How are you feeling about the increase in popularity of handheld computers in the last few years? I personally find the idea of playing an MMO on a handheld very interesting, but it seems like the hardware just isn't there yet, as they're either too weak, too hot or have too short of a battery life.
I'm glad to see them get more powerful but I think MMO on a handheld is probably the last thing these are targeting. Being a portable device with somewhat limited input and screen space compared to a normal computer offline single player games are a good fit but online games with tons of inputs and things on screen seem a bad match even in ideal concept.
These handhelds are great, but the battery life is just not there. They need to be able to sustain ~4 hours of continued gameplay. As they are, they can do maybe 1-1.5 hours. It's simply not enough.
Still great machines and I believe they only need a little more power to be able to play 1080p at 60fps; or personally I think we should focus on 40fps (40hz screens) at 1080p and then just focus on efficiency as much as possible.
I would take a lower battery life for higher refresh rate. 60hz gaming makes me nauseous, but this is probably because I haven't played a game at <360hz in a long time.
For me personally, 40fps/40Hz seems like the sweetspot for these consoles. Ideally on a decent (1080p) resolution which at that screen size looks phenomenal. But I think ultimately we both want the same thing; more power, more efficiency.
Meanwhile, you can play 900p xbox 360 era games on the Steam Deck for at least 4ish hours if you don't run them full bore, or 8+ hours if you do something like emulation or very specific games. The game output the past five years hasn't been good enough to justify needing better than that for me.
Millions of units sold seem to suggest that's closer to the real value people see in them as well, rather than playing yesterday's best AAA game at 4k
There's so much to play in the past 30 years of video game history that the Steam Deck (and this handheld) can do effortlessly for several hours, and as cheap as $350, all the elitists who can't seem to care about gaming unless it's twin 4090s with 128 cores at 5ghz and 128gb of DDR5. I don't think you guys actually care about PLAYING video games
I'm currently moving and my desktop is all packed up, so it has given my Deck its chance to shine. As a Stardew Valley machine, I'm getting upwards of 6 hours of life out of the battery, can't sneeze at that at all.
The battery life is good on old games, that's true. But you can comfortably play a lot of modern games at 40hz/40fps mode; but just not for a very long while. It feels bad knowing you can run them decently but not really unless you're plugged.
Like, I wouldn't call people who want to play modern games on a handheld elitist? It seems to me that you're the one that has an elitist attitude as you're invalidating other people's opinion based on what... ? People want to play the games they want to play.
Not only that, but as with any industry, the video-game industry has evolved over the years; games are not just prettier but there's also plenty of changes in how games are played. So it's not unreasonable to think for a lot of people games that were released 20 years ago don't feel like the games they enjoy.
Really, there's a ton of really amazing games out there. And it's a shame to not be able to play them as comfortably as one would like to.
Also, by your own reasoning, there's hundreds of games on SNES/NES/N64/PSX that can be played perfectly on sub 100 dollar consoles. Damn to all those elitist that only care about consoles capable of emulating XBOX 360 era games, it's never enough for them!
> Like, I wouldn't call people who want to play modern games on a handheld elitist?
Not elitist, but somewhat unreasonable. One of the big difference between PC gaming business and console gaming is that the PC crowd (which i am a part of) has have an unreasonable fixation on performance and hardware specs instead of focusing on the experience, and that is bleeding on the reception of those windows handheld.
Back in the day of the PSP, gameboy etc... It was rarely the case that someone would buy a handheld and expect to have "qualitatively" the same experience as s living console. We all understand that you get the same enjoyment, just in a delivered at a difference price/graphic/performance point.
As people mentioned, there is so much amazing experience to be have at reasonable battery life around the 1.5 TFLOPS that the same deck can provide... From emulator, to old games, to nice 2D/indie games on steam or for very well optimized game (like diablo 4 or doom).
Buying a PC handled and wanting the same experience as a desktop for me is just missing the point of an handheld PC (as opposed to a gaming PC for example). But to be honest, i can't really blame people for wanting that because the marketing is strongly implying that's what you get when you buy those.
I have a steam deck (and will probably get the Ally), i play very different type of game on my deck vs my pc.
>I don't think you guys actually care about PLAYING video games
I am no PC gamer by modern standards, and while I agree withy your sentiment that there's fun good old games out there that don't require cutting edge PCs, I find your spiteful generalization of the people who want to play AAA games on expensive cutting edge machines rude and just as elitist as the people you're attacking. Ironic.
Why do you think people should not have the right to want to play the latest AAA games at full visual fidelity? It's their money, they're free to spend it on their hobby, and AAA games are also fun as well.
