New competition (?) The Steam Deck

[leech]

2 minutes ago, zzip said:

Specwise good,  but the storage situation on the $400 model makes it really iffy.   seems like a bait-and-switch to get people to upgrade one of the pricier models.

There are videos saying that it should be possible to upgrade the m.2.  But of course no one will know until it is out.  But sdcard slot is there as well.

[zzip]

2 minutes ago, leech said:

There are videos saying that it should be possible to upgrade the m.2.  But of course no one will know until it is out.  But sdcard slot is there as well.

yeah there's been conflicting information whether the m.2 slot will be user-accessible.  For a system with code sizes of the PC, I think you are really going to want the SSD speeds rather than the SDcard speeds.  Even the internal storage is much slower on the $400 model.

 

Seeing how much they are overcharging for the storage upgrades-  ~$200 for 512Gb when you could buy a 2Tb nvme yourself for the same money,  it really looks like that's where they are making their money and their strategy is to upsell people to those models by making the base model (which probably loses them money) significantly flawed.

[Cyclonus]

I ordered the 64gb model and IGN said that it works just fine. Most people aren't exactly going to be playing Battlefield or Warzone on it anyway

 

An uprated SD card should be fine for reading most games

[zzip]

26 minutes ago, Cyclonus said:

I ordered the 64gb model and IGN said that it works just fine. Most people aren't exactly going to be playing Battlefield or Warzone on it anyway

 

An uprated SD card should be fine for reading most games

Might be fine for some, but I find it underwhelming.   However, if it turns out that the m.2 slot is user upgradable in the 64gb unit without major hassle, that would definitely change my opinion on it.

[Mockduck]

I think its nuts that so many gamers are just shrugging a $650 portable since price sensitivity is such a hot topic on the Internet. Because it's by Valve?!?! Because they are used to paying that for video cards? Seems crazy given the VCS gets so much negativity at $300/$400 w/two controllers.

[zzip]

19 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

I think its nuts that so many gamers are just shrugging a $650 portable since price sensitivity is such a hot topic on the Internet. Because it's by Valve?!?! Because they are used to paying that for video cards? Seems crazy given the VCS gets so much negativity at $300/$400 w/two controllers.

Look at the way they announced it.   $399 seems like a magic price point for game hardware that you don't want to exceed.  So they dangle the bare-bones model $399!  that price is what grabs the headlines and gamers attention.   In the meantime the "Good" models are a buzz-killing $500-600+  

 

But just like when people go to buy a car or other big ticket item, many will end up paying more than the sticker price to get the features they want

 

It's smart marketing,  I'll give them that. 

 

Ediit: Also Atari VCS has the opposite problem, because they got the price of the deluxe bundle stuck in eveyone's head.   I keep hearing "That's not worth $400!"  But really it's $299 without the controllers, and there was talk of a $249 unit with less memory

Edited July 23, 2021 by zzip

[Bill Loguidice]

22 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

I think its nuts that so many gamers are just shrugging a $650 portable since price sensitivity is such a hot topic on the Internet. Because it's by Valve?!?! Because they are used to paying that for video cards? Seems crazy given the VCS gets so much negativity at $300/$400 w/two controllers.

Completely different in my opinion. PC gaming handhelds are a fairly new category and the machines released to date have been roughly double the price of Valve's offering because they've been put out by small companies. Valve's entry suddenly gives the category some gravitas and may be the harbinger of other big players stepping in. In any case, the Steam Deck is roughly the same power/quality as the more expensive options give or take. Contrast that with the VCS that is underpowered and overpriced in comparison to similar systems, e.g., the Xbox Series S with its developer's mode and rich game and app support, and it's easy to understand why it landed with a thud and has no real path forward (again, in my opinion). In other words, one is a dead end and the other is the start of something new and exciting.

[Mockduck]

And to think the Vita got sunk commercially over a $60 memory card...

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

41 minutes ago, Mockduck said:

And to think the Vita got sunk commercially over a $60 memory card...

