I think this is the correct explanation. The OLED version came with a simplified PCB layout and the chip was manufactured on a smaller process, it seems like your standard mid-life console hardware upgrade, makes sense that they were just getting rid of the old stock of release hardware which has finally run out.
In general they probably have run out of parts. Set order quantity of everything going on original LCD model. Some like SSD are semi-fungible. But you get only so many custom pcbs you expect to use. At some point you have perfectly functional or superior model and you decide to kill the old one.
I bought a 64GB model for around €200 from someone who bought it for his kids, but these kids did not like it.
I already did a lot of research on the device, plus i have over a thousand games in my Steam library, so this made it a very logical purchase. I ordered a 1TB disk from Amazon and installed within 15 minutes thanks to the IFixit documentation.
It’s a very versatile piece of hardware if you want it to be. Game emulation is very easy. Open Office and Kodi work flawlessly. HDMI output can be done with a cheap chinese adapter. Bluetooth takes care of other devices.
It’s BIOS is pretty easy and can boot from almost any device you can connect via the USB-C port.
Even running Windows 11 is possible, because Valve supplies the drivers for it. I tried it just for fun. How to reinstall the (Arch) Steam OS is well documented.
My kids love playing Lego City on it. I love playing Beat Hazard 3, Fallout 4, Skyrim and The Witcher 3 on it.
Will i buy the Steam Machine? Depends on the cost and it’s possibilities. If it can run streaming media like Netflix easily, it could make a very interesting replacement for the current media pc we’re using.
Going off a tangent but LibreOffice should be preferred as most OpenOffice contributors moved to LibreOffice following the acquisition of Sun by Oracle.
I'd switched my father from OpenOffice to LibreOffice, but the upgrade story was painful & years ago switched him back to OpenOffice after it was given to Apache. Figured the projects would consolidate under Apache, but no
& wow checking up on it now, things have not been going well at Apache for last decade
What exactly do you mean by upgrade story? The Libre Office UI hasn't changed for a long time (although there are new UI options l'île the ribbon, etc), I'd think the switch would be pretty straightforward.
I realized when posting this reply that these experiences are from over a decade ago. This was on Windows, the self upgrade option just didn't work well (large download, wouldn't complete or something, would end up reinstalling instead)
The retirement of the Steam Deck LCD feels less like a reaction to skyrocketing RAM/NAND costs and more like a strategic simplification of Valve’s product lineup. While rising component prices make for a convenient financial excuse, the "secret motivation" is likely operational efficiency: managing two different screen types (LCD vs. OLED), batteries, and motherboards complicates the supply chain significantly.
By cutting the LCD, particularly the 256GB model, Valve avoids internal competition where their "budget" option cannibalizes sales of their premium OLED units, which offer a much better user experience.
furthermore, with whispers of new hardware like the "Steam Frame" or a revamped "Steam Machine," Valve needs to clear the stage. The LCD Deck served its purpose as a pioneer, but keeping it alive indefinitely dilutes the brand's focus.
For consumers, it’s a double-edged sword; we lose the most affordable entry point into PC handheld gaming, but we gain a clearer, more unified path forward. Ultimately, this move signals that Valve is confident the OLED is the new standard, and they are aggressively pivoting resources toward whatever comes next.
The china's supply chain will let it be, what about you?
When the news hit that the entry model was being retired I thought it might not be so bad because there’s probably a deluge of used models available, either because the owner doesn’t really use it or because they upgraded to the OLED. I was astounded by how many blatant scam postings there are on Facebook Marketplace. I can’t imagine that Meta can’t detect these since every post title ends in some random four character alphanumeric string. I’m concerned now that we’re going to see an uptick in people being scammed because they want a Steam Deck but can’t afford the OLED models.
I don’t have any data to support this, but I suspect a sizable segment of PC gamers aren’t going to view this as the impetus they needed to splurge on the OLED. I doubt very many of those people see this as a double-edged sword. It doesn’t particularly matter to them what Valve’s confidence in the product is if they can’t afford to buy one. While some may buy the step-up model, many won’t. Valve loses out on the sale of the hardware and on the sale of the software to run on it. And I’d be concerned that ceding the lower end of the market is going to poison the well like video game consoles in the early 80s.
