I’d say updating the deck every year may hurt sales too, because why buy the deck now when you know a new, better one is only 6 months away?
And it’s easier to certify that a game works as expected when there aren’t too many hardware revisions.
I don’t think it would hurt sales, exactly, but I doubt it would be cost-effective to keep redoing them. People would still buy, but like you said, some people might wait, and that means the old ones go unsold, meaning Valve can’t recoup that investment.
I mean, Valve has more money than they know what to do with, but I imagine they’d like to keep it that way.
It is also taking on technical debt, as each revision can come with OS quirks, and you now have to support X numbet of versions of hardware/software troubleshooting.
It’s this mentality that made me pause on buying one, now that this info has come out imma be looking to get one ASAP 😁 good on ya Valve!!!
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Valve being based.
Name one console that is released yearly
I don’t think any console that did releases annually would be worth buying and I think you have a solid point.
That being said, it is slightly different insofar as console games are not implicitly available across generations. What I mean is PS4 games are playable on PS5 but WiiU aren’t on Switch or what-have-you.
I think most people are crossing over PC/laptop updates with game consoles and the walls are being broken down a bit.
I think Steam doesn’t want to muddy the waters with “Steam Verified” and everything just yet. They’re eventually going to with an upcoming refresh of the system, but it’s easier to get devs and consumers on the same page with Steam Deck verified and the software and such if they don’t iterate every year.
What do I know though, I’m an idiot.
Every other company producing handhelds (except Nintendo).
Legion Go, released a year ago, follow-up announced, no release date
ROG Ally followed up by the Ally X a year later but still sold (just like Valve is still selling two hardware versions of the Deck)
Then you have no name brands that do flood the market
Handheld gaming devices? Which ones?
Ayaneo, MSI Claw, ROG Ally, GDP Win, Lenovo Legion Go
iPhone.
“Steam does like everyone else but gets praised for it.”
No console or handheld gaming system is giving out yearly refreshes.
I think it’s more than just not doing yearly refreshes, it’s that they don’t want to do releases that are only incremental in nature, which is an extremely common behavior, especially among consoles.
It doesn’t even make much sense in the PC sphere either. It’s physically possible but in regards to cost and performance, there’s not much to gain from a yearly upgrade cycle.
Asus is doing it
Good. It sucks when companies make you always have to get the latest and greatest hardware if you want the new features that, it turns out, run perfectly fine on the old hardware (once someone hacks it).
The Steam Deck models itself much more after handhelds and consoles, anyway.
Sure, you’re not getting The Most Detail And Power Available Right This Moment, but having a stable target for developers means getting a healthy library for players. It builds value for the customer, who won’t want to swap out consoles super frequently to keep up with devs who’ll stop targeting old hardware.
i know they suck monopolistic ass, but damn arent they good at doing the bare minimum with excellence and not making us feel fucked over.
Yearly refreshes make a lot more sense for phones, where the OS defines a lot more of the app lifecycle and common features, consumers might be interested in non-performance hardware upgrades like cameras, and things tend to be less spec-sensitive in the first place.
For a gaming device, giving devs an uneven foundation and users a confusing compatibility matrix would spell doom.
Edit: I should probably clarify that I wasn’t saying a yearly refresh for phones is good. Just that the context of Android+iOS is very different from the Steam Deck, and that context makes more frequent refreshes more attractive to consumers and less damaging to developers than it would be if applied to the Steam Deck also.
Edit 2: I also just realized this is not the same story as the one a day or two ago that drew a direct comparison to phones. So I guess I should’ve gone back and commented on that one instead. I just wanted to share cuz I’ve had a lot of meetings about device support and consumer upgrade habits, as a mobile dev and as a game dev, and I don’t think most people would guess quite how different those two worlds are.
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old phones can be updated to the latest OS.
Yeah, that was my point.
Because so much of a (typical) mobile app’s behavior is delegated to first-party APIs, having a huge range of device models in the field doesn’t cause as much of a splintering problem as it would for software that defines more of its own behavior internally, like games tend to do.