Not to mention SONY's lack of marketing or seemingly even giving a sh*t about it hurt it a lot more then the proprietary over priced cards. It was really more bad business decisions on SONY's part, poor support and lack of titles that would appeal to a a market outside of Japan, I mean it was pretty good if you liked Jrpg's and visual novel etc but otherwise bleh. 

[Mockduck]

10 minutes ago, OldSchoolRetroGamer said:

Not to mention SONY's lack of marketing or seemingly even giving a sh*t about it hurt it a lot more then the proprietary over priced cards. It was really more bad business decisions on SONY's part, poor support and lack of titles that would appeal to a a market outside of Japan, I mean it was pretty good if you liked Jrpg's and visual novel etc but otherwise bleh. 

I am a HUGE Vita fan, it really got a bad deal by the gaming community, IMO. Sony tried for a few years, but after that it just didn't make sense given the hostility towards the device by the mainstream gaming community and the reality of the gaming business. The memory card was a bad idea, but still... It is still, though, being used by a bunch of folks and will remain an underground bit of awesome. I had so many games to play on it! It was like the Indie Steam portable of my dreams. Thing is still better than the Switch in a few ways...

[Matt_B]

I think a little bit of perspective is required. Despite being widely regarded as a flop, the Vita still sold over ten million units and I'd doubt that the Steam Deck would even get close to that in Valve's wildest dreams. They were looking at maybe 100,000 pre-orders and in the first interviews on it GabeN was quoted as saying that they were hoping to sell 'millions', not tens and certainly not hundreds of them. The demand might have pushed up their expectations a bit, but yeah, we'll see how that goes.

 

The problem for the Vita is that, as a proprietary platform, it needed to sell a heck of a lot more than that it was going to see much in the way of AAA game development. It was still more than adequate when it comes to ports, indies and mid-budget games though. Since the Steam Deck is just going to play existing PC games it doesn't need that; although the more it sells, the more likely it'll be that the makers of PC games design them to suit it rather than assuming that everyone is using a desktop.

 

So far as the Steam Deck's spec goes, it would be medicore if it wasn't a handheld. As with the VCS it can be compared to the Series S, which is more than twice as powerful and at half the price when you're looking at the model with an equivalent amount of storage. Still, when the handheld PC competition basically consists of three Chinese startups who are charging $800+ for tech that's a generation behind and have production runs of only a few thousand, it's still looking like a very good deal. Even that 64GB model should be fine if you mostly play indie games.

[leech]

32 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

They were looking at maybe 100,000 pre-orders and in the first interviews on it GabeN was quoted as saying that they were hoping to sell 'millions', not tens and certainly not hundreds of them.

Apparently they 'sold' 110k in the first 90 minutes.  It was enough to take their site down...

(I say 'sold' as it is a reservation).

 

They may sell minions, they closed up the hole that let people see the sales after that.

[Cyprian]

11 hours ago, leech said:

Apparently they 'sold' 110k in the first 90 minutes.  It was enough to take their site down...

(I say 'sold' as it is a reservation).

do we have figures for VCS, how many have been sold?

[leech]

3 hours ago, Cyprian said:

do we have figures for VCS, how many have been sold?

Good question, I thought there were at least that many during the Indiegogo campaign?

[+x=usr(1536)]

1 hour ago, leech said:

Good question, I thought there were at least that many during the Indiegogo campaign?

IIRC, the VCS sold around 11K units* through crowdfunding.  If the Steam Deck managed 110K reservations, that's roughly 10 times what the VCS was able to drum up.

 

* I'm being generous by saying that 11K VCS units were sold via Indiegogo.  Because the total amount of money that we saw had been raised was unable to be broken down into people who ordered just a VCS, just a controller or two, or a bundle with both, I'm just going with the highest reasonably-possible number of VCS-only sales.

[Mockduck]

Yeah, the current no-actual-data-to-prove-it estimate is that the VCS has likely sold fewer than 20,000 units. 11k from IndieGoGo if literally everyone bought the console instead of just the controllers, but that is highly unlikely, and maybe another equal amount since. However, let's assume it was at least 20% just controllers, so prob something like 10-15,000 units. 

