I remember one of my first thoughts on the Deck was “even if this fails commercially or can’t play any new games, I want it for old games and emulation. Even if it goes nowhere else, it would be worth it for me.”
It ended up being more powerful than I thought it would be. I thought I’d just be playing some retro 2d games and really old 3d games, but it ended up running some new titles better than expected to be able to play them on the Deck.
Running games at 800p targeting 40fps is a lot more viable than I would have expected just looking at the numbers. It looks great for a display that size and 40fps feels like it’s a lot closer to 60fps than it really is.
I get why people using it as their primary gaming device would want more power but as a secondary device for me it’s stellar.
and 40fps feels like it’s a lot closer to 60fps than it really is.
Counter-intuitively, 40fps, not 45fps, is the mid point between 30fps and 60fps, so it really is closer than what a lot of people think.
On the surface that seems impossible, but looking at frame times tells the story.
Let’s divide 1 second by 30, 40, and 60:
-
1 / 30 = 0.033s per frame
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1 / 40 = 0.025s per frame (0.08s less time per frame than 30fps)
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1 / 60 = 0.017s per frame (0.08s less time per frame than 40fps)
-
I think that perceived smoothness from 40 fps comes from the LCD screen they chose, and using a controller. Docking the deck to a monitor and using a mouse makes it much more noticeable; but running games at 720p makes it much easier to hit 60 fps.
The way I see it, is because of the controls. You have a much stronger reaction with a mouse than a joystick. Anytime you play with a mouse, the reaction time is expected to be lower because you I dictate where you want to be looking (like in am fps). The mouse acts as a view positioning device. It is not forgiving. A joystick however is a rotation device. It tells how fast you want to be moving around when looking, not where it should be looking. It is much more forgiving because you only dictate the speed of rotation. If you plugged in a mouse in your deck and played it on the deck you would immediately notice the difference I imagine. I think the trackpads do bring some aspects of the mouse to the deck too in that regard.
But yeah, my takeaway is, with a joystick you don’t need that tight of a latency as with a mouse.
Last night, I was playing cyberpunk without any problems. That’s pretty insane in my opinion.
I never would’ve expected a handheld console that could comfortably play Baldurs Gate 3 on an airplane. I got it for indie games, but it’s expanded beyond that for me
That’s me. Also it was based on Linux, so its not a waste of hardware, because I know a Linux operating system works well with it. I wasn’t even expecting it to play new AAA games developed for the newest console generations.
This is so important, especially as we live in an age where tech being churned out that ends up as paperweight is the norm. Being solidified in the Linux kernel we know this thing will live on for decades until in 2080 they will pull the plug on the x86 architecture and you’ll be one of the 3 people still around to remember it
I don’t think I make it to 2080, but otherwise agreed. :D
Funny thing is, now that I have it I keep finding uses for it. Sure, some of it is “well I’ve got it now so why not?” but I didn’t expect a handheld pc of this configuration to be so handy to have around.
and that’s the secret to a good product
And it’s why I hate capitalism as a consumer.
“People need an incentive to invent things!”
Well, if that incentive is making money instead of making a great thing, it’s probably not going to be a great thing. Great things make money.
Oh hey, that’s why I hate capitalism as an engineer. The endless pursuit of profit first rather than making good things that people want is disheartening as someone who just wants to make things that make life better
Listen. We need you to shave another $0.13 off the cost of the unit. Just like, reduce the quality a bit. No end user will ever notice.
3D printing is such a boon for this. You can make things for yourself put it online for free, and other people can also make it. There’s no need for a profit incentive. I hope in the future everyone owns a 3D printer.
Exactly, if you want a good product, have the developers make what “they” want. Usually works out.
That’s how you end up with Arch Linux.
This may work if the developer is a possible client too like in this case. But I feel that’s the exception.
Do what the clients want and not what developers, designers or management want.
my point was more broad. most products are design based on what the “market” wants, instead of what the individual making it wants. thus results in a diluted product that does too many things and all poorly
I love this so much. It reminds me of how AMD Threadripper came to be.
Apparently Threadripper was a skunkworks project by some of the engineers at AMD that they worked on in their spare time. They wanted to see if they could basically slap together a bunch of normal CPU dyes into on mega chip with a high speed/bandwidth interposer connecting them together.
It was almost abandoned and they had to fight to get it taken seriously. But it proved to be a viable product, and singlehandedly was responsible for decimating what was left of Intel’s place in the HEDT market so badly, that after several years of failed attempts to keep up, Intel officially announced that they wouldn’t be competing in that space anymore.
It’s such a cool thing when talented and passionate people come together without having to be subject to strict marketability and just try to create something awesome and revolutionary.
The Steam Deck kicked off an entire new market for handheld gaming devices that had real power to play modern PC games. And despite a bunch of competing and copycat products, the Steam Deck is still king.
I love mine, have close to 200 hours on it, which for me is a ton. I’ve barely gamed on my main PC in the last year, it’s just so much more comfortable to play on the couch or in my bed.
It’s just too bad that AMD is also not competing in the HEDT space now, leaving no reasonable options whatsoever
It really shows, because it’s just a well thought out, no compromises device. I’m still crossing my fingers hoping that they’re getting somewhere with the steam controller 2 prototypes that I’m sure they’re playing with if only for shits and giggles
The first one didn’t sell that well, so doubt it. Which is a shame, since it’s the best controller I ever had. If they removed the buttons and put in a joystick (or removed the right Gaben nipple) it would’ve been perfect.
Imo I think the steam controller didn’t take off because it relied so hard on the touch pads (the touchpads also clicked, which I didn’t like). Now with the steam deck it adds two real joysticks, and pressure sensitive touchpads which are so much better. So if they were to make a steam controller 2 it should have two joysticks as well as two touchpads. Pretty much all they have to do is make the steam deck without the screen.
I would buy that, multiple even
But so many people have decks now, it would make sense to market a dedicated controller for docked mode. At least that’s what I’m desperately hoping for.
In the early days I thought it would be some niche gimmick that would never take off. Turns out it wasn’t and it’s the best handheld gaming machine ever made.
It feels good to be wrong!
I adore mine. Not the best for GPU-intensive games like Elden Ring or Resident Evil 4 remake… But for essentially everything else it’s just the best.
Minecraft, 90fps Balatro, Slay The Spire, Binding of Isaac and similar… 90fps Dark Souls 1-3 - 90fps!
Very, very happy.
I only have a switch because of my nephew. It hardly gets any use otherwise. Then i found balantro and now it’s basically a balantro machine. I do wish i had a steam deck instead of a switch.
How are you playing DS1 at 60+ fps on your steam deck? I thought the game was limited to 60
PTDE can be played above 60 through DSFix with minor physics bugs.
Remastered cant as all the logic is tied to the fps.
Sorry that’s a mistake I made from happily typing ‘90’. You’re quite right, it’s capped at 60.
To be fair I have invested in a lot of their “niche gimmicks that will never take off”. I’ve owned the steam link and the OG steam controller (my dad still uses that controller to game, he really likes it). I love the steam deck but none of the handhelds have the right ergonomics for my little hands except the Switch, and so I use mine docked. But even then it’s a game changer not needing a huge gaming rig to play games.
It’s also what got me to finally go linux full-time.
I had tried to a couple times before, but always ran into one too many snags.
When the deck was announced I thought to myself “that can’t work with every game, can it?” as I’d attempted that myself.
But I had to see for myself, and the improvements in proton were staggering. And it’s gotten even better since! Who would have though Apex Legends, Hunt Showdown, and a bunch of other holdouts and anti-cheat games would be running on linux within a year of the deck releasing?
it’s the year of linux on the toilet!
My toilet runs FreeBSD.
oh yeah? my bidet runs plan 9
Just flush its cache regularly.
When I heard of it, I was wondering who that was for and what was even the point. Since I got mine, I barely play on my desktop PC anymore. I really didn’t expect to live it this much.
This is a shared experience.
Every single person in my circle gave the biggest wtf to it and when they finally got it, talk about how they rarely use their gaming PC.
I’ll be real, before the Steam Deck existed, I was toying around with the idea of either building something basically like it, or how to slap a Steam Link into that kind of formfactor (3d printer, breadboard shenanigans, etc.)
Was very pleasantly surprised when Valve announced exactly what I wanted. Have been happy with it ever since.
still loving and using it. grabbed bf1942 from the archive.org, now playing in lan with friendo and 255 bots. epic joy.
Old games from archive.org always seem more fun than newer games. Doom is SO FUN and it was made in 1993!
