Valve has revealed a bunch of new details about its Steam Deck gaming machine, including the fact that you can use it as a chunky PC controller.
The company has issued an FAQ that addresses a number of questions that have arisen since the Valve Steam Deck’s announcement in July.
Perhaps the most eye-catching bit of info concerns the fact that you can employ the Steam Deck as a particularly bulky PC controller, via Remote Play. You might wonder why you’d ever choose to use a 669 gram controller over, say, a 287g Xbox Series X controller.
But remember that the Steam Deck incorporates a unique pair of touch pads. If those turn out to be a hit with certain types of games, it could be a worthwhile feature to utilise.
Other tidbits include the confirmation that you can have multiple OSes installed, and then choose which one to boot into through the BIOS menu.
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On the negative side, we find out that the Steam Deck won’t support external GPUs, and it’s not optimised for VR. Those two seem like niche enthusiast use case scenarios, but hey – this is a fairly niche enthusiast device we’re talking about here.
The Valve Steam Deck offers the promise of playing your PC Steam library on a portable device not much bigger than a Nintendo Switch, via a 7-inch 1280 × 800 LCD touchscreen and an integrated set of physical controls. It’s set to be released in December, with a starting price of £349 / $399.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
