One of the Steam Deck’s primary advantages over more powerful handheld gaming PCs is its operating system, which is designed to mimic a game console interface within a Linux PC environment. Valve has long planned to bring the OS to other devices, but a recent Steam Deck software update includes the first mention of a rival handheld.
Isn’t that what the Steam Link tried to do?
The Steam Link tried and succeeded at this. My guess is only technical people understood its use-case at the time. For hardware to do well on a large scale it needs to be standalone. You turn it on and immediately see the benefit of it. Can’t be dependent on the customer’s other hardware.
well it will help if you can get many of the same internet streaming apps you have with firetv stick and such. so people might just buy it to steam netflix and be part of the market outside of the ones using the game streaming.
It is, but Steam has a habit of iterating, maybe we’ll see an updated Steam Link- like device in the future?
They abandoned it because they could just build it into TVs.
They didn’t abandon it, they opened it up to anything running at least Andriod 8.0 or newer. So basically every Andriod device made since 2015 can run Steam Link, maybe not at a quality seen as appropriate but it’ll run.
I’m talking about the hardware.
They stopped making the hardware because they didn’t need a dedicated device any more.
Unfortunately smart TV’s are just a step up from potatoes. Having separate hardware is gereally better than a smart TV app
I wish we could stop with smart TVs. I want a dumb TV with a nice screen & my own hardware without worrying about the data collection
Steam link hardware was junk too.
Just get something with android and you’ll have a better experience for all the rest of your TV stuff too.
Yes, but it really only works at low latency over a wired connection. It’s great for video or games where input lag isn’t a big deal.
Loved that thing, I could play party games from downstairs with our 5ghz network. Made college weekends so much fun!
yeah and steam had a desktop I think but Im hoping it just sorta being cheaply licensed will work out better for that kind of thing.
I believe so yes (tbh forgot it was a thing) but for example my smart TV does not have a steam link app available for some reason (LGC3) and I would definitely stream to it given the chance. Not sure why the steam app is not available.