With that said, Valve almost certainly has the data and would know better than me. It seems like a gamble to me. Maybe the post is correct and this is all about price anchoring for the new Steam Machine and Frame.
Information to text ratio pretty low and assumes some background knowledge I don’t actually have about the current state of Steam hardware offerings but I gather it’s because they’ve introduced new, more expensive hardware and no longer wish to have a budget item whose price is too far off from it.
I think the Deck's capability to be relevant for years into the future depends entirely on whether PC game developers target it as a platform. Many of the top best selling video games from the past few years struggle on the deck even on low settings (Baldur's Gate 3, Oblivion Remastered are a couple I've tried with rough results). Of course there's still a massive PC backlog and ample lower spec games released each year.
Is anyone here aware of whether developers are using the Deck as a minimum spec and thus their technical constraints?
It's my target spec and the platform I test the most on for my outside of work stuff. The steam deployment app works so well it makes testing on the steam deck just as easy as testing on my dev machine with a gamepad.
At work it depends on the title but we've definitely used it as a test target. Usually in the minspec range
I have a Legion Go, which is basically a premium Steam Deck - playing similar games but on a nicer screen with a stronger GPU to drive it. I've been very happy with it - still playing nearly daily 2 years later.
All this hubbub about chip shortages has me wondering if it's going to extend the lifespan of these devices. Already in the Legion Go line, its successors are much more expensive but not much more performant. The line bifurcated into an entry level and a premium option, and both have a variant whose chip is derived from the same 7840 as the original model. That is, the Legion Go S and Legion Go 2 are both priced higher than the original, with a lower screen resolution and identical (or nearly identical) chipset. The only reason to choose one over the original is if you really need that extra RAM.
Like the Steam Deck, the Legion Go is still a perfectly serviceable device years later. The Deck competitors from Lenovo, ASUS, OneX, AYANEO, etc. are all built around basically the same chip that's a bit stronger but less power efficient than the Deck. The performance envelope hasn't really moved.
Tariffs and part shortages are making these devices a lot more expensive, but they aren't noticeably better than they were 2 years ago. In fact, Valve's upcoming Steam Machine has very similar specs, and was designed to outperform 70% of the devices currently gaming on Steam.
If prices are going up and performance is stagnating, people who already have gaming devices are going to be reluctant to upgrade. I expect these market forces are going to extend the lifespan of current-gen devices.
Most games take years to make. I wonder how many games currently in the production pipeline were banking on players having more performance available by the time the games are released, and how that is going to impact their reception.
The Steam Deck has been a really useful performance-and-feature anchor for computer gaming. Until hardware improves enough to justify a Steam Deck 2, I expect it will continue to maintain that position, improving the playable lifespan of all the other gaming devices in the market too.
Steamdeck sold like 6m units, maybe valve gets a few 100m more selling OLED markup, but I feel like that's kind of peanuts for Valve who would rather push the platform. With price of PC these days and disenfranchisement with windows, I think Valve would rather have Steamdeck be Switch.
The article is glaring over a key point- Valve often sold the model at a 20% discount for $320. Clearly this is because the amount spent by a Steam Deck owner would make up the loss in BoM. If they believed they could continue to do so, they would.
I'm happy I got into the LED from the refurbished sale, the price point made it attractive. I was not much into gaming but I've been having a blast, the lowest price point also was ok for me since I am 100% comfortable with DIY on the SSD.
It is very much apparant I'm not Steam's ideal customer, but I'm happy I got it for about $249'ish? I hemmed and hawed alot thinking why am I buying a hand held pc for gaming but the switch 2 was sold out/to much work to reserve so I went for it and am really happy I did.
If you're not interested in games, why the interest in a Valve tablet?
SteamOS is probably the most commercially well-supported consumer desktop Linux, but it's still primarily a games storefront. If you only want to do desktop stuff, you're probably better off either on the Chromebook/Android train, or putting a community-supported distro on whatever hardware you've got.
> SteamOS is probably the most commercially well-supported consumer desktop Linux
Yeah, this basically, and they have good hardware too.
