10 Things You DIDN'T Know About Steam Deck | AAA Games, Dock, UI, APU, & more

Valve hosted a stream targeted at Steam Deck developers to give them the information they need to know to develop for the Steam Deck appropriately. I sat through the 4 hour stream and compiled 10 things we didn't know about the Steam Deck that gamers will want to know.

HOW TO BUILD A HACKENDECK

CHAPTERS
00:00 1 - Build A Hackendeck
02:10 2 - Handheld Optimized APU
03:38 3 - UI Overhaul Looks Great
05:06 4 - Sleep Mode
06:12 5 - AAA Gaming
07:20 6 - SteamOS 3 and Big Picture Mode
08:24 7 - Targeting the Deck
09:19 8 - Docked Gaming
10:12 9 - Input Handling
11:08 10 - Australia & Japan!
11:33 Bonus - Quick Hits

SOURCE

[Technostatic]

If they make different editions like what Nintendo has done with their DS lineup and Switch lineup, that would be really cool and I would definitely want to get a Portal themed Deck 2.0 in the future.

[VisionFR]

Finally I can see this stream in French, I was looking forward to it and you are the only one to have done it! Thanks again for all these precious informations, I can't wait to receive my steamdeck, long live your channel and long live the DeckGang!

[LycoLoco]

Really loved this breakdown. Especially liked learning that BPM and Desktop will have feature parity in the future. Thanks DeckGang!

[MrNobody-zxjz]

I really appreciate that you have a smooth, ASMR voice, is night here and it calms me, its good cause I have problems with sleep.

[bluekewne]

My concern with "getting rid of Big Picture" is that I still use my Steam Link (been playing Tomb Raider I & the DELTATRAVELER fangame recently), so I hope their new image for Big Picture doesn't undermine/discontinue Steam Link (both the hardware & software)

[jmbd]

Great coverage! Shared on Reddit as usual.

[cpmarianoibz]

WoD you are doing a great job from the presentation of the info to the time answering to almost every one commemting... Dont feel any presure to reply, im just complimenting and keep it up! Props man 🙌

[emiliosanchez]

This is a really good summation of consumer relevant things from the livestream thank you!

[Travesura]

What a pity that we are going to keep waiting to touch SteamOS 3, I really hope it helps Linux to be a much more stable and easy way to play games, and finally a good alternative to Windows.
Great video as usual!

[dominik]

I simply love the direction of supporting low-powered hardware for big games as well as providing good tools to squeeze more performance. The current state of PC gaming is somehow broken as a lot of games are not very well optimized (though there are well optimized games). It feels like developers don't care all that much of PCs, because they assume PC users have very powerful bleeding edge hardware, which is not the case for everyone. There are situations where your graphics chip and processor simply crashes a console like PS4 in terms of horsepower, but the same game works the same or better on PS4. It doesn't have to look like this and having popular, single PC-based target might possible make that situation better.

[rajgill]

Coming from high end gaming laptops. The power priority is very cool to see. Even on battery, the clock speed stays up and full power to the gpu/apu.
So many of us laptop power gamers are used to less power on battery power, and have to plug in for full performance. It takes away from the portability

[hyperknighta]

This was an interesting video, thank you. I would definitely like to see you use an comparable machine and do some testing that will give a general overview of how games would run on Deck. I also have a list! Rimworld, Planet Coaster, Rocket League, Microsoft Flight Sim, Skyrim 10th Anniversary and anything else you could throw at it. At the moment, I’ve been using the Aya Neo as a point of reference.

In 45 years of being alive and being a hardcore gamer through and through, I don’t think I have EVER been so hyped for a piece of hardware such as this!!

[Tommo_]

When steam os gets launched to the public I'm jumping on that shit so fucking fast

[GavinPetty]

Makes me happy that Manjaro with KDE Plasma is recommended as the SteamOS 3 alternative from Valve.

[cadethumann]

If you dont mind me asking another question, would a sound tactic for the deck with the least storage or even the one with medium be to uninstall a game to make space for another? If so, would the save data of an uninstalled game remain should said game be reinstalled?

[johnylightning]

Great video thank you for all these informations !
I hope that many AAA games will be optimize on the steam deck !

[ZerneBDTDev]

This is All Speculation, with the Maximum Peak Power(i talk about Maximum Watts he can pull) of the APU/Memory, we could get Bad Surprise about "AAA Gaming", its not a coïncidence that we haven't really seen AAA Gameplay longer than few seconds.

[cravenmarigold]

One thing I hope for the Deck is better Steam Input support, a huge amount of titles don't play well with mixed input and it makes setting up custom configurations a hassel already. I hope with the Deck if it takes off devs will finally support mixed input better.

Also hopes it makes track pads and gyro aiming more popular. Gyro is supported on Sony and Nintendo platforms (not Xbox) and due to lack of demand we rarely get support on console. At the least good support too. Ps games, a majority don't support it but Switch games do and it's not very good even if people say it is.

I just want it to be more popular as it solves the heated mouse vs controller debate and makes shooters on console just far better to play. Channels like Gyro Gaming have been advocating for it for years and so have the Switch and Steam Input community. Its really upsetting to see console players shamed just because we play controller and its upsetting knowing we have a much better option that we aren't allowed to use, and if it is, it't not very good.

Steam Input alone makes the deck the perfect handheld device for shooters as you get the best of controller and mouse aim if you turn on settings and devs allow it.

[zombiejesus]

I was thinking of getting a desk MAINLY to
1. Use to bring over to a friend's house (docked)
2. Use on a TV (basically like a steam link since mine broke)

I have the steam controllers already. It would be much easier to hook it up to my TV for a night or two or bring it over to a friend's house for the weekend.

How is it looking while docked? Usually play older/indie games. "Highest graphic" game would be like borderlands 2

[Regorsnas]

Good amount of info, long wait until Q2 2022...