More from Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and more: all the news about the handheld PC gaming revolution
The Steam Deck competitor will be sold in both Z1 and Z1 Extreme configurations, Asus confirms to The Verge. (That was expected, but it’s good to know for sure.) So when you see the starting price on May 11th, know it’s for a somewhat less powerful model.
Here’s our ROG Ally hands-on.
I had a fun time testing this device, but everything’s going to come down to price.
The company says the ROG Ally, its handheld gaming PC that actually wasn’t an April Fool’s joke, will be releasing worldwide “sooner than you expect,” but I’m still mad about the April Fools’ Day shenanigans. Fingers crossed it actually launches in the near future, though.
Did you know the Steam Deck downloads pre-cached shaders from Valve’s servers so games launch faster? It’s awesome — but they can take up a bunch of room on your SSD. Hear this: PCGamer confirmed with Valve (via Phoronix) that those caches are about to shrink by 60 percent.
It won’t shrink cutscenes and intro videos that Valve has to transcode for legal and technical reasons, though.
And it’s all thanks to the new “NoVR” mod.
Friend of The Verge Cameron Faulkner wrote about the experience, and after reading his article, I really want to try it out, especially since I still haven’t actually played the game. The mod apparently even works on Steam Deck!
Does anyone else have this issue? I swear I skim right over the all important r every time I am discussing these products. My colleague Chris Welch, meanwhile, has another suggestion. He’d like someone to make a Stream or Steam Dock. I’m personally very grateful Steam didn’t think of this when they made their Steam Deck dock.
Microsoft’s Halo team announced that Halo: Master Chief Collection is now playable on the Steam Deck. Since the Steam Deck’s launch, MCC was one of a handful of games that weren’t working due to issues with the Easy Anti-Cheat software.
In our burning questions interview with Valve last December, we learned the company spent six months working on Halo Infinite compatibility and was actively working on MCC as well.
After an odd April Fools’ Day tease, Asus confirmed the ROG Ally is coming out someday. Dave2D got hands-on time with a prototype and reports it will be a global release, but with no word on the battery or price.
But the most important element is the custom-designed AMD Ryzen APU inside, which is a major strength of Valve’s Steam Deck that other portable PC gaming machines haven’t been able to match until now.
Sony has broken its streak beautifully bringing its biggest games to PC. The Last of Us just arrived on Steam and 67% of user reviews are negative. Beyond crashes and excessive VRAM use, it’s not Steam Deck Verified and doesn’t run well there, despite game creator Neil Druckmann’s tweet last December suggesting it would “grace” the portable.
Guess that’s why Sony didn’t send journalists review codes until today!
Sure, you could download Dolphin for free any number of ways — but this one should make it that much easier for, say, Steam Deck owners to experience. (While saying nothing of the sort, the announcement comes with a low-resolution 16:10 screenshot to tease such possibilities.)
ETA: Q2 2023. Price: free.
[Dolphin Emulator]
It got a little buried in my story about how the Steam Deck is on sale for the first time ever, so just want to make sure you see! You can use them with your desktop too when you launch Big Picture Mode.
Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais tells PC Gamer that a new screen is not exactly a “drop-in” or “incremental” upgrade. Is he hinting we won’t see a mid-cycle refresh like Nintendo did when it introduced the Nintendo Switch OLED?
Valve’s Steam Deck designers told me months ago that screen and battery are the pain points they’d most like to address in an eventual sequel.
I almost wish I’d waited before buying JSAUX’s excellent transparent heatsink backplate for my Steam Deck...because it now comes in better colors, too! Oh BTW: don’t do the RGB mod yet.
All it took was RGB LEDs.
(And a JSAUX transparent backplate, and a M0 microcontroller, and competent soldering skills, and 1-3W drain on the Deck’s battery... instructions here.)
Steam’s new Big Picture Mode has made it to the stable ring at last, giving you a way more responsive way to select PC games from your couch, touchscreen, or with a Windows portable like the Ayaneo 2 I’m trying right now. It basically gives you the Steam Deck UI on your PC.
PCGamesN has already deleted its story (and tweet) but just to be clear, the GDC survey in question was from an entire year ago, before the Deck even went on sale.
GDC’s new survey just came out last week. While it doesn’t ask about the Deck, a majority of developers say PC is the platform they’re most interested in — just like they did last year.
