Steam Life on Deck

For those of us who grew up with Game Boys and Game Gears, maybe even an Atari Lynx, the concept of full desktop gaming in a portable form factor has been on our wishlist for a very long time. So, the question we discuss with Noah from Steam Deck HQ can be summed up as “Has Valve’s Steam Deck made that dream come true?”.

We talk about the hardware itself, the impressive software stack built upon SteamOS, how many games perform, as well as looking at where it holds up against things like the Nintendo Switch, and the powerful emulation made possible in such a portable platform.

it’s also worth mentioning that James’ side of recoring was done entirely on the Steam Deck, and that’s in no small part due to how awesome SquadCast is.

Have you got your hands on Steam Deck, or is there something holding you. back? We’d love to hear from you, why not send a note over to podcast@crossedwires.net, leave a comment on the post, or join the discussion over on our Discord server

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Disclaimer: This episode was recorded in December 2022, before the current investigation into allegations of domestic violence made against Justin Rolland. We won’t comment on this further, but we wanted to be transparent that the episode does mention his studio’s game, ‘High on Life’. For those who, for whatever reason, want to skip any mention of the game, we talk about this between 00:29:00 and 00:31:21; we’ve marked this as a chapter in the episode.

Episode Links

• Steam Deck HQ: Website / Mastodon / YouTube
• Steam Deck Tech Specs (Valve)
• Bugsnax (Steam)
• ProtonDB
• Decky – A Steam Deck plugin loader

Chapter Times

1. 00:00:04: Introductions
2. 00:06:14: Missing OLED and Game Gear Homage?
3. 00:09:17: Hardware and Verified Games
4. 00:14:57: Proton
5. 00:18:44: Price Points & Storage Options
6. 00:25:16: Controllers
7. 00:29:00: High On Life
8. 00:31:21: Software & Performance Tweaks
9. 00:37:38: Challenges with Certain Games and Launchers
10. 00:43:32: Sony Games on Steam Deck
11. 00:44:41: Nintendo, the Switch, and Emulation
12. 00:50:11: What Could Valve Have Done Better?
13. 00:55:52: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW