Valve being based.
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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See this is why I love Valve. At least their hardware and the great support for open source software (Linux, Wine/Proton).
No, I don't agree with everything they do in regards to Steam. I know that it sucks, that you can't truly own your games nowadays, but at least Valve supports an OS that lets you truly own your hardware and have control over your software. And they do it, by providing open source software (Proton) with no strings attached (free software license) that lets you play games on this exact FOSS OS.
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.
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.
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.
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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.