> the Chromebook/Android train
I am not really interested in getting back into the google world. If I buy hardware it needs to support a real linux distro.
> putting a community-supported distro on whatever hardware you've got
With the Macbook, my only option is Asahi. If things keep going the way they are going, I may well end up there. But it is 13 inches and I don't love the keyboard.
I would rather something with an 11 inch screen (for travelling) that can drive a full-size monitor when at home. And use the keyboard I like regardless.
> I believe that the end of the LCD line is an entirely strategic move.
> With the discontinuation of the LCD and the introduction of the Machine and Frame, the OLED will suddenly occupy the "Pricing Anchor" slot for Valve's first-party lineup of gaming hardware.
> Crucially, I believe Valve sees the $399 price as too low.
Part of the point and usefulness is having a stable target for developers to aim at, that they can test performance on. Also, most phones these days are roughly equivalent from the end-user perspective to ones from 2 or 3 years ago, the only difference is increased waste. So... no, no thank you.
Does anyone want to buy a phone every few years? No, I don't think they do.
You don't have to buy it with each iteration, but at the same time if I'm buying one, I don't want to buy hardware that's many generations behind current one.
If I build a new PC myself - I don't have such problem. With laptops - it's a bit behind (usually one generation for AMD with their APUs approach). I don't think anyone complains that there is a choice.
And somehow above doesn't prevent games being released that can scale according to the hardware and aren't tied to a specific hardware generation target. So I don't really see why this has to dictate handhelds to have way slower refresh cycle.
> And somehow above doesn't prevent games being released that can scale according to the hardware and aren't tied to a specific hardware generation target.
Until the Steam Deck came out, I had no hope of playing a game like Sekiro. And even then, the machine I built to play Seikro would not then have also played the second Spiderman game, because those are different console generations.
Now, both are targeted in part at the Steam Deck, and it can run both of them. This actually is a huge boon for the industry, and like I said,
> Part of the point and usefulness is having a stable target for developers to aim at, that they can test performance on
> And somehow above doesn't prevent games being released that can scale according to the hardware and aren't tied to a specific hardware generation target.
In theory, sure. In practice... just look at pretty much all software out there and you will be proven wrong. Every. Single. Time.
It was released February 2022, that's only almost 4 years ago. 4-5 years is a good target for a refresh, I'll be somewhat surprised if there's not a new one in 2027 (but I was surprised by the lifespan of the Switch, and even the 7-8 years of the 360/PS3 era were surprisingly long, long generations are common now so no new Deck until 2028 or 2029 isn't out of the question), but any more frequently doesn't really make sense as the important components aren't improving in price/capability fast enough, and the initial release was and still is very capable rather than woefully inadequate. The motivations for upgrading are also different from a phone or more general laptop. I think the most common ranking of priorities for improvement would be: having various games run at all (mostly a software problem, Steam Deck already supports hardware ray tracing that various games now require), similar price range, better active battery life, physically lighter, and last would be higher graphical fidelity/performance. The things further down can't compromise the things higher up. Battery life advances being slow is kind of the killer.
There's a point that they could prioritize selling to new owners over existing owners looking to upgrade, and having a more capable device would help with that, but I think the marginal increase is probably not very big. The Steam Deck estimated sales were at 4 million units earlier this year, but that's still a relatively small portion of the whole PC gaming market (132m monthly active users on steam alone by 2021). It has been a big success for them, but it still exceeded their expectations, so I think they also would be skeptical of any large marginal improvement of new owner sales for what would likely be a minor improvement on the important specs. There's also competition from Windows handhelds whose sales don't suggest a large market just wishing Valve had a slightly more capable device that they'd pay more for.
A counter argument - the Switch gave game devs a solid platform to target without being the latest and greatest without compromising the usability or fun factor
I've heard that argument before, but I don't buy it. Whole PC gaming is a counter argument. Let developers make games that scale according to hardware, instead of excusing things with weak specs.
Even in PC gaming, the performance target tends to be the lowest performing current gen console, not the best PC.
Which is a totally reasonable approach and has given my PC years of usefulness even though better equipment is out there.
The cutting edge of PCs is such a tiny minority of users, even amongst PC gamers it's still a fraction of users.
