Valve Steam Deck hands-on: the Nintendo Swap of PC gaming

I’ve held the Steam Deck, and I’m almost a believer.

Not fairly, however I like what I see.

Three weeks after PC gaming big Valve surprise-announced its own $400 portable game console, I flew to the corporate’s headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, for a whirlwind tour of the corporate’s newest prototypes — and an opportunity to match them to the Nintendo Swap and an earlier AMD-powered handheld gaming system, the Aya Neo.

I logged in with my Steam account, picked up The Witcher 3 and Management proper the place I left off weeks or months in the past on my desktop gaming PC, and chewed by means of just a few demons in Doom Final with thumbsticks, precision touchpads, and gyroscopic aiming. Whereas I didn’t get solutions to burning questions like how seamlessly you’ll be able to set up your individual video games, how the mannequin with slower eMMC storage works, or how properly it really works outside, I used to be completely capable of really feel how comfy this moveable could be and the way a lot energy it has on faucet.

Getting into, we knew to count on efficiency far forward of a Nintendo Swap however not almost that of a next-gen recreation console since the Steam Deck has slightly less than half the raw graphical muscle of even Microsoft’s entry-level Xbox Sequence S. However because it solely has to energy 720p gaming, not 1440p and even 1080p, you might get a shocking quantity of bang to your 4 hundred bucks: I used to be capable of flip up demanding sections of The Witcher 3 and Management to medium spec with out feeling uncomfortable. That’s a full graphical tier increased than the founder’s version Aya Neo, the place I’m sometimes enjoying these video games on lowest settings and generally nonetheless bogging down.

What I didn’t essentially envision after I walked into Valve’s foyer: simply how gigantic the Steam Deck appears to be like subsequent to a Nintendo Swap — and but, how rather more comfy it’s to carry. Whereas it simply barely suits right into a deep cargo pants pocket (when you can name “bulges out in each course” a match), I now consider Valve when it says the Deck was sculpted for lengthy play periods.

The primary time I picked it up, it felt like my fingers simply melted into its grips and grooves, putting each management at my fingertips — together with far meatier joysticks and a deeper, softer throw to its triggers than the stiff, clicky controls I’ve come to count on from the Swap and Swap-like PC opponents. I’m undecided I’m a fan of the graceful, flat-topped joysticks, although. Despite the fact that you are able to do some superior gyroscopic aiming by leaving your finger on the hidden capacitive sensor there, you’ll be able to already pull that very same trick with the precision touchpad, and I’m undecided it’s definitely worth the trade-off in joystick grippyness. I’d want to check extra, although.

Whereas I instantly seen the additional half-pound of weight in comparison with the Swap, it didn’t bug me throughout my transient session. The Deck could also be heavier, however these prototypes appear mild for his or her measurement, with a barely hole feeling that — come to think about it — could be polarizing. I’m wondering if Valve will maintain it that approach and if the display end and the plastics may enhance. Indoors, I didn’t actually have a transparent choice between Valve’s shiny display and the premium etched anti-glare remedy — since what you acquire in anti-glare you lose in vibrancy — and I noticed just a few scratches on the chassis.

I additionally undoubtedly felt some warmth and battery drain, with one unit that was plugged in firstly of our session almost {dead} after an hour and a half. Since Valve promised 4 hours of real-world battery life enjoying Portal 2 and as much as eight hours with much less demanding fare, I think about that’s not regular. Valve couldn’t say what is going to particularly change between these EV2 developer items and remaining, however that construct high quality continues to be being improved.

There’s rather a lot I actually wasn’t capable of do in an hour and a half at Valve’s HQ yesterday, like dig in deep on the brand new SteamOS (although I do like how rather more streamlined it appears to be like and how one can simply see which video games you’ve acquired on an SD card and the inner drive), strive any on-line or multiplayer gaming, or hook it as much as an even bigger monitor. The staff additionally wouldn’t allow us to tear it down — I requested!

However I used to be capable of get some partial solutions to some lingering questions and a promise that this received’t be the final have a look at the Steam Deck forward of its late-2021 / early-2022 launch.

As one instance, Valve says it’s planning to provide its personal video to elucidate precisely what it means to open up the Steam Deck and entry the internals if mandatory as a result of that’s undoubtedly a factor the corporate’s planning to allow you to do. We’d already heard you can swap the SSD, however reparability could be very a lot on the corporate’s thoughts as properly. Valve’s Greg Coomer says the corporate has an entire set of nuanced solutions to your burning questions there.

You may also do not forget that Valve plans to supply a docking station for the Steam Deck to simply output to a TV, and whereas that’s nonetheless within the works, the staff says it’s hoping to ship that alongside the moveable. It’s potential you may have the ability to order one alongside the Deck, although not for sure.

The staff dismissed questions on whether or not Valve would carry any new video games to the Steam Deck or whether or not it’s going to be worthwhile — “We’re not going to dive into this and lose a bunch of cash” — however they did strongly counsel to me that they wouldn’t make any video games unique to portables the best way they made Half-Life: Alyx unique to VR, saying they don’t take into consideration the Steam Deck’s inputs the identical approach.

Whereas the staff believes some recreation producers may particularly optimize their controls for portables, Valve says it didn’t design the Steam Deck by way of giving the participant arms, despite the fact that the Deck has buttons below eight of your fingers and may sense your thumb place. It was extra about having extra buttons for PC players to map, and one staff member introduced up how the Xbox Elite controller provides you further paddles so that you don’t need to take your fingers off the sticks. “It’s extra about high quality of inputs and amount of inputs,” stated Valve’s Lawrence Yang.

However Coomer did mild up after I recommended that perhaps we might see the Steam Deck’s customized AMD APU in a standalone VR headset, just like the Oculus Quest. He stated he beloved the query. “We’re not able to say something about it, however it might run properly in that surroundings, with the TDP mandatory… it’s very related to us and our future plans,” he stated.

Images by Sean Hollister / The Verge