So no bugs then?. I heard they made a mess of remastering the first two and introduced a load of problems that never got fixed.
My excitement definitely depends on the price point of the Steam Machine. Any intel on that yet?
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The one thing that I donāt like about my steam deck is that itās not as smooth as a switch when hooked up to a TV via the docking station. Maybe the problem is the Bluetooth controller Iām using (an older 8-bit-do pro), that I always have to set the steam deck to forget and reconnect.
A more powerful system like the steam machine with the new controller seems to be just the right thing for me. Iām not in a hurry to get one and will wait for reviews, but Iām certainly interested.
On a completely unrelated note, I started playing dark souls 2 a few days ago for the first time and itās brutal. Whoever came up with the idea that each death permanently reduces your maximum health is completely insane. I know thereās a (finite?) item to reverse this, but still. Itās the most punishing game mechanic for a game where you can expect to die often, because itās a already a difficult game, but further reducing the maximum health after each death just seems like a very cruel downward spiral. That aside, I do enjoy it so far.
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only speculations at this point. they said its more in the realm of a PC than a console but it also has to compete with the consoles so internet talks 600 - 800. But noone knows if Valve maybe subsidices it to push it hard. If its not totally out of line I think its still a good deal because PC Prices are going through the roof again.
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It very well could be the controller. The built-in Deck controls are pretty flawless (as far as no latency, snappy controls etc.) The new Steam Machine has a dedicated WiFi style connection for the Steam Gamepads. So probably pretty similar.
Bluetooth though may or may not perform as well due to many factors.
I find using PS5 Dualsense controllers with my Bazzite PC over bluetooth works great. Probably almost as good as wired, or the built-in Deck controls.
On a related note, I found playing Silksong on the Deck to be pretty flawless. Then I was playing with my daughter on her Switch with a brand new Nintendo branded Pro Controller, and it was like playing a completely different game. I was doing something platform related, and it took me several minutes to get used the timing/latency on the Switch. It felt sloppy in comparison. It made me feel bad too, because sheās been playing the game along side me, and has unknowingly been playing with that latency the entire time. Sheās almost caught up to me too, but probably had to work harder. (unless sheās just not sensitive to latency as much as I am)
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Yeah, steam deck in handheld mode is flawless. When I tried to play silk song in docked mode on the TV with a blue tooth controller, it was absolutely unplayable due to the latency 
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Yeah, I canāt believe how good my daughter is with Silksong on the controllers sheās been using. Itās insane. I guess if you donāt have something to compare to, you just get used to it. Still thoughā¦ 
I actually tried to get her to play on the PC setup on the living room TV, because thatās where she likes to play anyway, but she doesnāt like the DualSense 5 pads (which I think are amazing).
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Yeah, I really dislike this. I disliked it about Demonās Souls, and I disliked it in Dks2. Fromsoft seems to have figured out that this sucks and is anti-fun since they omitted it in DkS3, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring (aside from some nasty status effects which have cures).
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only bug I had was with the save states. Nothing else comes to mind and I beat it yesterday
edit: the issue with the save states was I reached the limit and the game bugged out. I had to delete a bunch of saves and after that, quick resume stopped working (restarted game everytime I shut down xbox) and sometimes the saves would not appear. I would play an older save for a minute, then go to āloadā and it would appear.
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That would be fantastic, Iād be happy to pay 600-800ā¬ to replace my Xbox Series X behind our TV with something that gives (near) full access to my Steam library in my living room. I love the Steam Deck and how well everything works on it and Iāve come to love Steam, games tend to cost a fraction to what they cost on consoles.
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I signe all of this, except the Xbox already has gone to the closet. I am fed up with MS. Next step is the gaming pc is going full linux.
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My living room PC is already running Bazzite, and works so nicely as a replacement for a console. Using four DualSense 5 gamepads with it (occasionally get to play four player games with my kids) 
Itās pretty amazing. The specs are higher than the Steam Machine, but I think the Steam Machine would do 80-90% of what I play exceedingly well. Even the Deck does pretty well. For things like Stellar Blade, Doom, Witchfire though, itās nice having the extra GPU power that I have in the PC there. (RTX4070 Super)
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I think there is a strong dynamic towards linux at the moment. It seems to work pretty well for most people. Going open source is the best thing that could happen to gaming.
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Same exact situation here. My Xbox is basically a huge brick of e-waste at this point.
