As much work as the Verge article says they put into cooling, I’m not too worried about heat issues

The skin community is going to be all over the swappable panels like butter on hot corn.

Edit That didn't take long...

https://dbrand.com/shop/limited-edition/companion-cube

I'm down to buy the new controller. I have a Steam Deck and it's very comfortable to hold, other than the weight. This thing is basically the Deck controls without the screen and a bunch of the weight.

Plus, I've personally found the gyro, trackpads, and back buttons to be extremely useful for games that don't have controller support, or for simply easier use of existing buttons (like putting L3/R3 on back buttons). I'm really looking forward to this, looks way better than the 2015 Steam Controller.

Lastly, that charging connector / wireless adapter all-in-one combo is just nice.

My only concern would be haptics. This really needs to have good rumble motors, and not just trackpad haptics like the deck. The pad haptics are good for subtle effects, but near useless for conveying actual heavy vibration, explosions, stuff like that. Sounds like they accounted for this though:

High definition rumble

Steam Controller's powerful motors are capable of handling complex waveforms for immersive, accurate haptics.

That sounds closer to something like the PS5 DualSense enhanced haptics, and if so, I'm here for it.

It's insane. Seemingly everyone but Sony figured out decades ago it's a terrible idea, and Valve does it anyway.

At least it has concave sticks, which weren't on PlayStation until 2013.

It’s possible placing the thumb sticks in some slightly different way helps to avoid patent issues.

This isn't going to be a high end machine, it's probably competitive with the PS5, more or less.

You didn't mention what you have, but you could probably get a decent upgrade competitive with this for well under $1200. The GPU seems to be about an RX 7600 ($250-260), the CPU is about a 7600 ($190), motherboard is $170, and 16GB RAM is $120. So $700-800 mandatory, plus whatever you need to replace from your current rig, and the result should be a bit faster than the Steam Machine. That's probably a bit more than the Steam Machine, but it's upgradeable, whereas the Steam Machine won't be.

I mean… What is a console, but a prebuilt running custom firmware and manufacturer’s OS? You can literally install Linux on a jailbroken PS5. Old consoles were obviously bespoke pieces of hardware that wouldn’t match any computer OS… But modern consoles are closer to prebuilt PCs than they are to old consoles.

It’s meant to be used with a TV, just like a console is. It’s targeting the console crowd, to try and capture that wing of the market and bring the console players into the PC ecosystem. It’s also trying to give PC players the flexibility to play in their living room, instead of at a computer desk.

That last part is primarily what I use my Steam Deck for right now. And it’s why I’m excited to potentially have something a little more powerful than the Steam Deck for my TV. My partner started to resent my gaming habits. After some discussions, we figured out that it was because they couldn’t cuddle me when I was at my computer desk. They missed the physical snuggle time that we got on the couch. So I got a Steam Deck, and made a point of shifting my gaming habits to be able to play more games on the couch.

Suddenly, the complaints about my gaming dried up. Because they could snuggle up next to me and read a book or scroll on TikTok while I played, which is all they really wanted. I’m still able to play my game to de-stress after work, they get their physical touch time, and we’re both happy. The only real change was in what kinds of games I played, because I had to shift more towards controller-based games instead of Keyboard+Mouse games. So fewer shooters, more hack-n-slash type stuff. But I enjoy playing both, so I just wait until after they go to bed to play the KB+M games at my desk.

And thus far, my only real complaint about the setup has been that the Steam Deck has started to struggle to run newer games. It was never meant to be a super high powered top-of-the-line device. The first consideration was portability, which meant they had to make some concessions on processing power in order to get an acceptable battery life. But with a standalone TV console, that isn’t really a big factor. So the standalone console can be much more powerful, because it’s not needing to take things like battery power consumption into account.

Aren't all consoles?

Yes.

Yes, just like the Steam Deck, it's a pre-built that functions like a console and can do other desktop stuff too.

Frankly, the Xbox One and the PS4 marked those vendors transition to 'tiny prebuilts', by the standards one might call this a 'tiny prebuilt'.

One could fairly argue that Switch is "just a gaming tablet/phone"

I think so. It's trying to compete with Microsoft and Sony consoles in much the same way that Steam Deck competed with the Switch. Taking on the largest segment of gaming outside mobile is pretty ambitious. It seems to be launching along with a new VR headset and a new controller, so they seem to be targeting high volume sales for the living room gaming market.

The hardware isn't the ambitious part, the target market is.

God forbid people posting the most exciting gaming-related hardware news of the past 5 years on a Gaming community! Must be all paid shills, I gues.

Lots of Linux and gaming enthusiasts in the platform. Still better of the latest pedotrump news.