That was not always the case for PC gaming, on modest means in my teens I could at least keep up with graphics card releases. I don't bother with that now, because I don't have to and gain very little from doing so.
> Even in PC gaming, the performance target tends to be the lowest performing current gen console, not the best PC.
I would have said "even static websites don't care about older hardware". I am very happy that Valve doesn't refresh the SteamDeck every year exactly for that reason: developers can target "the SteamDeck" instead of "the latest 3 SteamDecks" and force me to buy one every 3 years.
Sales numbers are also why Steam isn't in a particular rush to release another. It's popular to adult nerds. Outside of that, it's pretty poor selling when compared to essentially all consoles. The Dreamcast outsold it and Sega gave up on hardware cause of that thing. The PS Vita outsold it and it caused Sony to give up on handhelds. Meanwhile, the Switch 2 has pretty much no compelling reason to purchase it yet (an alright Donkey Kong game?) and outsold the Steam Deck's multi-year sales in a month.
I would much rather a refresh every 5+ years with a more profound hardware improvement. I'm even fine with closer to 10 years if the technology hasn't changed that much at the 5 year mark.
Phones try to emulate PC refresh cycle. Is it healthy? You get new generation of CPUs / GPUs roughly once in two years. I'd say it's OK.
You can easily skip a generation and upgrade say once in 4 years or even less frequently. But at the same I think it's good that there is an option to get newer hardware at that cadence.
> You get new generation of CPUs / GPUs roughly once in two years. I'd say it's OK.
If you look at sustainability, it is obviously not okay.
And for what? Websites and mobile apps that get bulkier and less efficient slightly faster than the refresh cycle. I recently replaced my smartphone - not because I wanted to, but because the main app I use (like banking, nothing that should require a big CPU) were lagging so much that they were unusable. A banking app is supposed to print a few numbers to the screen, and yet it doesn't work on a 5 years old smartphone.
No one would bother optimizing for it at all if it had a yearly refresh.
Not saying that's why they don't, but that would be a side effect. I actually think it's more their business doesn't rely on selling Steam Decks, hardware business where you do a yearly refresh is a very different beast to one you do a new model every few years. Their organization doesn't seem set up for that.
It's been just 2 years since the OLED release, I think we're closing in on a refresh. Unless a deck is a year away from a generational bump. A refresh could include the updated joysticks featured on the Steam controller, though.
Till then I'd think I'd do more good for Valve to focus on their steam app and store experience.
honestly at this point, phones and personal computers probably should move to a 2 year cadence. The R&D costs are going up and the performance benefits are decreasing.
I just assumed that Valve ran out of the APUs AMD made for Steam Deck LCD.
There were news/rumours that it was originally designed for Magic Leap 2 and Valve got the leftovers for cheap: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/steam-decks-... .
If they're going to spend a premium on ordering a new batch, they might as well order the APU for the OLED model they charge full price right?
I think this is the correct explanation. The OLED version came with a simplified PCB layout and the chip was manufactured on a smaller process, it seems like your standard mid-life console hardware upgrade, makes sense that they were just getting rid of the old stock of release hardware which has finally run out.
In general they probably have run out of parts. Set order quantity of everything going on original LCD model. Some like SSD are semi-fungible. But you get only so many custom pcbs you expect to use. At some point you have perfectly functional or superior model and you decide to kill the old one.
I bought a 64GB model for around €200 from someone who bought it for his kids, but these kids did not like it.
I already did a lot of research on the device, plus i have over a thousand games in my Steam library, so this made it a very logical purchase. I ordered a 1TB disk from Amazon and installed within 15 minutes thanks to the IFixit documentation.
It’s a very versatile piece of hardware if you want it to be. Game emulation is very easy. Open Office and Kodi work flawlessly. HDMI output can be done with a cheap chinese adapter. Bluetooth takes care of other devices.
It’s BIOS is pretty easy and can boot from almost any device you can connect via the USB-C port.
Even running Windows 11 is possible, because Valve supplies the drivers for it. I tried it just for fun. How to reinstall the (Arch) Steam OS is well documented.
My kids love playing Lego City on it. I love playing Beat Hazard 3, Fallout 4, Skyrim and The Witcher 3 on it.
