Author: Trafficblast

This is a mostly spoiler-free review of Season 1 of Marvel’s Loki, which is now streaming in its entirety on Disney+. Some themes and characters are alluded to, but no main plot points are discussed in detail. For a deep dive into the show, you can read our spoiler-filled individual episode reviews:

Loki: Season 1, Episode 1 Review

Loki: Season 1, Episode 2 Review

Loki: Season 1, Episode 3 Review

Loki: Season 1, Episode 4 Review

Loki: Season 1, Episode 5 Review

Loki: Season 1, Episode 6 Review

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While the first two Marvel Disney Plus shows — WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier — took place after “the blip,” Thanos, and the other universe-shattering events of the Infinity Saga, they never felt like they were really moving the MCU onto a new path. Instead they were more introspective pieces, more content in dealing with inner turmoil and personal repercussions than setting up future storylines. This is where Loki differs: it has its fair share of soul-searching and character development, but also takes us to new places to meet new people; not only making for an enjoyable watch in its own right, but also providing excitement through the promise of what’s to come. 

Loki begins where the titular trickster’s story ended in Avengers: Endgame by introducing a big concept: He awakens, face down in the sand of his own art-deco version of Dune, surrounded by a squad of black-clad armoured guards who quickly take him to the 1930s-like corridors of the Time Variance Authority (TVA) headquarters. The first episode does a great job of getting us up to speed on the concepts of protecting the Sacred Timeline from unauthorized tampering by using Loki himself as a proxy for the audience as it’s all explained to him. This allows the series to stand more or less on its own, rather than requiring 20 films worth of homework to get through beforehand. Nothing drives this point further home than the fact that clerks at the TVA use the all-powerful infinity stones as mere paperweights here. 

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Tom Hiddleston is as good as ever as Loki, the Prince of Asgard, who finds himself a long way from home. He serves up his usual helping of charm and cheeky demeanor that we’ve come to expect from him. But this Loki is a little different to the one we’ve got so used to over the past few years: he’s still that evil Loki (though not for too long), fresh off his defeat in the Battle of New York, who hasn’t yet had the time to see any errors in his ways. This more headstrong Loki makes for a more entertaining centerpiece as he bounces off of all who dare speak to him as sparks fly in any conversation that remotely questions his authority. It makes for an engaging screen presence, and one you can’t help but just root for no matter how dastardly his intentions.

Apart from Loki himself, every other character is new to us, which helps the first few episodes feel fresh and exciting and in no way a rehash of what’s come before. In fact, it’s in those rare moments that the series does look back where the pace becomes sluggish and generally less engaging. This happens sporadically over the course of episodes 1 and 2 as Loki watches through archive footage of what’s to come for him; it doesn’t quite pack the emotional punch intended, instead acting as a dull clip show for those familiar with the MCU. 

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These early episodes introduce us to a few crucial members of the TVA, each of whom are developed to different degrees over the season. The first we meet is Wunmi Mosaku’s Hunter B-15, an imposing presence who receives a neatly woven arc over the 6 episodes. Then there’s Judge Ravonna Renslayer, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, a higher-up at the TVA who is shrouded in mystery for much of the series, which unfortunately doesn’t give her much of a chance to shine.

The standout, though, has to be Owen Wilson’s Agent Mobius, who brings a new lease of life to Loki every time he appears on screen. Combining Wilson’s signature dry delivery with a clever script that allows him to flourish never fails to entertain, especially when bouncing off of Hiddleston’s Loki in Buddy Comedy fashion. It’s no coincidence then that the series’ lowest point is episode 3, where we are robbed of the duo’s dynamic, instead setting Loki on a branching path with a new companion.

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Loki’s partnerships along the way are a key to what makes this show so enjoyable, and while he and Mobius together are the optimum pairing, Sophia Di Martino does a great job in her role, too. To avoid spoilers, I won’t reveal who she’s playing but she holds her own against Hiddleston (no mean feat) and grows as a character the closer to the finale we get. Di Martino’s cloaked persona provides a big part of the emotional core of the show throughout, embodying its two main themes: trust and free will. 

Trust – and just as equally distrust – runs through every conversation. Can Loki trust the TVA? Can the TVA trust him? Can he trust his new accomplices? Can he even trust himself? There’s not a whole lot more I can say about the plot from episode 3 onwards without spoiling some major reveals, but the choices of who Loki decides to put his faith into go a long way to deciding the outcome, all the way up until its fantastic finale. 

