@Criel: The popularity on mobile gaming is only true for smartphone games, because everyone has a smartphone, it fits into everyone's pants pocket. But so much less people own a gaming handheld, for a good reason. When SteamOS came up everyone was excited and people said we should make Linux trainers. We did, they were only downloaded by 5 people or so. And SteamOS became dead very short after. Even VR is still a niche and see how much devices are out there.
So let's be careful about Steam Deck and wait until the first two pre order waves have shipped.
Exactly. Everyone thought the "Steam Link" would be the "next big thing" so we (stupidly) pre-ordered 4 of them and guess what? Not a damn person cared or used it. They now make for great coasters and the joypad? Useless garbage. Ever tried playing an RTS game like Total War on a handheld device? Um yeh, not happening which is why their super-awesome new-wave controller with a mousepad caked into it couldn't even get gamers to use it. It may work for FPS games like every other hand-held portable but you can forget running any kind of elaborate PC game on it. Again, we aren't falling into the same trap we did the first go round so haven't even bothered in pre-ordering one. If anyone wants us to work on it then they will likely have to ship us several and we might even have to do another Kickstarter to get any kind of native SteamOS support for the thing as it's going to be a massive undertaking to create any kind of Aurora type interface, let alone a huge library of native trainers unless people get smart and just install Windows on it for a awesome 4-hour battery life hand-held device that costs as much as a decent laptop which would last longer and play games much better where you're not trying to re-invent the wheel.
Anyways, we will wait and see. Don't let pre-order numbers and hype fool you. Any big company can make any upcoming product seem like the best thing since sliced bread, just like the whole world would be riding around on Segways by now. We see how that went. Only people using those are mall rent-a-cops.
@Criel: The popularity on mobile gaming is only true for smartphone games, because everyone has a smartphone, it fits into everyone's pants pocket. But so much less people own a gaming handheld, for a good reason. When SteamOS came up everyone was excited and people said we should make Linux trainers. We did, they were only downloaded by 5 people or so. And SteamOS became dead very short after. Even VR is still a niche and see how much devices are out there.
So let's be careful about Steam Deck and wait until the first two pre order waves have shipped.
Exactly. Everyone thought the "Steam Link" would be the "next big thing" so we (stupidly) pre-ordered 4 of them and guess what? Not a damn person cared or used it. They now make for great coasters and the joypad? Useless garbage. Ever tried playing an RTS game like Total War on a handheld device? Um yeh, not happening which is why their super-awesome new-wave controller with a mousepad caked into it couldn't even get gamers to use it. It may work for FPS games like every other hand-held portable but you can forget running any kind of elaborate PC game on it. Again, we aren't falling into the same trap we did the first go round so haven't even bothered in pre-ordering one. If anyone wants us to work on it then they will likely have to ship us several and we might even have to do another Kickstarter to get any kind of native SteamOS support for the thing as it's going to be a massive undertaking to create any kind of Aurora type interface, let alone a huge library of native trainers unless people get smart and just install Windows on it for a awesome 4-hour battery life hand-held device that costs as much as a decent laptop which would last longer and play games much better where you're not trying to re-invent the wheel.
Anyways, we will wait and see. Don't let pre-order numbers and hype fool you. Any big company can make any upcoming product seem like the best thing since sliced bread, just like the whole world would be riding around on Segways by now. We see how that went. Only people using those are mall rent-a-cops.
I'm not sure who the "everyone" is that thought the Steam Link would be a success. The Steam Link, Big Picture, Steam OS, Steam controller were all products that weren't made for PC gamers, they were made for console players in an attempt to convert them into PC gamers.
It would be interesting to see who your customer base is. I may be in the minority because some of the comments you just made aren't what I would consider the view of the majority of PC gamers. The Steam controller failed because we don't use controllers (exception would be for some console ports), I'd never play a FPS (most PC ones are competitive MP) on a handheld device yet RTS, TBS ,4X are perfect for handheld devices. I've played most of the older RTS's in my GoG library on a Samsung tablet using ExaGear, Winulator, DosBox Turbo.
A "decent" gaming laptop cost 3 to 4 times what the base model Steam Deck cost ($399) without the weight, heat and size. The lower end MSI and Acer gaming laptops run about $1400.
This is actually a product designed for the PC gamer. When you look at the number of people who game on low end laptops and those of us that will pick it up just for the novelty of having a handheld PC then I think they may have found a market this time.
It will be an interesting "experiment", and I call it that because that is what it truly is. I'm not hoping for success or failure, we're just not jumping on the hype train this go 'round as it has led us to nothing but dead-end roads to date. Maybe it will be awesome and like some others have said that Aurora and our trainers will work just fine for it out of the box. That would be excellent as we don't have to pour a bunch of resources into it like we did with our first-ever Linux trainers that a ton of people asked for but no one ended up using (same goes for our VR trainers). People have wanted gaming to take off on Linux for a long time now and it just hasn't happened. And it doesn't have the hurdles of being only a hand-held device with a handful of buttons for games that make use of almost the entire keyboard in order to play.
We will see how it goes once gamers get their hands on it and start to truly "mod" it. Trust me, we will be watching closely and there is a time for us to jump in, we will jump.
If you're not already watching it there is a subreddit for the Steam Deck (81,000 members at the moment).
So if you're looking to see what gamers are going to do with it when they get their hands on it then that time is already here. Already modding hardware, software, 3d printing docks, emulators and people have only had them for about a week.
It will be an interesting "experiment", and I call it that because that is what it truly is. I'm not hoping for success or failure, we're just not jumping on the hype train this go 'round as it has led us to nothing but dead-end roads to date. Maybe it will be awesome and like some others have said that Aurora and our trainers will work just fine for it out of the box. That would be excellent as we don't have to pour a bunch of resources into it like we did with our first-ever Linux trainers that a ton of people asked for but no one ended up using (same goes for our VR trainers). People have wanted gaming to take off on Linux for a long time now and it just hasn't happened. And it doesn't have the hurdles of being only a hand-held device with a handful of buttons for games that make use of almost the entire keyboard in order to play.
We will see how it goes once gamers get their hands on it and start to truly "mod" it. Trust me, we will be watching closely and there is a time for us to jump in, we will jump.
If you're not already watching it there is a subreddit for the Steam Deck (81,000 members at the moment).
So if you're looking to see what gamers are going to do with it when they get their hands on it then that time is already here. Already modding hardware, software, 3d printing docks, emulators and people have only had them for about a week.
joy
Just a quick note that we are now the proud owners of one Steam Deck which is literally the size of my TV and weighs almost as much. So, we are going to start tinkering with it and see what we can figure out.
***APPLAUSE*** 😮😯😱😲
I mean, if nothing else, you can now install Windows 10 on it and use it like any other x86-64 PC (bar the integrated sound chip, currently - it's lacking drivers). Upside to that is that trainers already created should probably work fine.
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