Hopefully long term the next Steam Deck sells even better and we’ll see support like this more often. I know about Larian and Bloober’s recent native builds.
The problem is realtime raytracing vs affordability.
Pick one, basically.
If you make a game on an engine, or in a way where there’s no way to run the game without raytracing on, well, thats not gonna run well on an affordable system.
If you build a handheld that can do realtime raytracing, ok, you can play some more AAA games now, but your device cost to the consumer basically doubles.
We are currently in an economic depression in the US, you probably are not going to do well with a market strategy that relies on consumers generally having a lot of disposable income.
Intelligent frame upscaling? Frame generation?
All bandaids to paper over realttime raytracing being immensely computationally expensive… and these ‘solutions’ just also require expensive, specialized hardware.
Also, bandaids for utterly incompetent AAA game dev management practices. Setting up good lighting systems without raytracing has always been possible, but it takes developer skill and a mamagement that can provide a stable development process, as opposed to schizophrenic, constantly massively changing development process.
Go look at TitanFall2 or MGSV, at Steam Deck resolution, and tell me you can notice a serious difference.
Maybe a bit, but its not worth doubling the cost of your gaming machine for.
One of the reasons why this is even possible is, because Valve sticks to current Steam Deck as the base. If they introduced the Steam Deck 2 already, then not only would this mean for developers more to test and optimize for, it also meant the new 2 would be the baseline and old Deck is forgotten quickly. Therefore even if lot of people ask for a Steam Deck 2, its crucial that Valve waits with the update. And honestly, its already impressive what we can play on it. I did not expect Dark Ages on it to play this well.
Hopefully long term the next Steam Deck sells even better and we’ll see support like this more often. I know about Larian and Bloober’s recent native builds.
The problem is realtime raytracing vs affordability.
Pick one, basically.
If you make a game on an engine, or in a way where there’s no way to run the game without raytracing on, well, thats not gonna run well on an affordable system.
If you build a handheld that can do realtime raytracing, ok, you can play some more AAA games now, but your device cost to the consumer basically doubles.
We are currently in an economic depression in the US, you probably are not going to do well with a market strategy that relies on consumers generally having a lot of disposable income.
Intelligent frame upscaling? Frame generation?
All bandaids to paper over realttime raytracing being immensely computationally expensive… and these ‘solutions’ just also require expensive, specialized hardware.
Also, bandaids for utterly incompetent AAA game dev management practices. Setting up good lighting systems without raytracing has always been possible, but it takes developer skill and a mamagement that can provide a stable development process, as opposed to schizophrenic, constantly massively changing development process.
Go look at TitanFall2 or MGSV, at Steam Deck resolution, and tell me you can notice a serious difference.
Maybe a bit, but its not worth doubling the cost of your gaming machine for.
One of the reasons why this is even possible is, because Valve sticks to current Steam Deck as the base. If they introduced the Steam Deck 2 already, then not only would this mean for developers more to test and optimize for, it also meant the new 2 would be the baseline and old Deck is forgotten quickly. Therefore even if lot of people ask for a Steam Deck 2, its crucial that Valve waits with the update. And honestly, its already impressive what we can play on it. I did not expect Dark Ages on it to play this well.
I agree with you, but that’s what I intended with saying long term.