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Episode 6 is perhaps the best Marvel TV episode to date, with a star turn from a standout new cast member who slows the pace down in favour of thrilling conversational staging compared to the pacey action-packed events of the prior two. It’s a finale that brings home those themes of trust and free will, delivering a philosophy and tension-filled last few minutes that have major consequences for the future of the MCU.

The second half of the season also does a great job of showcasing a grand sense of scale. Every piece of the set design has been meticulously thought out, from the stylish yet bureaucratic browns of the TVA offices that you wouldn’t be surprised to see Don Draper sat in, to apocalyptic skies raining down death in shades of blue, purple, and green. Showrunner Michael Waldron and director Kate Herron grant Loki a real sense of unique identity, mixing things familiar to us – like Loki the character and raw human emotion – with the more bizarre such as a talking cartoon clock called Miss Minutes and a character who happens to be an alligator. The later episodes also deftly juggle a large cast of characters that play a brief but important role, chief among them Richard E. Grant, who lends gravitas to the story while wearing a delightfully absurd costume.

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Key parts of the equation are Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s cinematography and Natalie Holt’s score. Both add to the series’ individuality and make it stand apart from any other Marvel production; the former through a proliferation of wide, slowly spinning and rolling shots and the latter soundtracking these images to fantastical but almost mechanical music throughout. All of these aspects combine to create a sense of unease but also wonder at what you’re watching. It’s a fresh and exciting style for an MCU story that ends with universe-altering decisions that usher in a promised second season as well as a fresh and exciting era for the MCU as a whole.

It’s ironic, in a way, that it’s the show that starts off before all of the others that’s the one that lays the strongest foundations for the future. But if there’s anything Loki has taught us over its 6 episode run, it’s that time is very far from being a flat circle in this universe.

Today Valve announced the Steam Deck, a brand-new handheld PC gaming device. Last week, IGN had the exclusive opportunity to visit Valve for the very first hands-on with the Steam Deck, as well as chat with the people who made it. After spending several hours across two days playing a wide variety of games, it’s hard not to be impressed by the balance of price, power, form, and function Valve has managed to strike.

To test out its capabilities, I tried more than half a dozen different games – some first-person like Doom Eternal and Portal 2, some third-person, including Death Stranding and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, and some isometric, such as Stardew Valley and Hades. For the most part, these all ran without issue on their default graphics settings at the handheld’s native 720p resolution, and the Steam Deck stayed comfortably cool to hold that whole time.

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When I first saw the hardware, I admit I was a bit thrown off by its control layout. Primarily that’s because the thumbsticks are in-line with the D-pad and face buttons, which looks a bit odd when you’re used to the more staggered arrangement found on most controllers. However, as soon as I held it myself, the layout felt completely natural: the intuitive hand orientation when you grab the Steam Deck is more straight up and down, like holding the sides of a steering wheel, whereas with a controller your hands are at more of an angle. As a result, it’s easy and natural for your thumbs to reach the Steam Deck’s face buttons, D-pad, and thumbsticks.

The full-size thumbsticks felt precise, and while the D-pad wasn’t quite as clicky as I’d like, it was fully serviceable for rounding out some quarter-circles in Guilty Gear Strive. Similarly, the face buttons and bumpers all felt solid, and served me well through a few runs of Hades. The triggers felt a little bit squishy for my taste, but it’s worth noting that I was using a non-final hardware unit, so it’s possible that things might change as Valve tweaks the Steam Deck before launch.

On the back side are four rear buttons – a welcome standard feature for anyone who’s grown accustomed to using “Pro”-style controllers like the Xbox Elite and borderline essential for playing games designed with a keyboard in mind. These, like the rest of the buttons and other inputs, can be fully customized to whatever you like thanks to Steam Input, Valve’s system for making useful custom keybindings available for almost any controller layout. 

Underneath the thumbsticks are one of the Steam Deck’s standout features: two precision trackpads, which give you access to mouse-like controls for games that don’t play well with a traditional controller. Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais told IGN that these trackpads are an evolution of the tech they’ve used in both the Steam Controller and the Index Controller, and they can be customized for many different uses here. Valve plans to work with developers to help implement many of them, while others, like with the Steam Controller, will be pioneered and shared by the Steam community itself.  

“In game, you can map them to areas of the screen for the mouse cursor to jump there and be kind of a one-to-one region-type input,” Griffais told us, which would be useful for something like quickly moving around a minimap in a real-time strategy game. “You can create on-screen menus that pop up on top of the game and have many customizable macro buttons or keyboard keys. And you can just use it for mouse input, where it’s really powerful and reliable for the people that are comfortable with that sort of input.”