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Once Upon a Katamari. A birthday gift from my other half because she knows full well my Katamari obsession. Itās a BRILLIANT game, perhaps the finest in the series. And Iāve played them all except the mobile ones. To my ear, the music isnāt up to the quality of previous entries, but with the music DLC, you can set a 20-track playlist of your favourites. Yes, that means Houston, Blue Orb, Angel Rain, Katamari on the Swing, BOYFRIEND A GOGO, Lonely Rolling Star, Sayonara Rolling Star, Baby Universeā¦ Theyāre all in there! The levels are varied, the tasks diverse, there are lots of levels (but never enough), there are more cousins than ever, you can create your own cousinsā¦ Basically, itās a brilliant entry in one of the finest series of videogames to grace our beloved planet, and you have to play it.
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Dunno about that, I donāt think Microsoft is anywhere as evil today as it was in the Ballmer era. Theyād have to kill babies or something to beat that.
They donāt try to eradicate FOSS anymore, they arenāt engaging in anti-competitive practices, their products have improved a lot (15 years ago, OO was a legit MSO alternative, now nothing is even close), and they actually work on their mistakes (W11 was almost Vista level bad at launch, but they managed to fix most issues within an year). And donāt get me started on what they did to Nokiaā¦
Not commenting on the gaming side, since my experience with Xbox is quite limited (I borrowed an Xbox One from a friend from an year and mostly used it as a dedicated Skyrim 2016 machine, plus really enjoyed some Kinect games at parties). And yes, I agree, they have completely lost their way, they used to have an evil agenda of world domination with a side effect of making money, and now they are all about making money. Iād take Nadellaās MS over Ballmerās MS any day.
Anyway, itās great that Valve keeps promoting desktop Linux, itās already at 4% worldwide, and there definitely is potential for wider adoption. If Canonical hadnāt shot their own foot with Unity, it could be 10% by now, but at least we have Valve now.
The original Steam Controller is my favorite gamepad, so Iād definitely want the new one. A Steam Machine would be great as well, though I donāt think I will be able to afford it anytime soon. A 4x graphic performance upgrade over my current computer would be wild.
Microsoft hasnāt actually stopped engaging in anti-competitive practices. Maybe they hide it better. The Activision acquisition wasnāt for the good of game players everywhere. It wasnāt due to excitment for the properties and creativity they could bring. It was to eliminate another major player in AAA games, add IPs to the library with zero effort, and to cash in on the popularity of some of the titles. And what did they do with these studios? They ran them into the ground. Not that I liked CoD games anyway (or other Activision titles for that matter.) But still not nice to see things like this.
The recent Gamepass subscription hikes border on bait and switch.
All MS cares about is getting people onto subscription models. They have zero interest in anyone owning anything at all. Granted most large corporations want that too, but MS is probably the worst, trading blows with Adobe or maybe Autodesk.
Windows 11 is an absolute joke. Forcing people to use a LiveID to log into their own PCs, and completely disabling local accounts, patching out workarounds, etc. is about as slimy as it gets. Forcing users onto platforms that are more and more restrictive and invasive through things like TPM modules and discontinued support for previous OS level isnāt great either.
Theyāve completely lost all direction creatively with their game studios, fired or lost most of the ones that WERE good at one point.
They keep trying to push their hardware as some kind of premium platform while raising prices on it, even though they have lost all direction in the gaming space.
It all adds up to really being the worst option for really anything.
I work in networks and systems, and theyāre not much different in that space. Our company is now paying who knows how much in MS subscription fees, most things have left on-prem and gone into Azure, and there are so many outages that impact our phone systems, authentication systems, etc. that compared to where we were before, itās an absolute joke. Not only for reliability, but now MS is hosting all of our companyās data. Itās not a comforting thought. Unfortunately I have no say in it. I think there could have been a healthy balance struck between hosted and on-prem if we were smart about it, but the people in charge wanted to dive head first into it, and now we at the division level have to support it. (which when thereās an MS outage of some kind is actually not even possible)
Anyway, Iām straying off topic here. I used to like MS. I used to work for them on various teams from Windows to Games to hardware compatibility work, etc. I used to allow myself to get excited about things they did, but now they just make me sick.
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Itās a tragedy that Microsoft owns Minecraft. I think they butchered it.
Heartbreaking that they own MechWarrior videogame rights as well
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I have been playing lots of Endless Sky recentlyā¦ Old guys will especially like this because it is the spiritual successor to Escape Velocity/Novaā¦ and it is cross platform and free
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This is my biggest issue with the whole situation. I have to keep one system with Windows, so my daughter can play Minecraft. Iāve removed it from every other system in the house. They really have made it hard to like at this point. It used to be cheap, flexible, moddable, etc. Now everything is a transaction on their store. Plus the two versions donāt play nicely with each other after they split it. In a perfect world, I think the non-Java edition would be better, but apparently I donāt live in that world.
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