Steam Deck can be used as a gamepad for PC -apkrig
No, we definitely didn’t forget about Steam Deck. A small laptop from Valve – according to some physical materialization of Steam – will arrive to the first applicants this December, and as we informed you over the past week, devkits are gradually being delivered by individual game studios. So everything is well on its way to launching the promised device and the first longer-term tests, either through your own play or further exploration of the options suggested. However, in order to be clear about some things in advance, the people of Valve have put together an updated version of the questions and answers, in which they explain some issues and recall what has been said before. The FAQ section has supplemented the official Steam Deck portal – also in the Czech language – and it is likely that it will be added gradually if ambiguities arise around some of the features.
Valve first explains things that are obvious to regular Regular users. As you probably expect, you will need to log in to Steam first to play on the Steam Deck, and an unlimited number of people can do this on a single device. The easiest way is to imagine the Steam Deck as a computer – which it is completely uncovered – and many other questions will suddenly get a simple answer. Adding games will be the same as on the Steam desktop application. It will also be possible to play games offline, of course, unless it is a multiplayer shooter. Technically, support for VR headsets could work, but at this point, the people of Valve are reluctant to say that the Steam Deck is not optimized for such performance. Even if you want to increase the performance of the device with an external graphics card – according to the FAQ, it will simply not be supported.
When asked if it will be possible to play non-Steam games on the Steam Deck using the Proton layer, Valve answers in a positive spirit.
Next, the Q&A section discusses the hardware and capabilities if we want to continue to see the Steam Deck as a computer. The nice thing is that users will be able to enter the BIOS, which legitimately opens up the possibility of installing a larger number of operating systems with the option to boot when the device is turned on. And even from an external SD card, without the need to fill the internal storage with a capacity of 64, 256, respectively. 512 GB. However, you must always keep in mind that the SD card – resp. microSD card – will be accepted by Steam Deck only in case of ext4 format with case-folding. Of course, Steam Deck will be able to format the card itself if you don’t have any other PC or reader on hand. The remaining issues regarding the device hardware are solved by a touch screen, for which a multitouch has been confirmed for all 10 fingers, a CTIA standard audio jack, ie with one socket for audio input and output, and once again, to be sure, it was said that the optional docking station will not add nothing to the performance of the device connected to it.
The last part of the questions solves the software or emulation side of things, if you do not want to install an operating system other than SteamOS on the Steam Deck. It runs on the Linux kernel and uses the Proton emulation layer to run Windows applications on it. When asked if it will be possible to play non-Steam games on the Steam Deck with these tools, Valve answers in a positive light, which means that in addition to the Steam interface, it will probably be possible to display a standard Linux desktop and play applications installed directly on the SteamOS kernel. , but not via Steam. In retrospect, it is assumed that all improvements to the operation of Proton on the Steam Deck should be reflected in the desktop version and the form of Steam on the Deck and the standard PC should be unified. However, the fulfillment of both mentioned matters will be subject to time and everything should come gradually.
In the end, however, we have kept it far for you most important. If, for some reason, you want to use the entire Steam Deck, which weighs almost half a kilogram, as a gamepad to your computer through the Remote Play function. And when you need to charge the Steam Deck, you can sit exactly 1.5 meters from the socket. This is a long cable for anyone interested in this one funny finds in the package.
