When many people are happily playing Mario and Baokemeng with Switch, Steam, the king of PC games, has quietly appeared in the battlefield of game consoles, and left a heavy "bomb" off guard-without preheating in advance and without any announcement, Steam Deck, his own game console, was born, and the pre-sale was immediately started.
Just a few hours after the official announcement was put on the shelves, all the supplies in the first quarter of 2021 were robbed. Two days after it was put on the shelves, the Steam Deck 512GB version, with a pre-order price of only $649 (about 4,300 RMB), has now been fired for nearly $5,000 (about 33,000 RMB) on eBay.
Yes, a tough life needs no explanation. Steam is so capricious. And netizens exclaimed after tasting this new handheld. This is the Switch Pro I want to see. What was the upgrade of Switch before? In a surging, unguarded Switch smile gradually disappeared, and shouted Valve have no martial ethics in my heart.
So, what’s the charm of this new handheld that looks like the Switch, but "hangs" the Switch in various performances, which makes people "like the new and hate the old" so quickly?
Breaking the rule of handheld, you can run Windows to align with PC.
From the appearance, Steam Deck is very similar to Switch. In the middle is a 7-inch touch screen with a resolution of 1280×800, and the left and right sides are non-detachable controllers. In the operation area, in addition to the basic left and right analog rocker, cross button and four groups of independent buttons, there are also two touch pads, which are convenient for users to click or slide with their thumbs. The fuselage also supports the gyroscope function, which means that content interaction can be carried out by changing the fuselage angle, and tactile feedback can be transmitted through the fuselage vibration.
At first glance, Deck is like an upgraded version of the "Diablo" Switch.
However, although "face" is similar, the difference between "lining" is big. In terms of performance, Steam Deck adopted the exclusive APU developed in cooperation with AMD, with built-in Zen2+RDNA2 specification architecture, and the configuration specifications are similar to those of Microsoft Xbox Series X/S and Sony PS5. In other words, on Deck, you can completely play 3A games and completely leave Switch behind.
The picture was taken from SteamDeck official website.
In terms of battery life, Deck will be used for 2~8 hours according to the performance requirements of the game. In addition, it also provides the fast pause and resume function of the built-in SteamOS, and the game machine can continue to play where it was interrupted last time after entering the sleep mode. At the same time, it has built-in Bluetooth 5.0, which is used to connect handles, headphones, etc., and solves the peripheral connection problem that Switch was widely criticized in the past.
Not only that, but what is "insulting" is that Valve doesn’t seem to put Switch in the ranks of competitors at all. They stressed that although it has the appearance of a handheld, the overall operation function of Deck is basically a mini laptop. The appearance of Steam Deck is to break people’s stereotype of handheld devices.
Deck has a base similar to Switch, which can be connected to a screen, USB, etc. You can plug it into a monitor or TV, install applications and software, use it to watch streaming video, etc. It is no problem to change the original system Steam OS 3.0 to Windows.
What does this mean? That is, in addition to playing the games in your Steam game library on Deck, you can even install Epic, Nintendo simulator and so on. Play Mario after 3 years, and one machine and several platforms are exchanged. Isn’t this a paradise for game fans?
A comparison picture of Steam deck and Switch made by netizens, the picture is from Twitter.
Of course, Deck is not a complete victory over Switch. Its fuselage weight reached 0.67 kg, which is almost equivalent to the weight of two Switch. Think about those moments when you were lying down playing games and your hand slipped and got hit in the face. Deck was like a brick. The advantage of Switch’s exclusive game is unparalleled. After all, big IPs like Zelda, Baokemeng and Mario have a high degree of nationality, and Xian Yi, men, women and children, may have a wider audience than those 3A masterpieces on Steam.
In view of Deck’s lack of real mobile phones, its heat dissipation, actual battery life and operational fluency are still only at the propaganda level. Therefore, it is hard to say who wins or loses the battle of size "S".
How to book and when to deliver?
At present, Steam Deck has released a total of three price models, namely: 399 dollars for the 64GB version; $529 for the 256GB version; 649 dollars for the 512GB version. Among the three versions, the basic version uses an embedded multimedia card, while the other two use SSD storage, which is faster to load. Other than that, there is no other difference. In addition, all three versions support extended memory.
