It's interesting how hyped the portable emulator community is about this - seems like a lot of people will be dropping their Chinese emulator devices in favour of this.

Haven’t done it for years, but you used to be able to add non-steam games to your steam library. If that’s still the case, could you potentially access all you have without having to faff around with leaving the steamOS, having separate stores etc?

Yeah still works but it would have to be Linux versions

Yep good video. He was a bit vague with his comments on the fan noise. Wish he’d bought a db meter as that is the only possibly gotcha for me. Hoping it’s no worse than the switch or PS5. Definitely don’t want gaming laptop noise levels.

Looking forward to this more than I’ve looked forward to a gadget for a long time.

The most expensive one also has fancy anti-glare etched glass in front of the screen, which might help with playing in sunlight. You can see the difference with the normal glass in that video above.

It does seems like we will be able to open up the machines and put in our own m.2 NVME storage, which could make the cheapest one a good option. It's unclear exactly how easy it is to do that, but I would wager it's just a case of removing some screws and gently prying the back of the case off which would expose the slot. And you would also need to install the OS onto that drive which might require doing it outside of the device on another computer first. I would have no fear at all of doing all that but I'm sure many people would rather not, there will be plenty of video tutorials on that shortly after release to make it easy if you're not used to that sort of thing though.

Also you can use microSD cards for all of them, and that method might be completely fine for more minimal games. But yeah having a proper full speed SSD in there would be advantageous.

I'm the same as you Boris, can't see myself playing it in the sun. I think 90% of my time with it would be spent docked.

Which drive would you be putting in it Gurt? I think for an extra £100 the hassle free 256 would do for an indie machine, not sure how much of a saving you can make on that?

If and when the Steam deck takes off, Linux will eventually become mainstream. It's inevitable....and very weird. Valve's gamble on steamos/steammachines finally paying off? At least they won't be in the awkward position of having their landlord (ms) for a main competitor.

True, very true.
Still, the increased userbase will bring many more apps and support to the platform. Some of the users (students?) might even use the desktop to type out an assignment or two?

That current 0.5-1.0% userbase might grow to 5.0%. If valve plays their cards correctly it might grow even more. Which is unheard of for desktop Linux lol.

The Dreamcast never had a Windows desktop tho.

poprock wrote:

Remember how the Dreamcast had a Windows logo on its casing? Nobody cared.

I thought it was cool that it had that

My puny female hands already loath the size and heft of the Switch (Vita was perfect, in that regard), I will never be able to play on this.

I am looking forward to try it, but I would never gamble on a preorder. I can barely use the PS5's Dual Sense either; it's uncomfortable after half an hour or so. On the other hand (haha), I don't need to bother thinking about getting a PS5 of my own.

The cost is obviously the main factor but yes, the heft puts me off too.  As it is already I much prefer the Switch Lite over the Phat version for the same reason.