VR absolutely niche, but Steam Deck has delivered on its promise far more than I expected, and this seems to be being reflected in impressive sales.
I'd happily place a bet today on there being a family of Steam Deck devices forming a material part of the PC games industry in 5 years or earlier. Much of the implementation such as the store experience is already leagues ahead of the garbage Nintendo get away with on the Switch.
When they inevitably release a second one with an OLED display and more performance and battery life, its going to be massively compelling. Sure we can all point to failures like the Steam Boxes, but from those failures came Proton which has been directly responsible for the Deck concept working so successfully.
It's unclear whether Valve is playing the long game or simply hedging their bets. My recollection is that their investment in Linux was expressly stated to be a hedge against a future where Microsoft put Windows in a walled garden, like iOS.
On the other hand, I know that a bunch of people are unhappy that the Steam Controller has been discontinued. Secondhand prices are through the roof.
I'd argue this to be a pretty dated take on Valve's strategy, personally. Gabe stated it was a hedge over 10 years ago, in response to the risk of Windows 8 moving to mandatory Microsoft Store:
Obviously none of that came to pass, we are two more Windows releases on and much has changed since. It is serendipitous the tech built is so great for delivering a portable experience - I think Valve's actions and words demonstrate it to be far more committed to the Deck than prior efforts, I don't see this as hedging bets. And why wouldn't they? At this stage they appear to have a hit product on their hands.
In 2022, Microsoft and Valve have strategic partnerships too, which certainly wasn't the case in 2012:
Yes, I should have been clearer. I meant that their Linux investment started out as a hedge, but over time they were able to pivot it to something else.
I'm not sure what the impetus was for the Steam Deck. I could see it as a hedge against anticipated future, dwindling laptop sales. I could also see it as an attempt to expand into the same space that the Switch occupies. After all, with the exodus of Sony from portable gaming, Nintendo's only competition is cell phones.
The impetus is it’s an obvious vehicle to sell more games via Steam? I don’t think it is any more complex than this.
AMD finally delivered a chip that can make the dream of desktop-ish performance in a handheld work. That simply wasn’t all that possible until very recently.
It depends on who is buying the Steam Deck. If it's people who don't already have a PC, then sure, Valve is broadening their market. But if it's people who already have a gaming PC, then it probably won't lead to a lot of additional software sales.
After having a Steam Deck for a bit I really really hope either Valve or some other decent controller company like 8bitdo makes a controller with the same style of setup. The dual haptic trackpads+paddle buttons combined with the customizability is incredible. To me it is easily the biggest leap in controller tech since the analog stick with the N64.
I've never used the original Steam Controller and I still think the dual analog stick setup is better for some games but having the trackpads is good for many others.
The Atari 2600 had a digital joystick. The Atari 5200 was completely analog. If you tear the controller down, there's a complex mechanism that links the stick to two rotational potentiometers. It's similar in outcome to modern analog thumbsticks, but the mechanism is completely different (and is MUCH bigger).
The 5200 joystick didn't self-center, though. The only centering force was from the rubber boot. This ended up being advantageous in a game like missile command, but is widely seen as the Achilles heel of the controller.
I might have overstated that. Looking at eBay "sold" prices, they seem to go for anywhere from 30 USD (controller only, no accessories) to over 100 USD (used, but in box with accessories) or 200 USD (sealed in box). But even then, there's a lot of price variation - there are sealed controllers for as low as 130 USD.
The VR niche has grown significantly recently with the Quest 2 selling 15 million units. Just today, what I would consider the most promising game/platform in VR released, which is BoneLab. The state of the art VR experience wise in my opinion was Boneworks, and that was only on PCVR, so I'm excited to see where we are headed with VR. It has been a slow-growing niche but it's still fighting on.
I strongly disagree. First, to adress the grandparent comment, Valve is a private company that is still lead by its founders, so the sentiment does not apply to them.
First, Half-Life Alyx, from the technical standpoint, is a more complex project than a regular AAA fps due to the sheer amount of innovation that was required to make it work. They also developed their own VR set alongside it.
Second, measuring a company's capabilities by how popular their products are is not fair, imo. Activision, Ubisoft and the like have been churning out "blockbusters" for years at this point, essentially packaging the same game under a new title. Are they really more capable than Valve, which has released an innovative product in a completely new field?
Third, the reason Valve does not release HL3 (and this is me speculating) is not because they are unable to "pull it off" - technically, they are, they just did it with Alyx. The real issue is that the amount of hype generated behind the title is so immense almost anything they make would be underwhelming. Their decision to venture into VR complicated matters even further. VR, still being niche, would essentially make the game inaccessible to most of the fans. With valve having developed their own set, it would have looked like an intentional rip-off.
> as they’re not the company that can pull that off anymore.
No company could ever pull off Half Life 3. This game is hyped to death before it's even announced and everyone would come in with sky-high expectations. To make matters worse, everyone would expect that game to be something different and it would be impossible to make even just half of the players happy. There's no point in creating a Half Life 3, it's a guaranteed disappointment.
I wouldn't mind this, honestly. a game can be solid even on an old engine. just look at how long the Monster Hunter series had been on their old engine before overhauling with World.
I agree it's becoming sort of pointless to make HL3. As a fan, I'm perfectly happpy with keeping HL3 as only an asymptote and getting episode1, 2, Alyx and hopefully more.
They are still pulling off big projects and pivoting well though though steam proton/steamdeck which pivoted from the initial failures of the steambox push
they may not really be in the AAA game business as much but I'm not sure that's a bad thing
Yeah, I was saying niche because the Steamdeck experience isn't as plug and play as other consoles.
For example if you want to play Batman Arkham Asylum, you need to go into desktop mode, download a different Proton version then go back to the console mode, switch the used Proton version and then you can play. There's a whole bunch of other games where you have to tweak settings, maybe use the CLI to tweak things. And then add on top of that of managing settings to get optimal FPS and battery life.
That's a lot to throw at kids or non-technical people. It's quite a different experience than a Switch where you just download it and it works at optimal for the device resolution/fps.
Now if they do Half Life 3 - that’ll be a mainstream blockbuster, but they won’t, as they’re not the company that can pull that off anymore.