Will i buy the Steam Machine? Depends on the cost and it’s possibilities. If it can run streaming media like Netflix easily, it could make a very interesting replacement for the current media pc we’re using.
> Open Office
Going off a tangent but LibreOffice should be preferred as most OpenOffice contributors moved to LibreOffice following the acquisition of Sun by Oracle.
It's crazy how, after all this time, OpenOffice is still mentioned so often despite being kind of dead for a while.
I'd switched my father from OpenOffice to LibreOffice, but the upgrade story was painful & years ago switched him back to OpenOffice after it was given to Apache. Figured the projects would consolidate under Apache, but no
& wow checking up on it now, things have not been going well at Apache for last decade
What exactly do you mean by upgrade story? The Libre Office UI hasn't changed for a long time (although there are new UI options l'île the ribbon, etc), I'd think the switch would be pretty straightforward.
I realized when posting this reply that these experiences are from over a decade ago. This was on Windows, the self upgrade option just didn't work well (large download, wouldn't complete or something, would end up reinstalling instead)
Oh aplogies. It was LibreOffice :)
I don't think SteamOS can run DRM content, meaning NetFlix is off the table afaik.
> I don't think SteamOS can run DRM content, meaning NetFlix is off the table afaik.
Can't you switch to desktop mode and launch a webbrowser?
That'll only support L3 DRM, so you'll only get horrible quality and are better off sailing the high seas.
The retirement of the Steam Deck LCD feels less like a reaction to skyrocketing RAM/NAND costs and more like a strategic simplification of Valve’s product lineup. While rising component prices make for a convenient financial excuse, the "secret motivation" is likely operational efficiency: managing two different screen types (LCD vs. OLED), batteries, and motherboards complicates the supply chain significantly.
By cutting the LCD, particularly the 256GB model, Valve avoids internal competition where their "budget" option cannibalizes sales of their premium OLED units, which offer a much better user experience.
furthermore, with whispers of new hardware like the "Steam Frame" or a revamped "Steam Machine," Valve needs to clear the stage. The LCD Deck served its purpose as a pioneer, but keeping it alive indefinitely dilutes the brand's focus.
For consumers, it’s a double-edged sword; we lose the most affordable entry point into PC handheld gaming, but we gain a clearer, more unified path forward. Ultimately, this move signals that Valve is confident the OLED is the new standard, and they are aggressively pivoting resources toward whatever comes next.
The china's supply chain will let it be, what about you?
When the news hit that the entry model was being retired I thought it might not be so bad because there’s probably a deluge of used models available, either because the owner doesn’t really use it or because they upgraded to the OLED. I was astounded by how many blatant scam postings there are on Facebook Marketplace. I can’t imagine that Meta can’t detect these since every post title ends in some random four character alphanumeric string. I’m concerned now that we’re going to see an uptick in people being scammed because they want a Steam Deck but can’t afford the OLED models.
I don’t have any data to support this, but I suspect a sizable segment of PC gamers aren’t going to view this as the impetus they needed to splurge on the OLED. I doubt very many of those people see this as a double-edged sword. It doesn’t particularly matter to them what Valve’s confidence in the product is if they can’t afford to buy one. While some may buy the step-up model, many won’t. Valve loses out on the sale of the hardware and on the sale of the software to run on it. And I’d be concerned that ceding the lower end of the market is going to poison the well like video game consoles in the early 80s.
With that said, Valve almost certainly has the data and would know better than me. It seems like a gamble to me. Maybe the post is correct and this is all about price anchoring for the new Steam Machine and Frame.
Information to text ratio pretty low and assumes some background knowledge I don’t actually have about the current state of Steam hardware offerings but I gather it’s because they’ve introduced new, more expensive hardware and no longer wish to have a budget item whose price is too far off from it.
That’s the article’s assumption, although the new hardware has yet to announce its price so it’s yet to be seen how plausible the thesis is.
The more expensive hardware is Steam Deck OLED, available since about 2 years ago, it starts at $549
The SD_OLED is my second game console after the PS2.
