Z okazji roku od premiery wywiad z ekipą z Valve:
- SD's been a top seller on the store for the entire time it's been out.
- Interview is with Lawrence Yang (designer) and Pierre-Loup Griffais (engineer).
- They're surprised at all the creative uses people came up with for the SD.
- Playing on prototype SD's (when it was in development) was fun.
- 42% of people who buy SD's change their play patterns. They switch over to gaming on steam, the majority of the time on the SD.
- Delay from purchasing to receiving a SD is way shorter versus release. Down to 1-2 weeks, no reservation required.
- SDs are more versatile now. They attribute this to more third-party peripherals and community contributions like emulators, custom boot videos, etc. (They gave an example of a script that automatically uploads screenshots.)
- Other improvements referenced are from small software updates like the more in-depth refresh rate settings.
- They intend to continue adding more features going forward.
- They focus on features that improve the ecosystem as a whole.
- A quick mention about Doom Eternal recently gaining ray tracing support. More games to get it in future.
- They use feedback to determine next steps. It often aligns with what they want out of the device (as users) too. Working as fast as possible, maximum developer bandwidth.
- Game compatibility has improved a lot. They're still working on improving it but say they're past the big holes (anti-cheat systems and media codec problems) So they're shifting to "value-add features" like HDR and ray tracing.
- A good relationship between Valve and other devs is really important in making sure there's good compatibility. The back-and-forth has even allowed bugs to be found before the release of games.
- The Doom ray tracing update also contained urgent fixes for Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. That's why the game came out after that update.
- Deck verified program has evolved over time. Over 10k Steam games have been rated.
- When asked if the power of the SD is still acceptable when newer games push for higher and higher spec requirements: depends on how developers approach it. Making your game scale down for the SD has the added benefit that it can be enjoyed by a larger market, (the people with lower-end hardware.) They're optimistic due to seeing lots of devs testing their game's performance on the SD and optimizing specifically for the SD.
- SD isn’t in danger of getting dumped and replaced by a new model. "A true next-gen Deck with a significant bump in horsepower wouldn’t be for a few years."