There’s another product that probably was this and ended up… somewhat badly. Valve index
It wasn’t bad in itself but the whole vr thing kinda missed the chance for whatever reason and now Zuckerberg took over it mercilessly. Maybe it was naive to think it will ever take hold outside of simming
Still the beginnings were real fun and that valve demo was so real I had panic attack from past me agoraphobia while in tutorial
Yeah, it’s really sad. VR is great for some experiences. There’s just two issues with it. The largest is the price. It’s pretty expensive for something that doesn’t have much content. The second smaller issue is that it’s too hard to swap into and out of. I can just sit down at my computer and instantly get into something, but switching to VR takes effort.
The price can probably be solved over time, assuming we keep making VR hardware. The convenience is harder. I don’t think there’s a solution to that, at least not in the near future.
You can now get refurbished for around $200. Mostly the meta quest 2. I’d be happier with something that isn’t meta affiliated, but it’s a solid headset. Considering how expensive most of the rest are, getting it down this far is pretty good. Maybe in a decade, there will be more entry headsets at this price point or lower.
Convenience: meta has hand tracking as controllers and can play games by itself so you only need to put the headset on, and theirs is much lighter than the old vives I cut my VR teeth on. The head strap isn’t great still for convenience, but there are third party straps that are much easier to put on and take off. The framework for convenient VR is there, but support is dwindling as there’s not much money in the VR market compared to the cost vs anything else in games.
I hate that most of this is about meta, but I haven’t seen anyone else really making great strides in VR. There’s a Chinese company I need to find again which apparently made super light headsets I was going to keep an eye on and forgot.
Unfortunately, my understanding is that Meta’s offerings are so cheap because they’re making a loss on the hardware to undercut competitors that don’t have the resources or desire to do the same.
I don’t see them turning a profit on the market after killing their competitors. I don’t get their angle. Unless they can offer something truly transformative, they’re going to put themselves out of business doing that.
But yeah, they have this all in on VR/AR mentality which I don’t see working out. Killing the competition does guarantee no one else makes a good product either.
Eh, I think they also really have an infinite money pump with all of their worldwide products. I don’t think they would be able to hold out if VR were more widespread and actually became a market that big players were entering instead of dipping into and then exiting, but with the market the way it is, for people that don’t have powerful enough standalone computers to back them up… They’re the only product that truly could become the standard as of now. Even if you have a PC capable of running desktop VR, the Quest 2 is incredibly attractive with a reasonably good wifi router and steam link. “And if you have a Quest anyways, you definitely gotta re-buy beat saber because what if I go out to a hotel and wanna play, and hey look this game that I wanted on PC was on sale” and so on.
I say this as the owner of an index and a quest.
Yeah, but I don’t think they’ll keep it unless it turns a profit. Meta as a whole will always have ads which literally print money for free, but they’ll Google the VR line as soon as their lizard overlord gets bored of the metaverse idea. Maybe they’ll sell it instead of close it like Google always does, actually… That would be nice.
I am being somewhat exaggerative with word choices.
capitalism <3
I get what you are saying but your entire post dances around the actual problem. All of this is fine if there was actually good software. Ive yet to see any killer app or must have software. If there were really good games it would make the hardware short comings less important. Even apple with their typically polished experiences seems to have just dumped their headset on the market and hope for the best.
I mean there are, it’s all just extremely subjective.
Pistol Whip is musical John wick simulator, with community made levels. This is pretty much the pinnacle, IMO it’s better than beatsaber which is a little more boring for me. Then there’s the story based and multiplayer based FPS games, alongside the rhythm ones. Arizona Sunshine, Superhot.
There’s Vermillion, which is a VR painting simulator. It’s incredible as an artist with a small space and not having to clean up afterwards. There’s also SculptrVR for modeling, SynthVR for music (synthesizers) which IMO is actually a quintessential piece of software as an actual synthesis rig is thousands of dollars, rooms full of space, and in this game it’s all available to you. There are a number of other games depending on your hobby preferences.
And then there’s space/relaxation simulators, on their own are great, but can be further enhanced with various software. For example, one of my favorite passtimes during lockdown was Elite Dangerous with my phone connected to my computer using SCRCPY, brought into VR as an overlay. So I was space trucking with Netflix and didn’t have to remove my headset to interact on my phone.
