built a cheap but underpowered device to reach the price point of the switch nobody would have been interested. Gamers are into the deck because of its cutting edge specs.

When I said discount, I mean Valve is supposedly selling at least the low-end tiers at a loss.

Well that's the beauty of the deck. Devs don't need to do shit, as it's basically a gaming PC in your hand that can run the same games you have on your steam library on your gaming rig but on lower graphic fidelity.

You don't need to changes things, but you probably want to. It's a general purpose computer and I could run e.g. StarCraft, but I would get slaughtered with controls like that.

The traditional business view is the casual gamers are growing, and the elite PC gamers are stagnant. Valve is trying to wreck that dichotomy with hardware like this, but I think that goes with making sure there are games that fit the form factor. You can't just sell this to people who rather play on their main gaming rig but are sometimes stuck without this.

Making games for this form factor != a retreat from the principle of general purpose computing.

Also half again as cheap.

That’s not even remotely true if you’re comparing the new OLED model switch to the base model steam deck. $349.99 vs $399.99.

You’re comparing the top of the line switch to the bottom of the line steam deck. Switch starts at $200.

My bad, I thought the oled model was meant to replace the standard switch. The lite does indeed start at $199.99, but that can’t do docked mode so it’s not really a fair comparison to this steam deck. The base regular switch is $299.99.

Though the Steam Deck notably doesn't come with a dock. The dock isn't for sale yet, but will be sold separately later.

Sure but it’s also compatible with any generic usb c hub. I know I already have one that works with my Mac and switch that I’m sure would also work with this. Probably cost me all of $20 on Amazon.