Sure, some gamers care more about hype and graphical fidelity, than they care about the fun and gameplay, but so what? Most people care about having good looking eyecandy in their lives: their shiny car, their shiny watch, their shiny iPhone and Mac, their houses, their attractive partners, etc. Who are we to judge other peoples' tastes on what they value in life? Looks sell.
Life is short and many people don't want to wait 5-10 years till their favorite AAA game can be played on a handheld on 720p low settings, but want to experience the full graphical fidelity the original developers' vision intended. And that costs money and a big tower PC.
I envy people who can get 4 hour gaming sessions at all =)
It's not a huge deal to carry along an external powerbank for the Deck if you really need to get over two hours of gameplay while you're mobile. You can use the same one to charge everything else you need.
If you're at home, a 3+ meter USB-C cord isn't that expensive and you can charge while you play.
I have a Steam Deck and a Switch and barely use my Steam Deck. You basically have to be tethered to an outlet which defeats the point if you already have a gaming laptop or console.
It also takes up too much space if I travel. This also compounds with the fact that you can even get a Switch OLED for $90 used fairly easy.
It's a great device, but just too big and power hunger for me to use regularly. These will improve and I'm looking forward to smaller form factors that seamlessly integrate streaming from a local device as well.
The display in the Steam Deck supports VRR, and the in-game overlay lets you adjust the framerate cap on the fly. 40 FPS is a very popular compromise on it.
The problem with battery life is that any gains made by more efficient chips will be eaten up by more demanding games, especially as developers start dropping support for last gen consoles. But you can play plenty of older games for hours on end with current hardware.
Companies iterating so quickly on their products might be their biggest weakness. Since its release, the Steam Deck hasn't been improved by releasing the Steam Upper Decker, but by a constant stream of software improvements, both to the OS, and also Proton. I know my device won't be handicapped by a replacement in six months.
Valve has been really good at providing parts for fixing or even upgrading the deck from the very beginning. They even replaced the bad first edition fans for everyone who wanted - or you could order a new one and swap it yourself with picture by picture instructions.
Swapping the sticks to hall effect is like a two beer job. The battery is replaceable - and maybe upgradable in the future etc.
The Asus ROG Ally is more powerful than the Deck, but Asus isn't known for their after market support...
How on EARTH do you make money with 30 different phone versions? Do apple/google/samsung TOGETHER even put out 30 phones a year? That seems absolutely not profitable but what do I know I guess!
why doesn't apple make more different devices then? I guess they have been trending that way.. But still, how does "compartmentalizing" make up for 30 different production lines and whatever else can't be parallelized? Like the tiny differences the other reply noted, what is the difference in a consumer who picks the 3 mm bigger?? Do these "segments" of the market exist naturally or is it manufactured to some degree? ie If one year they suddenly consolidated down from 30 to 5, what % of customers would they really lose?!
There were even a time when they release a model, that were few millimeters off (height, width, thick and camera location) on the same named model for different countries. Have fun to buy a proper case for it.
Good thing that the EU is planning on mandating the amount of updates phones need to get[0]. It should cut down on the amount of phone model spam - or at least they get updated and not abandoned.
The regulators have suggested that phone vendors provide at least five years of security updates and three years of OS updates to their devices. Moreover, the said security and operating system updates should reach users “at the latest two months after the public release.”
The easiest thing to screw up in a handheld is the D-Pad. A bad D-Pad means that Sonic doesn't roll, Ryu doesn't shouryuken, and Madeline crouches randomly. At least this reviewer admitted that he wasn't knowledgeable enough to review the D-Pad..
That is one thing I'm somewhat disappointed with on the ROG ally. It's both mooshy and round enough that a downright vs a down is a very small input difference, which doesn't feel physically different to perform. The Xbox elite controllers have one of my favorite dpads, colicky and you can choose + or rounded + via insert.
I didn't see it in the review, or in the video so forgive me if this was covered.. but the real killer feature of these handhelds is the instant on/instant resume. I can grab my steam deck play for 5 minutes or 2 hours, or 2 hours with interruptions because I can just hit the power button and then resume it right where I left off for any game. It's amazing and it's the real reason I use the steam deck. I also have my dual 4090s 128 core 5ghz game station for Call of Legends 4 gaming, but playing games on the deck is just friction-less so not really sure if the AYANEO has that.
Only steamdeck has this feature. Also steamos is way more energy efficient for mobile as the currently windows is already a clusterf*k. I don't see in foreseeable future where windows could catch up with steamos. M$ can't even fix their own laptops
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadStill great machines and I believe they only need a little more power to be able to play 1080p at 60fps; or personally I think we should focus on 40fps (40hz screens) at 1080p and then just focus on efficiency as much as possible.