I think the Deck's capability to be relevant for years into the future depends entirely on whether PC game developers target it as a platform. Many of the top best selling video games from the past few years struggle on the deck even on low settings (Baldur's Gate 3, Oblivion Remastered are a couple I've tried with rough results). Of course there's still a massive PC backlog and ample lower spec games released each year.
Is anyone here aware of whether developers are using the Deck as a minimum spec and thus their technical constraints?
It's my target spec and the platform I test the most on for my outside of work stuff. The steam deployment app works so well it makes testing on the steam deck just as easy as testing on my dev machine with a gamepad.
At work it depends on the title but we've definitely used it as a test target. Usually in the minspec range
I have a Legion Go, which is basically a premium Steam Deck - playing similar games but on a nicer screen with a stronger GPU to drive it. I've been very happy with it - still playing nearly daily 2 years later.
All this hubbub about chip shortages has me wondering if it's going to extend the lifespan of these devices. Already in the Legion Go line, its successors are much more expensive but not much more performant. The line bifurcated into an entry level and a premium option, and both have a variant whose chip is derived from the same 7840 as the original model. That is, the Legion Go S and Legion Go 2 are both priced higher than the original, with a lower screen resolution and identical (or nearly identical) chipset. The only reason to choose one over the original is if you really need that extra RAM.
Like the Steam Deck, the Legion Go is still a perfectly serviceable device years later. The Deck competitors from Lenovo, ASUS, OneX, AYANEO, etc. are all built around basically the same chip that's a bit stronger but less power efficient than the Deck. The performance envelope hasn't really moved.
Tariffs and part shortages are making these devices a lot more expensive, but they aren't noticeably better than they were 2 years ago. In fact, Valve's upcoming Steam Machine has very similar specs, and was designed to outperform 70% of the devices currently gaming on Steam.
If prices are going up and performance is stagnating, people who already have gaming devices are going to be reluctant to upgrade. I expect these market forces are going to extend the lifespan of current-gen devices.
Most games take years to make. I wonder how many games currently in the production pipeline were banking on players having more performance available by the time the games are released, and how that is going to impact their reception.
The Steam Deck has been a really useful performance-and-feature anchor for computer gaming. Until hardware improves enough to justify a Steam Deck 2, I expect it will continue to maintain that position, improving the playable lifespan of all the other gaming devices in the market too.
I bought the steam deck because it was 420€. Now the cheapest one is at 570€. I would have never bought it at this price
I shouldn't have bought it at the original price seeing as I never use it. But yes it's a bit less compelling as an impulse purchase.
Yeah especially as its now a few years' old hardware too.
The pricing anchor concept is very intuitive and once you hear about it it’s hard to stop seeing at play.
Steamdeck sold like 6m units, maybe valve gets a few 100m more selling OLED markup, but I feel like that's kind of peanuts for Valve who would rather push the platform. With price of PC these days and disenfranchisement with windows, I think Valve would rather have Steamdeck be Switch.
They still depend on Windows to source their games.
I am not seeing much SteamOS native games.
The article is glaring over a key point- Valve often sold the model at a 20% discount for $320. Clearly this is because the amount spent by a Steam Deck owner would make up the loss in BoM. If they believed they could continue to do so, they would.
I'm happy I got into the LED from the refurbished sale, the price point made it attractive. I was not much into gaming but I've been having a blast, the lowest price point also was ok for me since I am 100% comfortable with DIY on the SSD.
It is very much apparant I'm not Steam's ideal customer, but I'm happy I got it for about $249'ish? I hemmed and hawed alot thinking why am I buying a hand held pc for gaming but the switch 2 was sold out/to much work to reserve so I went for it and am really happy I did.
I am not a gamer, but if they made an 11-inch tablet, I would buy it to replace my ipad and macbook. I already have a portable keyboard I really like.
If you're not interested in games, why the interest in a Valve tablet?
SteamOS is probably the most commercially well-supported consumer desktop Linux, but it's still primarily a games storefront. If you only want to do desktop stuff, you're probably better off either on the Chromebook/Android train, or putting a community-supported distro on whatever hardware you've got.
> SteamOS is probably the most commercially well-supported consumer desktop Linux
Yeah, this basically, and they have good hardware too.