And then there’s murder simulators like Gorn and Blade and Sorcery, which also is the best Star Wars simulator.
So even your post doesn’t hit the problem on the head. There’s a few compounding issues.
First and foremost - the cost of the device in tandem with the lack of publicity. It’s no question that Blade and Sorcery and Beatsaber are well known VR games, but neither of them are marketed very well by their teams. Understandably so, how much ad money is worth putting into a VR game. But it’s hardly marketed by the headset sellers themselves, which you would think would be something desirable.
Second - the reality. Headsets are heavy. Moving is hot. Even if you do get your VR setup, really fun games translated to VR like Holoball (basically just racketball) can actually get you pretty sweaty. The other reality is space is a factor. Even though I have a smaller house I still got VR, but using it in a smaller house can be compromising.
Third - back to marketing, but with subjectivity. I would argue that there is killer software out there worth making VR worth having, the issue is that no one knows about it. Know one knows that SynthVR exists and let’s you save hundreds of thousands of dollars if you want to play with synthesizers without having to purchase all the parts for racks. Vermillion is incredible for aspiring painters and regular artists who may be low on materials or space, or I’mOpenBrush if they’re looking for the 3D VR art side.
Finally - VR has a really difficult time with multiplayer. Without it, longevity can be shortened. With it, there might be no longevity at all because the game cost $20 and the headset and the cost of the PC that can run it and no one has even heard of Revolv3r. So while some games like PavlovVR somewhat takeoff and are successful, other games might have you waiting in a lobby for forever. Additionally, after the Vive there was a bit of a falloff of developer interest, and so there’re a fair number of games from 2016-2017 which look promising but are entirely abandoned, or might not even work on modern headsets (not so much an issue anymore now that Microsoft is ending support for Reality Portal.) This makes it even harder to find games for VR since you’re effectively sorting through a graveyard with a mix between hardware compatibility and something actually worthwhile.
There are a ton of fun VR games, fully fledged and arcade style, and there’s a lot of great software. I just don’t think people know about them, they’re hard to find, and they’re a bit locked behind a pretty significant price disparity.
Well said. Also, good suggestions. I haven’t tried a few of those.
Thank you! I have a lot more if you’re interested, I got pretty into VR for a while and I wanted to find what really worked and what really didn’t.
I still really enjoy it but it’s harder to find the time and space these days, but every time I do go to set it back up I’m just as amazed.
My comment they were replying to didn’t touch this, so they weren’t responding to that. However, I disagree we need some “killer app” to make adoption more likely. It’d be great, but I don’t see it happening. There’s nothing really that is done in VR that can’t also be on traditional displays. The advantage is immersion. It just has to be at a price that people find worth it.
People, especially companies, don’t like talking about this because it’s “obscene” or something, but, like so many things, I think porn is the way to sell VR. It gives an experience that, while still available in traditional formats, is quite different. It’s not a “killer app” but does provide distinct advantages not seen anywhere else.
Thank you. Also, kind of fair, but the library probably needs to be bigger before people are willing to adopt too.
I always kind of thought a good desktop system, where wearing the headset is cheaper than getting a new larger monitor or more monitors, but the long term comfort of wearing a headset instead kills that idea pretty strongly right now. Even just a theater experience is kinda meh.
Porn does tend to sell technological advances though.
Yeah, I had a Vive. The lighthouses have failed now so it’s not currently usable, and I didn’t use it frequently and am now on Linux and haven’t looked into if VR will work for me now, so I haven’t gotten a replacement. I’ve thought about it though. It sucks that even I, who has used VR and enjoyed it, doesn’t currently feel the need to have a working headset.
Im going to look into a used headset and support on my device though. I might get back into it.
The convenience is harder. I don’t think there’s a solution to that, at least not in the near future.
lighter headsets that work well in MR, so you don’t need to take it off to reply to a msg or find your login. you’d leave it on in mixed/augmented reality mode, then swap it back to VR to play your game.
Slowly, we’re moving towards that. I’ll be very interested to see what comes after the quest 3s / index etc.
Something I wanted to do when I had my Vive working, and I’m unsure if this is actually possible, is integrate the android watch OS into it. It’d be so nice to always have quick access to your device that is integrated into the VR space. I’m not sure why someone hasn’t done this yet (assuming they haven’t).
