And in a week at CES Asus will likely launch a new model with official SteamOS.
I’m sure Valve loves the fact that more people are locked into the Steam store.
Steam is great, and there’s workarounds for using other installed games/stores, but… kinda feels bad that this stuff is so integrated into the Valve/Steam experience.
Don’t get me wrong, I use my steam deck… a lot… and I buy most of my games on Steam… I just wish GOG and Epic integration was a little more integrated, just so I don’t feel so locked in to one company. (yes, I’m aware of heroic launcher, and other options, but they’re still just hacked on extra steps that don’t always work)
Thing is, unlike other vendor lockins, it’s on GOG and Epic for not providing a launcher. It’s super easy to install alternate launchers on the Steam Deck, it’s just Epic and GOG haven’t released official ones yet…
They likely already have regular executive meetings amongst the developers at GOG and likely have discussed this over a decade and decided is wasn’t worth the effort. I wonder why?
If GOG officially supported Linux with their launcher and whatnot, idy probably switch my spending to them. That they haven’t tells me they don’t want the hundreds I spend on games every year.
Likewise for EGS, but I expect a bit more from them (e.g. fund Linux compatibility, make Fortnite Linux compatible, push their EAC customers to support Linux in their games, etc).
It will never happen unless CD Project/GOG spend the 100s of millions of dollars that Valve spends to help fund and support all the Proton compatability and tool suites and ease-of-use QA control to ensure their legacy games run in Linux (i.e. support a game developed in 1996 to run smoothly on every permutation of PC hardware configurations and support paying to develop patches until the end of time). Which is what Valve is currently doing.
They don’t need to, Valve’s work is FOSS, and Heroic proves that it can be reused in another application.
I don’t expect GOG to test every game on every Proton/WINE version, all they need to do is give the user the option to select a different version. Heroic does that, as does Steam, so surely GOG can figure it out.
So then why do you think they (GOG) haven’t done anything for Linux yet?
Because they don’t care. Or maybe they’re just poorly run. It would be pretty cheap to make Linux gamers happy, yet they don’t.
There’s nothing stopping epic or GOG from distributing a flatpak for their experiences/stores, the question is where are they?
Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris both have Epic and GOG integration.
While I would love to have an official GOG Launcher on Linux, it would probably not work as well as Heroic’s integration.
I’m aware, I just like to gently remind people that the stores they want to shop from, seemingly don’t want their money. I view the deck as a kind of linux trojan horse for gaming, SteamOS on more devices could at least convince GOG that linux is worth supporting.
Epic has an axe to grind and I expect nothing from them.
A free game on Epic is too expensive as far as I’m concerned.
Why? I claim them all the time on my phone, and occasionally play them through Heroic. I’ve never installed EGS on any of my devices, but I’ve played a few through Steam’s integration.
A free game is a free game, but I’ll never buy from EGS while they’re so hostile to my preferred platform: Linux. I’ll occasionally buy from GOG, but honestly, their DRM-free schtick isn’t nearly as valuable to me as Valve’s investment in Linux.
A free game is a free game
If that’s all that matters, what’s different between downloading the free game Epic affords you versus simply browsing FitGirl and downloading any game for free?
Epic is paying the devs, FitGirl and any other form of piracy isn’t.
So, they ignore Canada and refuse to support the people there. Greaaat.
Neither of the companies want to support Linux. Simple as that. Or else their launchers would work on Linux without needing third party ones. They don’t see Linux user base as big enough to be worth the effort.
Agreed but that’s just life in Linux in general. If epic and gog don’t want to do the work to have a legitimate option in Linux (makes sense given market share), we’ll keep doing the best we can with the hacky options while supporting the platform that is putting in the work.
yes, I’m aware of heroic launcher, and other options, but they’re still just hacked on extra steps that don’t always work)
I mean, this requires buying a windows powered handheld and then loading an entire OS on it.
So I don’t think people are locked to steam with it, but I’m honestly not sure.
GOG games work great with heroic because no DRM, almost as easy as steam games. Epic is a pain in the ass though because you need to be logged in to play them. They work offline for a time but every time I travel I have to reenter username, password, 2FA code and captcha. For whatever reason it just refuses to remember the device. Still Civ6 is good on deck and it was free on epic.
No one is locked into the Steam store. Any of the others could release a Linux handheld if they wanted to.
First they would have to make an interface that works in a console like way, and then actually make the launchers work on Linux. But this would require effort, and neither care about actually supporting customers.
Epic is far happier being customer hostile.
GamersNexus proved that ASUS is a scummy company and the ROG Ally isn’t a great product
And Asus is still going strong with the shitty prebuilt GN reviewed yesterday that was the worst prebuilt GN had ever reviewed.