> the Chromebook/Android train
I am not really interested in getting back into the google world. If I buy hardware it needs to support a real linux distro.
> putting a community-supported distro on whatever hardware you've got
With the Macbook, my only option is Asahi. If things keep going the way they are going, I may well end up there. But it is 13 inches and I don't love the keyboard.
I would rather something with an 11 inch screen (for travelling) that can drive a full-size monitor when at home. And use the keyboard I like regardless.
You can put their OS on a minisforum V3 and that's like ... exactly what you want?
Thanks, this is exactly the sort of reply I was fishing for. I'll check it out!
Out of curiosity, what's the portable keyboard you like?
Keyboardio Atreus
tl;dr because this was a bit longs winded imo
> I believe that the end of the LCD line is an entirely strategic move.
> With the discontinuation of the LCD and the introduction of the Machine and Frame, the OLED will suddenly occupy the "Pricing Anchor" slot for Valve's first-party lineup of gaming hardware.
> Crucially, I believe Valve sees the $399 price as too low.
They should refresh Steam Deck more often still. Laptops and phones have more frequent refresh cadence, why not gaming devices.
May be it shouldn't be as frequent, but still more frequent than what it has now.
Part of the point and usefulness is having a stable target for developers to aim at, that they can test performance on. Also, most phones these days are roughly equivalent from the end-user perspective to ones from 2 or 3 years ago, the only difference is increased waste. So... no, no thank you.
Does anyone want to buy a phone every few years? No, I don't think they do.
You don't have to buy it with each iteration, but at the same time if I'm buying one, I don't want to buy hardware that's many generations behind current one.
If I build a new PC myself - I don't have such problem. With laptops - it's a bit behind (usually one generation for AMD with their APUs approach). I don't think anyone complains that there is a choice.
And somehow above doesn't prevent games being released that can scale according to the hardware and aren't tied to a specific hardware generation target. So I don't really see why this has to dictate handhelds to have way slower refresh cycle.
> And somehow above doesn't prevent games being released that can scale according to the hardware and aren't tied to a specific hardware generation target.
Until the Steam Deck came out, I had no hope of playing a game like Sekiro. And even then, the machine I built to play Seikro would not then have also played the second Spiderman game, because those are different console generations.
Now, both are targeted in part at the Steam Deck, and it can run both of them. This actually is a huge boon for the industry, and like I said,
> Part of the point and usefulness is having a stable target for developers to aim at, that they can test performance on
> And somehow above doesn't prevent games being released that can scale according to the hardware and aren't tied to a specific hardware generation target.
In theory, sure. In practice... just look at pretty much all software out there and you will be proven wrong. Every. Single. Time.
Hardware sales FOMO brainrot got to you.
It was released February 2022, that's only almost 4 years ago. 4-5 years is a good target for a refresh, I'll be somewhat surprised if there's not a new one in 2027 (but I was surprised by the lifespan of the Switch, and even the 7-8 years of the 360/PS3 era were surprisingly long, long generations are common now so no new Deck until 2028 or 2029 isn't out of the question), but any more frequently doesn't really make sense as the important components aren't improving in price/capability fast enough, and the initial release was and still is very capable rather than woefully inadequate. The motivations for upgrading are also different from a phone or more general laptop. I think the most common ranking of priorities for improvement would be: having various games run at all (mostly a software problem, Steam Deck already supports hardware ray tracing that various games now require), similar price range, better active battery life, physically lighter, and last would be higher graphical fidelity/performance. The things further down can't compromise the things higher up. Battery life advances being slow is kind of the killer.
There's a point that they could prioritize selling to new owners over existing owners looking to upgrade, and having a more capable device would help with that, but I think the marginal increase is probably not very big. The Steam Deck estimated sales were at 4 million units earlier this year, but that's still a relatively small portion of the whole PC gaming market (132m monthly active users on steam alone by 2021). It has been a big success for them, but it still exceeded their expectations, so I think they also would be skeptical of any large marginal improvement of new owner sales for what would likely be a minor improvement on the important specs. There's also competition from Windows handhelds whose sales don't suggest a large market just wishing Valve had a slightly more capable device that they'd pay more for.