I know a startup tried to do phone reflection in VR, that is, to mirror a phone’s display into a render layer, and try to use the phone’s touchscreen as an input for that ‘display’.
they went out of business. I wonder if they ever got their patents figured out. seemed like promising tech.
Valve isn’t done in VR. it doesn’t feel the need to put out a headset every year.
Same with the Vive. It wasn’t the end. Index isn’t the end. When they find something they can innovate they will.
Warning: the following opinion has not been approved by Lemmy.
Meta has done a lot for VR and the tech is just getting started.
A big part of the reason was that Facebook offered game studios a big upfront sum if they made their games work on whatever headset they were selling at the time in standalone mode with no major caveats. The headset only had an anemic mobile GPU, so was only capable of as much as mobile games were doing at the time. A bunch of studios took them up on this offer, and cut back their projects’ scope to be viable under the hardware constraints, so nearly everything that got made was gimmicky mobile-style minigames, and obviously that’s not what makes people want to drop hundreds of dollars on hardware, as they can get their fill by borrowing someone else’s headset for an hour.
Mobile GPUs have improved, so standalone headsets aren’t as terrible now, but we missed the expensive toy for enthusiasts and arcades phase and soured most people’s opinions by making their first VR experience shovelware.
I am impressed with how many games are now playable on Linux with Proton and how well they look and play, to think this game meanwhile has graphics glitches on the PS5. I might get one myself.
While you’re all here what controller do you use for your deck? Been thinking of getting one of the hall effect 8bitdo ones, but I’m open to trying anything.
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Some people like a lighter weight and different grips. Lots of cases have a kickstand where you can prop up the deck and use your favorite controller.
Can’t it also dock to a TV or monitor?
Yes
If you have a dock. Maybe I’ve been unlucky but I don’t recommend the official dock. Every time I want to use the deck in a docked mode I have to rewire everything in the correct order to get the dock to output a normal resolution. Wire it in the wrong order and you either get no output or you get low resolution output with weird artifacts.
I have the thin silver JSAUX one and don’t have an issue like that, but sometimes it refuses to charge until I reseat the AC adapter.
This is the dock I have. I’ve never had the issue you mentioned, but I also don’t take it on the go a lot.
I’ve used multiple docks and never had this issue on the official one. Do you have this issue on other docks, or just the official one?
I would guess it’s a software issue on the device rather than some kind of compatibility problem
Actually I’ve grown more fond of my ultrawide monitor and I don’t really couch game anymore, so I haven’t bothered to troubleshoot why it does that.
I agree that my specific issue is an uncommon one as it took a bit of digging on the web to find a working solution, and that alone isn’t an indication that the official dock is bad. The purpose of my comment was to shed light on the fact that it’s not as plug and play as the Switch dock is. You can’t just buy the official dock and expect everything to work.
Maybe a third party dock works better. I don’t really know, but it’s something to look into when you plan to buy a dock for the deck.
Oh I see. It definitely can be plug and play but you are right that there is a chance for it to have some quirks. I think it can vary from TV/monitor to what cable or version of Steam OS you’re currently on.
I only say this cause I have 2 and one is treated like a Switch. Very rarely it will fail to connect right away unless it gets restarted, which I think is related to the overarching bug that is present that people talk about.
For the most part though it is plug and play, some of the problems are the same that switch owners might run into (CEC handshake issues, something Nintendo has also released firmware updates for). But also yes, not 100% plug and play with the exceptions usually being specific hardware, sometimes because of firmware.
I like the steam deck and use it as a controller, but you could make the same argument about the switch. Regarding the switch, my answer would be that while it is a controller, it is - IMHO - a poorly designed and uncomfortable-to-use controller.
While you and I like the ergonomics of the deck, others may not. One can hardly blame those people for wanting something they feel more usable.
I use it in a dock most of the time.
OG steam controllers for me!
I wish they were still available
I got a PS5 controller from a sale, even the touchpad works
I have the 8bitdo Pro 2 and I love it. Works great with or without a custom config, but in my opinion the config I use makes it worth it for the price.
I went ahead and ordered the hall effect version of the Pro 2. Excited to try it out!
whatever controller is closest and convenient for me when i happen to sit down, or whichever one is charged lol.
I usually gravitate towards a wired xbox controller because its the one i have jurisdiction over in the household.