The Ally and Ally X are very different products, but yes…Asus is scum.
Different how? No difference in that the same scummy company sells them both.
Original Ally has a lot of design flaws, like the SD card being cooked to death, that were fixed in the X.
However, it’s still Asus.
Ah, well its fairly new, I’m sure we’ll find others.
Indeed
It won’t surpass the Deck for me until they put trackpads on it!
today’s best handheld
no trackpads, I rest my case.
I’ll be honest, the Ally as a complete product is not appealing to me whatsoever. Yes, it’s much faster and better on paper, but it’s not better in reality. Admittedly Bazzite makes it a lot better, but it still has way too many drawbacks, compared to Deck. Even more so, it can be said about whatever MSI made
Exactly this.
For me it’s just that the deck is a better low power device and has trackpads. I can play RPGs from the 90s at 3 watts for 8 hours on a single charge. The thing I’m most excited for in a deck2 would be even better performance under 10W.
As someone that has both (and I did install Bazzite on the Ally) I have found myself still using the Steam Deck. Like many in my (admittedly fortunate) situation, I had a deck first then got an Ally later out of curiosity if the “more power” aspect would make an impactful difference in gaming on more demanding titles. And while yes you can get more frames/use higher graphics settings on demanding titles, I keep going back to the Deck because it’s just a better overall experience. Even with Bazzite on the Ally, there’s just this level of Jank that prevents me from using it as my main “console.”
A recent example: I finally beat Horizon Zero Dawn (original version ran great on the Deck and I played through the whole game on it) so naturally I fired up the sequel, Forbidden West. Since it’s a newer game it’s a bit more demanding and not officially a verified Deck game, but I’ve been able to get it to run at a mostly steady 30fps anyway. I was curious how much better the Ally would run it so I tried it for a day or two, and while I get more fps, the frame pacing and controller response and screen and speakers just soured the experience so I went right back to the Deck and I’ll be playing the rest of the game on that. I had similar experiences with other demanding games like Cyberpunk, BG3, Dragon Age, etc.
And yes I know that there is “tweaking” I can probably do to make things “perfect” on the Ally but I just want something that works when I want to just play a game, but allows me to go down the tweaking rabbit hole when I want to. The Steam Deck does that in all regards. And no, my issue with the Ally aren’t from a lack of knowledge (I’ve worked in IT for over 20yrs, I know what I’m doing when it comes to making a PC work) because I do often mess around with the Deck to “perfect” a respective experience with a game.
Maybe when Valve finally releases SteamOS for other hardware will I give it another go (though they can’t change the hardware itself), but until then, I’ll stick with the Steam Deck (and my big rig for the few games that are just too demanding)
Edit: and for the curious, I only got around 40fps on Forbidden West in the most demanding areas compared to 30fps on the Deck, and I put the two on identical settings, including graphics preset, resolution (720p on Ally, 800p on Deck because aspect ratio) and everything else. So the added power didn’t do enough to justify the rest of the experience.
Mm, yes, because I’m gonna spend $1100 on something far overpowered for its usecase
Yup. I got my Steam Deck for $530 or something at launch and I’m still loving it. If it breaks and I can’t cheaply fix it, I’ll buy their OLED model for $550 and still be less than Asus’ device. Yeah it’s less powerful, but it’s not half as powerful.
If Valve releases a faster Deck, I’ll probably get it because the first has worked so well and was priced well. I’m happy competitors exist, but I don’t need a top of the line handheld, because I can always play more intensive games on my desktop.
I’ll stick with the deck. I’d rather a Linux first approach and to support the people putting in the work.
Agree. Asus never really put much of an effort to support Linux, for example, for the big companies, fwupd, we only see Dell and Lenovo support.
Agreed. It’s hard to believe anyone still recommends Asus after the whole GN debacle.
Steam Deck has the OLED display, better efficiency/battery life, is hundreds of dollars cheaper, is supported by a company that actually cares about it’s customers, and doesn’t need to mess around with installing a different OS.
What’s the GN debacle?
Agreed. It’s hard to believe anyone still recommends Asus after the whole GN debacle.
If you’re in Asia, that debacle is a non-issue. Their support in Asia has been great for me. I’m on the Steam Deck camp but they’re still my go to for gaming laptops.
Just because you haven’t personally experienced issues doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Not sure why you’re trying to invalidate the experiences of people in my region and me but sure whatever makes you happy.
I didn’t invalidate anything.
Read your original comment and then read this comment you posted.
One of the appealing things about the Steam Deck is its repairability. Valve even published a teardown video and partnered with iFixit to make replacement parts available, IIRC.
It would be hard to convince me that a device that doesn’t beat the Deck in this area is “today’s best”. It’s important.
The ROG ally is extremely easy to repair and replace parts.