A counter argument - the Switch gave game devs a solid platform to target without being the latest and greatest without compromising the usability or fun factor
I've heard that argument before, but I don't buy it. Whole PC gaming is a counter argument. Let developers make games that scale according to hardware, instead of excusing things with weak specs.
> Let developers make games that scale according to hardware
I'd love that, but I would argue that the evidence shows they don't do it.
Even in PC gaming, the performance target tends to be the lowest performing current gen console, not the best PC.
Which is a totally reasonable approach and has given my PC years of usefulness even though better equipment is out there.
The cutting edge of PCs is such a tiny minority of users, even amongst PC gamers it's still a fraction of users.
That was not always the case for PC gaming, on modest means in my teens I could at least keep up with graphics card releases. I don't bother with that now, because I don't have to and gain very little from doing so.
> Even in PC gaming, the performance target tends to be the lowest performing current gen console, not the best PC.
I would have said "even static websites don't care about older hardware". I am very happy that Valve doesn't refresh the SteamDeck every year exactly for that reason: developers can target "the SteamDeck" instead of "the latest 3 SteamDecks" and force me to buy one every 3 years.
You don't need to buy it, that doesn't matter. Sales numbers are more meaningful than anything. Consumers and developers have voted with their feet.
Sales numbers are also why Steam isn't in a particular rush to release another. It's popular to adult nerds. Outside of that, it's pretty poor selling when compared to essentially all consoles. The Dreamcast outsold it and Sega gave up on hardware cause of that thing. The PS Vita outsold it and it caused Sony to give up on handhelds. Meanwhile, the Switch 2 has pretty much no compelling reason to purchase it yet (an alright Donkey Kong game?) and outsold the Steam Deck's multi-year sales in a month.
Switch 2 is a Nintendo console. It's going to sell like crazy regardless of the software available on release.
No, I’ll let developers optimize their shit instead of hogging my system.
I would much rather a refresh every 5+ years with a more profound hardware improvement. I'm even fine with closer to 10 years if the technology hasn't changed that much at the 5 year mark.
Why should they? Do you think the phone refresh cycle is a healthy one to emulate?
Phones try to emulate PC refresh cycle. Is it healthy? You get new generation of CPUs / GPUs roughly once in two years. I'd say it's OK.
You can easily skip a generation and upgrade say once in 4 years or even less frequently. But at the same I think it's good that there is an option to get newer hardware at that cadence.
> You get new generation of CPUs / GPUs roughly once in two years. I'd say it's OK.
If you look at sustainability, it is obviously not okay.
And for what? Websites and mobile apps that get bulkier and less efficient slightly faster than the refresh cycle. I recently replaced my smartphone - not because I wanted to, but because the main app I use (like banking, nothing that should require a big CPU) were lagging so much that they were unusable. A banking app is supposed to print a few numbers to the screen, and yet it doesn't work on a 5 years old smartphone.
Skip one generation? As of September, the bulk of Steam users were still on 1xxx and 2xxx era or equivalent performing GPUs. https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1oi499v/perce...
No one would bother optimizing for it at all if it had a yearly refresh.
Not saying that's why they don't, but that would be a side effect. I actually think it's more their business doesn't rely on selling Steam Decks, hardware business where you do a yearly refresh is a very different beast to one you do a new model every few years. Their organization doesn't seem set up for that.
I watched some behind the scenes videos about Valve’s Steam Frame development, and it doesn’t seem like they have a very big hardware team.
They don't have a very big team in general. They've got roughly the same headcount as a studio like Obsidian.
It's been just 2 years since the OLED release, I think we're closing in on a refresh. Unless a deck is a year away from a generational bump. A refresh could include the updated joysticks featured on the Steam controller, though.
Till then I'd think I'd do more good for Valve to focus on their steam app and store experience.
I think they recently said they aren’t looking for a refresh for at least 2 years https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/valve-says-a-next-gen-steam...
honestly at this point, phones and personal computers probably should move to a 2 year cadence. The R&D costs are going up and the performance benefits are decreasing.
I thought PCs are already doing it. I think AMD releases new CPUs and GPUs roughly once in two years, unless I'm missing something.