[leech]

1 hour ago, Mockduck said:

Yeah, the current no-actual-data-to-prove-it estimate is that the VCS has likely sold fewer than 20,000 units. 11k from IndieGoGo if literally everyone bought the console instead of just the controllers, but that is highly unlikely, and maybe another equal amount since. However, let's assume it was at least 20% just controllers, so prob something like 10-15,000 units. 

Still just as many, or potentially more than the JagCD? 

 

Edit: if the leaking of the first 90 minutes is anything to go by for the Steam Deck, they made a quick 550k in 90 minutes, just from reservation money.  Wish I could do that, I'd pay off my house and take a sweet vacation

Edited July 25, 2021 by leech

[Matt_B]

There was a figure of $2.5 million of 'deferred revenue' for the VCS in Atari's last financial presentation, which would account for 6000-8000 units after the crowdfunding. Barring a sudden surge in sales this year, that's another data point towards a total around the 20,000 mark.

[Mockduck]

1 hour ago, Matt_B said:

There was a figure of $2.5 million of 'deferred revenue' for the VCS in Atari's last financial presentation, which would account for 6000-8000 units after the crowdfunding. Barring a sudden surge in sales this year, that's another data point towards a total around the 20,000 mark.

Nice, that's as good and well reasoned a figure as anything I've seen so far. 

[Cyprian]

16 hours ago, Mockduck said:

Yeah, the current no-actual-data-to-prove-it estimate is that the VCS has likely sold fewer than 20,000 units. 11k from IndieGoGo if literally everyone bought the console instead of just the controllers, but that is highly unlikely, and maybe another equal amount since. However, let's assume it was at least 20% just controllers, so prob something like 10-15,000 units. 

wow, less that Falcon 030,

Maybe buying a few would be a good investment

[leech]

2 hours ago, Cyprian said:

wow, less that Falcon 030,

Maybe buying a few would be a good investment

Well, I mean they have only barely hit store shelves.  So we will see how well they do.

[zzip]

3 hours ago, leech said:

Well, I mean they have only barely hit store shelves.  So we will see how well they do.

Seems like they are only on store shelves at Microcenter.   Microcenters are not that common.    Best Buy and Gamestop seem to sell them only online, not in store.   I don't know if that will change.    Maybe get them on the shelves for christmas.   I notice Target and the like are getting filled with more and more of these retro-type products.   There's a whole section in the electronics section for retro stuff, so this would be right at home there.  Meanwhile a couple aisles over the Vinyl record section gets larger and larger everytime I visit.  

[+x=usr(1536)]

16 hours ago, Matt_B said:

There was a figure of $2.5 million of 'deferred revenue' for the VCS in Atari's last financial presentation, which would account for 6000-8000 units after the crowdfunding. Barring a sudden surge in sales this year, that's another data point towards a total around the 20,000 mark.

Total speculation on my behalf here: 20,000 units doesn't seem unreasonable, but I suspect 15,000 may be closer to the truth at this time.  Figure on 10,000-ish for the initial run, plus another 5,000 for the first retail wave with the option to do a second run of 5,000 once those are gone.

 

Again, total speculation, but somewhere in the range of a 15,000 to 20,000 unit manufacturing lifetime seems likely.  In all honesty, I can't see any production runs taking place in 2022 at this point short of an unexpectedly large burst of interest taking place in Q4 2021, so can see 20,000 as the absolute upper limit.

[leech]

On 7/26/2021 at 10:24 AM, zzip said:

Meanwhile a couple aisles over the Vinyl record section gets larger and larger everytime I visit.

Weird.  They're just so... inconvenient these days.  Like getting a decent record player is kind of a chore, unless you're a legit audiophile and know what kind to get.

[Matt_B]

Naah, audiophiles just buy a vinyl copy for the shelf and a 24-bit FLAC file for listening these days. ?