For me personally, 40fps/40Hz seems like the sweetspot for these consoles. Ideally on a decent (1080p) resolution which at that screen size looks phenomenal. But I think ultimately we both want the same thing; more power, more efficiency.
Millions of units sold seem to suggest that's closer to the real value people see in them as well, rather than playing yesterday's best AAA game at 4k
There's so much to play in the past 30 years of video game history that the Steam Deck (and this handheld) can do effortlessly for several hours, and as cheap as $350, all the elitists who can't seem to care about gaming unless it's twin 4090s with 128 cores at 5ghz and 128gb of DDR5. I don't think you guys actually care about PLAYING video games
The battery life is good on old games, that's true. But you can comfortably play a lot of modern games at 40hz/40fps mode; but just not for a very long while. It feels bad knowing you can run them decently but not really unless you're plugged.
Like, I wouldn't call people who want to play modern games on a handheld elitist? It seems to me that you're the one that has an elitist attitude as you're invalidating other people's opinion based on what... ? People want to play the games they want to play.
Not only that, but as with any industry, the video-game industry has evolved over the years; games are not just prettier but there's also plenty of changes in how games are played. So it's not unreasonable to think for a lot of people games that were released 20 years ago don't feel like the games they enjoy.
Really, there's a ton of really amazing games out there. And it's a shame to not be able to play them as comfortably as one would like to.
Also, by your own reasoning, there's hundreds of games on SNES/NES/N64/PSX that can be played perfectly on sub 100 dollar consoles. Damn to all those elitist that only care about consoles capable of emulating XBOX 360 era games, it's never enough for them!
Not elitist, but somewhat unreasonable. One of the big difference between PC gaming business and console gaming is that the PC crowd (which i am a part of) has have an unreasonable fixation on performance and hardware specs instead of focusing on the experience, and that is bleeding on the reception of those windows handheld.
Back in the day of the PSP, gameboy etc... It was rarely the case that someone would buy a handheld and expect to have "qualitatively" the same experience as s living console. We all understand that you get the same enjoyment, just in a delivered at a difference price/graphic/performance point.
As people mentioned, there is so much amazing experience to be have at reasonable battery life around the 1.5 TFLOPS that the same deck can provide... From emulator, to old games, to nice 2D/indie games on steam or for very well optimized game (like diablo 4 or doom).
Buying a PC handled and wanting the same experience as a desktop for me is just missing the point of an handheld PC (as opposed to a gaming PC for example). But to be honest, i can't really blame people for wanting that because the marketing is strongly implying that's what you get when you buy those.
I have a steam deck (and will probably get the Ally), i play very different type of game on my deck vs my pc.
I am no PC gamer by modern standards, and while I agree withy your sentiment that there's fun good old games out there that don't require cutting edge PCs, I find your spiteful generalization of the people who want to play AAA games on expensive cutting edge machines rude and just as elitist as the people you're attacking. Ironic.
Why do you think people should not have the right to want to play the latest AAA games at full visual fidelity? It's their money, they're free to spend it on their hobby, and AAA games are also fun as well.
Sure, some gamers care more about hype and graphical fidelity, than they care about the fun and gameplay, but so what? Most people care about having good looking eyecandy in their lives: their shiny car, their shiny watch, their shiny iPhone and Mac, their houses, their attractive partners, etc. Who are we to judge other peoples' tastes on what they value in life? Looks sell.
Life is short and many people don't want to wait 5-10 years till their favorite AAA game can be played on a handheld on 720p low settings, but want to experience the full graphical fidelity the original developers' vision intended. And that costs money and a big tower PC.
It's not a huge deal to carry along an external powerbank for the Deck if you really need to get over two hours of gameplay while you're mobile. You can use the same one to charge everything else you need.
If you're at home, a 3+ meter USB-C cord isn't that expensive and you can charge while you play.
It also takes up too much space if I travel. This also compounds with the fact that you can even get a Switch OLED for $90 used fairly easy.
It's a great device, but just too big and power hunger for me to use regularly. These will improve and I'm looking forward to smaller form factors that seamlessly integrate streaming from a local device as well.
The problem with battery life is that any gains made by more efficient chips will be eaten up by more demanding games, especially as developers start dropping support for last gen consoles. But you can play plenty of older games for hours on end with current hardware.
Swapping the sticks to hall effect is like a two beer job. The battery is replaceable - and maybe upgradable in the future etc.
The Asus ROG Ally is more powerful than the Deck, but Asus isn't known for their after market support...
Love Xiaomi products, for example, but they realease so many phones per year that it feels like they never have time to polish them.
They might release like 30 different phones in a year!
[0] https://www.androidauthority.com/eu-smartphone-updates-rules...