A nice touch – no pun intended – is that like with the Index Controllers, both the thumbsticks and trackpads are capacitive, which means they can tell when your finger is touching them. This can be combined with the Steam Deck’s internal gyro sensor for a more fine-tuned form of aim control than with a thumbstick or trackpad alone. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but after a brief adjustment period I found that the combination gives you a weirdly precise level of control that is honestly not far off from using a regular mouse. Yes, even in first-person shooters like Doom Eternal. 

Finally, the 7-inch screen is touch-enabled as well, which is nice both for games that naturally support touch controls and ones that can be played primarily through pointing and clicking. It’s also great for just browsing through the OS, which is similar to an improved version of the Steam Big Picture Mode interface we already know.

Steam Deck – Software and OS

The Steam Deck will draw immediate comparisons to the Nintendo Switch, but while it might look like a handheld console, Valve’s device really does have more in common with a desktop gaming PC when it comes to its capabilities. The Steam Deck runs a custom version of Steam OS that gives you a console-like experience on the surface without having to worry about things like drivers or setup, but under the hood is a full-blown PC for those that want the freedom to go deeper. The OS is built on Proton, a version of Linux that supports both Windows and Linux games and applications.

This flexibility means you can do pretty much anything on the Steam Deck that you can do with a regular PC. Connect a mouse and keyboard? Yep. Alt-Tab out of your games to a browser or video? Sure. Load third-party programs or even other game stores like Origin, uPlay, or Epic Games Store? No problem. You could even wipe Steam OS entirely and install a fresh version of Windows if you want – but the default Steam OS is smooth and efficient at getting you into your games, so I imagine most people won’t want or need to go that far. The point is, you can if you’d like to. 

“We don’t think people should be locked into a certain direction or a certain set of software that they can install,” Valve designer Lawrence Yang told IGN. “If you buy a Steam Deck, it’s a PC. You can install whatever you want on it, you can attach any peripherals you want to it. Maybe a better way to think about it is that it’s a small PC with a controller attached as opposed to a gaming console.”

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But PC gaming is about more than just getting away from the walled gardens of console game stores. For one thing: customization. Most games should play well out of the box on the Steam Deck – we’ll get more into its hardware capabilities in a bit – but for players who want to dive into the settings and customize things further, that’s an option too. 

“We think that there will be a pretty approachable entry point where you can see the games that work really well by default and get a pretty seamless gaming experience,” Griffais said. “If you want to go one step further and use all of these options, you can. Customize your controls, your level of performance, battery life, use Steam Workshop, or even mods that are outside of Steam Workshop. All these options that are dear to PC gamers are fully supported by the Deck.”

Importantly, this also means that all of Steam’s features like Cloud Saves are fully functional here. You can start playing a game on your desktop PC, save and quit, then load up and continue playing portably on your Steam Deck – with all of your progress, key bindings, DLC, and Workshop mods fully intact. You can also suspend games indefinitely on the Deck itself, similar to how the Switch works, though you can’t have multiple games suspended at once like with Quick Resume on the Xbox Series X. Valve’s team also told me they’re looking into ways to cloud-sync suspended games between desktop and Steam Deck, meaning you could hop between platforms without even needing to save and quit, but that functionality wasn’t in place yet during my time with it. 

While the Steam Deck is obviously designed for portable gaming, it’s also fully functional as a desktop PC. Using a dock or hub to expand its single USB-C port, you can connect it to a monitor, mouse and keyboard, Ethernet, and whatever other peripherals you can fit. Valve is developing an official docking station, to be sold separately, but any standard USB-C hub will work just as well. The Steam Deck also has Bluetooth, so peripherals that use that connection are an option too. We had no problems connecting a pair of Apple AirPods, for example.

As a result, in desktop mode the Steam Deck honestly just feels like a PC. The OS is Linux-based, but it feels largely familiar to Windows and is capable of running everything I threw at it from either platform. I played a bit of Factorio and Death Stranding with mouse and keyboard on a 32” monitor, and if it weren’t for the Steam Deck sitting docked next to me on the desk I would have forgotten it wasn’t running off a traditional desktop PC.

Steam Deck – Internals and Power

Yes, the Steam Deck can run a 2020 release like Death Stranding with good performance – and without having to turn all the graphical options down to zero to get it. This thing is no slouch. The Steam Deck is powered by a next-generation AMD APU featuring a 4-core/8-thread Zen 2 CPU and an RDNA 2 GPU with 8 compute units. 

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“For the total APU combined power, it’s about two teraflops,” Griffais said, “which should let people play the games that they have in their library without issues at 720p and provides lots of horsepower to that effect.”

