Steam Deck: A History

 

My very own personal Steam Deck!

Last week, I got my Steam Deck. I've been waiting for this lil guy, somewhat impatiently, for nearly a year- And I'm excited to toy with it and use it as an excuse to write more! So what's the big deal?

The Steam Deck is designed and manufactured by Valve Corporation, responsible for Half-Life, Team Fortress, Portal, Counter-Strike, Dota 2, Left 4 Dead, and Steam- a platform for selling and playing PC games. While their foundation is clearly built on software, they've been slowly wading into the hardware space over the last decade. 

Steam's Big Picture interface

This push started in 2012 when Valve announced it was working on a Steam-powered (ha) video game console: something you could plug into your TV and use to play Steam games, but with the extensibility of a computer. You could modify games to play however you'd like, or even use the PC for something entirely unrelated to gaming. The core of this idea was sparked by the launch of Windows 8 that same year: A major update to Microsoft's dominant operating system which revamped the interface to operate a bit more like Apple's iOS. While it introduced a built-in Microsoft Store for buying and downloading software, using it wasn't a requirement like the iOS App Store- but some folks among the industry, including Valve's president and co-founder Gabe Newell, feared this was where Microsoft was headed.

Thus, Valve's concept for a console revolved around using GNU/Linux- a free and open-source operating system, meaning it can be modified and maintained by anyone. Rather than sticking with Microsoft's (potential!) rules and (potential!) barriers, Valve could craft its own operating system, designed around playing Steam games. To add even further modularity to the concept, Valve wouldn't sell their own PCs. Instead, they'd design the operating system and sell the rights to any interested manufacturer. To compliment these "Steam Machines," Valve designed and sold their own "Steam Controller" to bundle with each PC, as well as a "Steam Link" for streaming games (more on that later).

The Steam Controller and a Steam Machine, the Alienware Alpha

This initiative was a massive failure. GNU/Linux is an incredibly niche set of operating systems, particularly when it comes to playing video games. Steam's own hardware survey suggests that 96% of today's PC gamers use Windows, so any new software is almost certainly designed with this market in mind. Why jump through the hoops of creating and supporting a GNU/Linux version of your game when you can expect those users to make up 1% of your sales? Even with Valve's massive support- making their own games compatible with GNU/Linux, selling GNU/Linux games and software on their store -this wasn't going to change.

There were plenty other lessons to be learned from the debacle. The Steam Controller's novel touchpads enabled gamers to play games that were designed around using a mouse instead of a thumbstick, but it was too funky and uncomfortable to use without spending hours tweaking and configuring it. The idea of selling manufacturing rights to other companies is a neat idea in theory- you can just let the market fill customer needs and let them worry about the manufacturing logistics -but in practice, it means customers could be disappointed by the quality of the hardware and lay the blame on Steam instead. (Plus, no one was really interested in making them anyway.)

But it wasn't all bad- Valve's iterative process resulted in a unique controller that slowly garnered a cult following, and the Big Picture interface made PC-gaming-on-the-TV much more comfortable. Even more importantly, Steam Machines proved that "PC gaming" packaged and sold for wider audiences was possible- Valve just wasn't quite ready for prime time.

In 2015, Valve pivoted its focus to virtual reality. They worked with HTC on a groundbreaking headset, the "HTC Vive," before designing and manufacturing their own, the "Valve Index." A far cry from the simple hardware inside the Steam Controller or the Steam Link, the Valve Index was packed with over-engineered components, and marked a step towards something even more complex: The Steam Deck.

The Valve Index, Lighthouses, and "Knuckle" controllers

A portable handheld gaming PC, the Steam Deck feels like a Steam Machine Redux. Once again, this PC runs on GNU/Linux- but this time, there's a catch. In 2018, Valve introduced "Steam Play"- a compatibility layer that allowed Linux users to play games made for Windows. Over the years, Valve paid developers to contribute to a variety of open-source projects, collectively referred to as "Proton," which powers this system. The result is surprisingly effective and efficient- After years of updates, these systems are capable of playing brand-new graphically intensive games with little-to-no performance loss. This clears one major hurdle that the Steam Machines wrestled with (and lost).

With compatibility ensured, the next hurdle is the quality and capability of the hardware itself. Beyond smartphones, the biggest mobile gaming device on the market is Nintendo's Switch family of systems. Nintendo has long prided themselves on the quality of their software and hardware- something Gabe Newell mentioned wanting to emulate in a 2018 interview. Originally released in 2017, the Switch is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra X1- rather than design a chip themselves, Nintendo opted to use an off-the-shelf design sold by the green graphics giant. These system-on-a-chips include everything a basic computer needs- a central processor, a graphics processor, memory, and the like. Unlike your every day computer, the Tegra series of chips are built for the ARM architecture- Just like a smartphone, these processors are designed to operate as simply as possible, requiring more complex code but drawing less power as a result. Perfect for, say, gaming on the go.

Unfortunately, the NVIDIA Tegra X1 originally launched seven years ago- an eon in the hardware industry. Folks buying a Nintendo Switch probably have a more powerful phone in their pocket by now (though the Switch is a fraction of the price). As the pandemic ensues and manufacturing has been rocked way out of wack, a Switch hardware upgrade just isn't in the cards- meaning gamers are stuck with aging hardware that's becoming increasingly irrelevant as the super-powerful PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X begin to kick off the ninth console generation. Games run poorly on these portable devices, which is a shame considering games on Nintendo's systems tend to cost more compared to other consoles. This is the bar that the Steam Deck has to clear.

The Nintendo Switch - OLED Model, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch Lite

Unlike the Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck can't use an ARM processor like the Tegra. Whether you're running Windows or Linux, PC games are all designed for x86 processors- which support complex instructions, use a lot of power, and generate a lot of heat. Valve instead opted for a custom design created by AMD (the yin to NVIDIA's yang). This system-on-a-chip sports a Zen 3 central processor and a RDNA 2 graphics processor, meaning they're capable of all the fancy technology offered inside of a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series S|X (though, in practice, it's closer to a PlayStation 4). 

But, check out that value proposition: A portable PlayStation 4 that plays Steam games and starts at $400. Is it really all it's cracked up to be? Let's take a look inside.