As someone who owns neither but is impressed by this new boom in handhelds, I’m just happy that there are multiple options that are repairable and modular.
Me too, I came from a switch, I really enjoyed it but the move for me was for the bigger variety of games and the are more specials on steam, gog etc compared to Nintendo. But bear in mind that not all games are handheld friendly.
Not the case for me (at least for the original model). I used it a lot for a few month before it just… stopped charging, not with the supplied power cable, not with any other cable capable of charging it.
Weirdest of all it still detects usb-c for files & stuff, and charges with a phone cable, but the power delivery is so crap that it doesn’t even show up as charging on the taskbar.
Sent it to general repair many times, they could not find out why it does that. It could be a windows problem, and i wish i was in the minority here, but it basically dead weight now.
Plenty of comments have already addressed the touchpads. But the other thing that only the steam deck does right now, is the symmetrical joysticks at the top of the device. Personally, I find having the right joystick farther down on a heavy handheld absolutely brutal for ergonomics, and it’s the reason I never touch my Switch Lite
I don’t own any of these, but the Microsoft (Windows) hate is appreciated here.
When will literally any media outlet notice that the touchpads are what make the Deck really special?
I see this type of comment somewhat often and I’m always left a little confused about what I’m missing. The only time I ever use the touch pads is in desktop mode, which is not that often. What games use the touch pads?
Same here, it’s strange because within my social circles no one talks about them. I only ever use them for the custom menus but that’s pretty much about it. Generally people seem to like using it on shooters but I’ve tried it and still prefer to play shooters with a mouse on my PC. Only ever play more controller friendly games on my Deck so it’s not a big deal to me either.
Mouse heavy games, e.g. Sterallis, you simply move the cursor with the touchpad and click with RT or LT and it works wonderfully
I don’t understand the RT/LT for mouse buttons. Such a long movement to get to a click just feels unnatural to me. When the track pad has a press to click why not use that instead? At least for the primary button.
You can set the actuation to require the slightest of pulls to engage a click. It’s all fully customizable.
Pressing on the trackpad for click often moves your finger, which moves the cursor during the click. It can get annoying.
You probably don’t play mouse heavy games, but if you like strategy games they’re a must. Playing Stellaris, RimWorld, Crusader Kings or Factorio without a touch pad would get annoying really fast.
Anything which does not have controller support. Civ, for example. Lots of other similar strategy titles. They function as a great mouse replacement. I’ve even used them for first person shooters, where a trackpad in trackball mode can be more accurate for aiming versus a controller.
The right one, that is. The left is more often used for custom menus.
But the fact remains: you are restricted to games with controller support without the touchpads.
I use them to get around shitty launchers too.
Games with partial controller support. I mean, I can hold the guide menu button and then use the right stick to move the mouse, but it sucks balls in comparison to just a quick swipe of the track pad. It makes the game feel fluid instead of wonky. For more complex games they act as controller augments. You can configure anything you want. When I use my PS controller, it just feels like it’s missing a necessary feature without the touch pads. I think most people think of the track pads as a replacement for L3 and R3 and they were in the past. Now though, we have gyro and flickstick. To me, gyro and flickstick over track pads.
*Partial or no controller support.
I’ve used them for custom radial menus and for moving the mouse cursor on games with no proper controller support, but I never use it on games with controller support; I would also like to know what other people use them for.
Try them in an FPS. You may be surprised how much more accurate the trackpad can be for aiming versus an analog stick.
I’ve tried, and I can’t get used to it. Actually I started using gyro for aiming, and that feels a lot better.
Fair, maybe it just isn’t for you.
But ultimately, the point is: the Deck is the only one of these handhelds with the trackpads. If you don’t use them, maybe it doesn’t matter, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Deck is the only such handheld capable of playing games with no controller support.
Yeah I’m the same. People have said they’re better for subtle movements like aiming but I find I tend to either move too little with them or spin out of control. Fat thumbs I guess.
Tbh the round, concave trackpads on the Steam Controller were better in every way. But I’m happy we at least still have the trackpads at all.
Steam Deck is more than software and a slightly old APU, its also the controlls and build quality. Tbh I dont think any company can truly surpass the Steam Deck.
People have the wrong ideas. Steam Deck LED was a pure test object anyway, where they saw that there was a market, which is why Valve also released the Oled version. Valve has left the hardware open so that you can also install other OS. Valve may also see competition there, even if the competition releases more powerful hardware. Valve’s hardware is still secondary and steam, which is installed everywhere, is still their core product. The better hardware the competition brings, the more power-hungry games people will buy.
Steam Deck vs … is just nonsense.
surpassed in what? sales? doubt! quality? doubt.
what is this AI Slob blog ad?
