Many questions still arise about the recently announced Steam Deck. The American media IGN interviewed three designers from Valve, who gave information on the interface of the mobile console in a 5-minute video.
A video with little detail, but which still leaves some doubts on certain points.
Read also:Valve announces Steam Deck, a powerful portable console to play its Steam games
Priority to quick access to games
Valve's portable console has caused a lot of ink to flow since its announcement. Everything is subject to discussion, from its price (419€ for the basic version with 64 GB of memory, and up to 679€ for the model equipped with a 512 GB SSD) to the strange layout of the keys. and joysticks on the machine. Three designers from Valve answered questions from IGN and cut short some hypotheses.
Thus, we are confirmed that the Deck runs on SteamOS, Valve's operating system based on Linux. In addition, the designers clarified that the priority during the development of the console was placed on quick and easy access to games. The console being nomadic, the players will have a use very different from that which one can have on PC; so, as with the Switch or smartphones, the focus will be on short sessions. Valve has therefore worked a lot with AMD to guarantee players quick and stable access to their gaming session: players can pause their game by putting the console to sleep, and resume it at the same place whenever they want.
A particular effort regarding accessibility
To launch your game quickly, you must first find it quickly. This was one of the big questions asked during development: how to adapt this Steam desktop application, so provided, on the small screen (7 inches, 1280x800 pixels) of a mobile console? Navigation in the menus being easily done with a directional cross, the teams at Valve sought inspiration from the side of connected television applications. In addition, the redesign, last year, of the Steam library on the desktop version allowed them to recover many simple tools to introduce into the portable version of their OS.
The home screen of the Steam Deck will therefore present the store, the game library but also the lists of friends or the collections. Basically: all Steam on one screen. The use of the directional cross will allow quick and efficient access to the service sought.
Doubt continues to hang over the console
While it is indisputable that the Steam Deck, with its AMD Zen 2 CPU and AMD RDNA 2 graphics card, will allow many recent games to run, doubts still remain about the viability of this console. The layout of the keys, for example, made more than one wince. If, in the video, we can see some gameplay sequences presenting the main features (gyroscopy, touch screen, joysticks, directional cross, precision touchpad), we still have questions about this particular ergonomics.
On the other hand, we already know that not all the games we have on Steam will be playable, since the Steam Deck can only launch those compatible with Proton, Valve's software that allows Windows exclusive games to be played. run on Linux OS. Question price, we also ask ourselves questions: the higher version, equipped with an SSD with more memory, is already very expensive, but it will be necessary to put the hand in the wallet again (for a sum not yet communicated) if you want to acquire the dock, not supplied in the pack, to access the Steam Deck on your TV.
The most convinced will have time to save money to acquire the precious sesame, the first deliveries not arriving before the first quarter of 2022 in our European countries.