I have to say that Steam Deck’s pricing this time is very conscience. With such a high performance configuration, the basic version is only $50 higher than the Switch. Just say that the Switch in your hand is still fragrant.
Steam Deck has opened the first wave of pre-orders to countries such as the United States, Canada, Britain and the European Union. It is expected to start shipping in December this year, and the rest will be launched in 2022. However, at present, the pre-sales of the three models in the first quarter of next year have all been robbed, and the goods in the second and third quarters are being arranged. On the second-hand platforms in various countries, the price of Deck has soared, even exceeding $5,000.
Image taken from eBay
In fact, in order to prevent malicious hoarding, Steam has made sufficient preparations. Valve requires that the account that can apply for booking Deck this time must be established before June and have a purchase record, and each account is limited to booking one set, and the players who participate in the booking will be charged a prepayment of $5 to determine which players have a clear purchase intention.
But even if the purchase threshold is so high, it can’t resist the strong interest of players. Only two days after its release, according to the data released by SteamDB, the total number of scheduled Steam Deck in the world has exceeded 105,000. (Small partners who are interested in its latest sales trends can also pay attention to its official website. )
Players are boiling, but can you copy the myth of Switch?
After the release of Steam Deck, it instantly set off a huge wave among gamers. Someone said, I’m sorry, Switch, but I may be a "love rat". I can’t help it. Steam is so good that I can’t take my eyes off it. From now on, I may have to say goodbye to Switch’s games.
Players have also said that it is really sweet to play 3A games on the handheld. Now Gabe, CEO of Valve, is simply the white-robed wizard in the Lord of the Rings and the god of the game in his eyes.
The picture is from Twitter.
Deck is also considered as a trend of game evolution: from the host to the mobile and then to the palm, and Steam is at the forefront of this wave.
Even Epic, the old rival of Steam, was full of praise for the Steam Deck. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic, even helped to promote Twitter, saying that Deck’s extremely open ecosystem was amazing.
Image taken from Epic CEO Tim Sweeney Twitter.
Of course, there are also many netizens standing on the side of Switch. They believe that even if Deck’s real machine is really as good as it advertised, it will never replace and surpass Switch. The reason is simple, it is not Nintendo. The particularity of Nintendo’s game IP makes it deeply rooted among users and can continuously open up a bigger market.
On the other hand, Steam Deck’s popularity only relies on a huge game library and high performance. The game will be iterative and its performance can be improved, but its uniqueness can’t be compared with Nintendo.
Image from Twitter
In fact, this is not the first time Steam has set foot in game hardware. In 2013, Steam launched a home game console-Steam Machine. At that time, Valve expected that the host could run the Steam OS system software and be equipped with an open source system, which was easy to put on the TV cabinet in terms of shape design, so that the game could enter the player’s living room from the small computer screen.
Now it seems that this idea is very advanced, and now it has proved to be very marketable, but Valve failed. After launching an amazing prototype and handle, this product gradually disappeared in the market.
The reasons are as follows: First, the Steam OS operating system was still a mess. According to the test, the version of Steam OS 2.0 was almost completely crushed by Win10, which was just launched at that time, and did not achieve the expected results at all. Second, it didn’t have the right to speak its own hardware, and outsourced the host manufacturing to other manufacturers, resulting in different prices of Steam Machine with different configurations. The starting price ranged from 499 US dollars to 6,000 US dollars, and the market was once very chaotic.
The concept map of the design of Steam machine in those days, the picture is from The Verge.
However, after learning from the failure experience six years ago, Valve seems to be ready to start again. First of all, Steam OS has gradually matured after years of polishing, giving Deck a better operating environment. Unlike sticking to Linux six years ago, Deck also embraced Windows with a more open attitude to better cater to the market. In terms of pricing, we also chose a more conservative low-price strategy.
As we all know, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo dominate the game console industry, while Nintendo dominates the console industry. Valve, which once failed to challenge the mainframe, is now targeting the handheld. I wonder if Steam Deck will be the Game Changer after 6 years.
So, do you think Steam Deck will beat Switch and become the new king of handhelds?
This article comes from WeChat WeChat official account: Silicon Star Man (ID: guixingren 123), author: Juny.