Strongly recommend a wireless mouse/kb with one of those couch cushions that is desk shaped. very good for playing some of the less controller-friendly games. I got a half-keyboard with a joystick on the thumbrest that i havent used yet.
Xbox Controller.
Just got an Ultimate 2c. It doesn’t work well in some games. Specifically Sackboy, Moonstone Island
If I had another go I’d probably purchase the 8bitdo Pro 2 Hall edition as it can switch between xinput and direct input.
I second the recent PlayStation controllers. My friend gave me an extra PS4 controller he had and it’s basically a Deck controller minus the back buttons and a track pad. Works fine for most games I play with it, but I’m primarily a M&K guy.
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That’s how all products should be
I got one to replace the Xbox that I’ve had hooked up to my tv’s since gen 1… absolutely no regrets.
I have a 14+hr travel day coming up in the next couple months and it’s going to get it’s first work out as a portable, lol.
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The more I learn about Valve culture the more I realize they definitely have teams just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. I bet there are some really wild prototypes that we never get to see.
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You do not understand what you’re talking about.
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Seems highly unlikely Valve was dedicating valuable dev/engineer time and money to make a toy they had no intention of ever producing…
This actually is basically how Valve works.
They have a pretty small team, and Steam is a fucking money printer.
They are a private company, not public.
That means no shareholders. No need to jam out a product to keep stock prices up, no boards of directors that also sit on 12 other boards that are all scheming to figure out how to push the whole industry toward stupid bullshit like NFT game items or ‘replace all our employees with AI’ or ‘every game is actually just a marketing tool for MTX or battlepasses.’
(The entire idea of loot boxes and in game microtransactions was basically just another ‘i wonder what would happen if, or if it would even be possible to…’ and then the steam marketplace of ingame items was born, and then basically every one else copied them, poorly.)
(Fuck, its basically the same with modern in game achievements as well.)
…
They could do nothing other than maintain their existing products and basically just coast on that forever, remaining profitable.
Because they have essentially no hard deadlines to put out some new product… this enables them to have a very loose, very voluntary, workplace culture which emphasizes quality over quantity, creativity over ‘its the same game in a new setting’, as well as not rushing anything.
A whole lot of their projects in the last decade are just people saying ‘I’m gonna do this’ and then if anyone else thinks its cool or neat, they work on it too.
People are allowed and encouraged to contribute to any project, at any time, as opposed to basically all other corporate software studios that have very rigid and defined roles.
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Some projects will end up being a waste of resources, but others end up printing a ton of money.
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Found the Buisness major
That user legitimately spends all day posting pedantic BS lmao, this is hilarious.
Literally the archetype of le Reddit neckbeard to a tee, Christ what a loser
… and they’ve now deleted all their posts.
I do have to say this has been amusing… haven’t seen this caliber of very obviously wrong but actually no you’re wrong in a while.
EDIT: Wow, no, holy shit, their entire account is gone now.
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this is how I know you’ve never created anything, lol. lots of times, you fail at making something, but you learn from those failures.
who knows what other projects they threw money at and failed, the only one I can think of rn were the steam machines.
I’m sure they learned from those mistakes, tried again, and here we are with the steam deck
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It’s not as strict as you are trying to make it out to be. My favorite job ever was a small company. The owner was fine with us programmers just working on pet projects on company time. I was goofing around at some point and ended up writing us some code that ended up being kind of a workshop for some code that us programmers would have to sit and work on. It allowed non-programmers to set up the same conditions and handled the ‘code’ part internally. It was all because I was just goofing around with program ideas and eventually got to that point where I had my eureka moment. I didn’t set out to waste company time and money, but the end result paid off in droves, which is exactly how it sounds like the deck came to be. Another programmers goofy side project turned into an accounting package that we ended up tying into our actual product. If our boss/owner had been looking at it the way you are describing, none of that would have come to fruition, but look at all the money he would have saved not letting us programmers do what we did. /s
thats called R&D. I don’t personally spend millions of dollars, but I do spend money on things that never pan out but teach me a lot of lessons I can apply to my next project
If I owned a multimillion dollar company, probably yeah. There’s a limit but for a groundbreaking company the RCA labs are more a warning of “but they actually have to complete projects at some point and have direction” than a “everything needs to be rigidly directed”.
“Hey I have an idea for something I’d like to exist” is quite possibly one of the best things a business owner can hear out of an R&D engineer’s mouth. You provide oversight in accordance with the risk factors established by your financials, business plan, and how good of an idea it is. But if a bunch of them like it as a product that’s a good sign.
It’s not a waste of resources if you learn something. Think of this as research rather than product development. You can try many things (from VR, to miniaturised computers, to cloud gaming, controllers with wonky form factors…) to see what results in a good experience. You don’t need to get anywhere near a full fledged product to understand those things, so the waste of resources isn’t massive anyway.
I’d bet at the moment people decided “this is useful, I even want this for me, so let’s turn it into a product” the steam deck looked more like a screen, a gamepad and a raspberry pi all taped together or jammed into a 3d printed prototype chassis.
If people have spare capacity to work on these projects, the material cost at such a point can be under <5k which is peanuts for a company like Valve.
Good thing you weren’t working at steam, huh.
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That’s pretty much the point. The steam deck was a huge success, but the only reason it could exist and be such a success was because they had the freedom to do what they liked and not worry about management with attitudes like yours.
Do you really, truly believe that everything that’s never been done before is a 100% sure bet to invest time and money into?
Do you really have no idea of how complex, untested, but potentially viable ideas come to fruition, come to be found out as coherent and workable vs incoherent and non workable?
… You are aware that matchsticks were essentially invented by the scattershot approach of a man who just had the time, funding, and materials to just basically randomly test a whole bunch of chemical compounds, and he just happened to accidentally drag a stick covered in concoction #38 or whatever against a hearth, whereupon it burst into flame?
… Do you think the Wright Brothers, or any other early experiments of developing flying machines… or all those involved in early rocketry… do you think all of those people were 100% sure that each of their designs would work?
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Nothing worth doing is ever worth doing just for money. You’ll never innovate if you never put time into projects simply for practice, or better still, enjoyment.
Steam made Valve more than $2,000,000,000 in 2021.
They have infinite money forever.
Gabe Newell runs a biotech company as well.
A couple million on a blue-sky product development pipeline is an incidental cost for the most part.
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… What?
It… it goes into the company.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/13/24197477/valve-employs-few-hundred-people-payroll-redacted
They run an absurdly profitable business.
They make approximately $15 million in profit per each of the roughly 360 employees.
That’s after wages.
Nobody knows exactly what an average Valve salary is (they’re a private company, they have no obligation to disclose that), but they almost certainly just continue to accumulate a stupendous amount of money, which they can then throw at any ideas that require all kinds of potential material or licensing or technical costs.
The employees are not making $15 million dollars a year. Probably more like 1/10 to 1/100 of that.
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The steam deck is making them money, that was a product developed by fucking around.
I don’t know how you read that from what I said, or how I could have “said this as if” anything. It’s a fact that stands alone.
Do you think that devs and engineers pay for prototypes themselves?
Whatever bud, enjoy being convinced you’re right so hard that you get mad at other people I guess. I guess the end result of the steam machine project or the steam controller or the index or the vive or the steam deck and multiple people at Valve describing that’s how it works are just not real because how they came to exist at all don’t make sense to you.
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it’s frustrating and difficult to talk to you about this issue. I still am confused as to the point that you have. Feel free to continue to attempt to explain it, but I’m not interested in continuing to talk to you. Thank you for your time.
When you have a stable business with a guaranteed source of huge amounts of revenue, that all you have to do is basically maintain at a very low cost…
Most other revenue can be thrown at whatever, in a how ever long it takes to do well and properly timeframe.
Actual innovation requires a series of creative ideas that are explored thoroughly, without overwhelming pressure or influence on decision making, or timetables.
Valve’s position allows them to do this.
Lots of those things go no where, but a good number of them work out, and basically revolutionize the industry, more than making up for the projects that do not work out.
As a certain wise old man once said:
“These things, they take time.”
You would be surprised how much companies experiment behind the scenes, that you never see. Prototypes aren’t actually the most expensive thing, so its totally doable, especially if you have lot of engineers hyped for that. Given that the teams at Valve produced hardware before, its only normal to get money for new experiments. Also the structure at Valve is a bit different than most companies.
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Plans change and evolve. After the experiments looked good, more and more people got interested. Maybe the one guy who was successfull with previous hardware got involved and they started to see something bigger than anticipated. Its an organic growth. I mean I don’t have any internal knowledge or anything, just trying to think how it could have went.