On paper, two teraflops puts the Steam Deck in the ballpark of the Xbox One and PS4. In practice, however, it’s actually more impressive than that. Since it targets a 720p resolution – more than enough for its 7-inch screen – it’s able to play current PC games at medium to high settings with smooth framerates. While I wasn’t able to run benchmark tests during my hands-on time, I played Death Stranding, Doom Eternal, Control, and several others, all of which looked great and played smoothly. 

Speaking of the screen, I should note that it’s actually a 1280×800 resolution display – which is the 16:10 aspect ratio equivalent of the standard 16:9 (1280×720 pixels). This gives you a little bit more vertical screen real estate for browsing through the Steam OS interface and in games that support custom resolutions, which is most of them. And for games that don’t, the combined 80 pixels of black bars on the top and bottom are barely noticeable. 

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The Deck comes in three different models, but power-wise they all have the same internals. The only internal difference is in storage space. The base model has 64 GB of storage for $399. Moving up to the 256 GB model costs $529, while the top-end will cost $649 for 512 GB. The latter also has premium anti-glare etched glass treatment on its touchscreen. All three storage devices are SSDs, however the 256 and 512 GB models use an NVMe drive for even faster load times. And while the internal storage can’t be upgraded, there’s an SD card slot to expand your storage, which games can be installed onto and played directly off of if you don’t mind them loading a bit slower than off the internal SSD. (Though Valve’s team told me they’ve done a lot of work to optimize load times as best as possible when playing through the SD slot.) All three SKUs include a notably luxe carrying case and a standard AC power adapter.

All-in-all, I’m extremely impressed with what I’ve seen of the Steam Deck. $399 for the entry-level model is a very attractive price point for folks who are either new to the PC space, or are looking for a more powerful alternative to the Nintendo Switch. And for PC veterans, the higher-end models offer the storage space needed to tote around a handful of triple-A games in their backpack – at a price point that’s actually quite compelling compared to a cheap gaming laptop, let alone a full desktop PC build. 

Personally, I love the prospect of being able to seamlessly transition playing PC games between desktop and handheld, and the openness of the platform means I’ll now be able to go mobile with not only my overflowing Steam library (thanks Humble Bundles and Steam Sales) but also all my Epic Games Store, uPlay, and itch.io collections. 

The Steam Deck will be available this holiday season, with reservations starting soon. In the meantime, be sure to check out our rapid-fire FAQ with the Steam Deck development team.

Valve announced the Steam Deck this morning, a brand new device that makes the entire Steam library portable. At $399 for the 64 GB version, the cheapest version will be $50 more than the upcoming Nintendo Switch OLED — expensive by traditional handheld gaming standards, but positively affordable in light of it functionally being a portable gaming PC.

Speaking with IGN, Valve president Gabe Newell talked about the need to be “very aggressive” in terms of pricing, characterizing price performance as “one of the critical factors in the mobile space.” He said that the top priority was to make sure that PC players are able to pick up the Steam Deck and feel like it works perfectly, but that price was also very much on Valve’s mind when it developed the new device.

“I want to pick this up and say, oh, it all works. It’s all fast. It’s all… and then price point was secondary and painful. But that was pretty clearly a critical aspect to it,” Newell said. “But the first thing was the performance and the experience, [that] was the biggest and most fundamental constraint that was driving this.”

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Newell’s comments highlight one of the biggest challenges facing the Steam Deck: creating a powerful handheld device that can support the breadth of the Steam library while still being affordable. As Valve revealed separately, the Steam Deck will feature an AMD Zen 2 processor and a GPU sporting the AMD RDNA 2 architecture — the kind of tech you will find in a solid gaming PC.

“We knew that the price point was very important, so […] from the beginning, we designed with that in mind, and we worked very, very hard to achieve the price point that we’re at,” said Valve hardware director Shreya Liu in a separate interview.

The Steam Deck will be available at three different price points: $399 for the 64 GB version, $529 for the 256 GB version, and $649 for the 512 GB version. With the average gaming PC costing between $800 and $1200, being able to purchase a powerful dedicated handheld with expandable storage for just $400 starts to seem like a good value.

Other considerations were the fit and finish quality, said designer John Ikeda, who said that it had to be “premium in feel, premium in look.”

“[W]e weren’t going to sacrifice those, so balancing that in this atmosphere of supply chain and manufacturing toughness, was something that we knew from the very beginning that we weren’t going to sacrifice, so we needed to find a way,” Ikeda said.

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Ultimately, the Steam Deck is being priced with long-term strategy in mind, Newell said, with Valve’s goal being to ‘establish a product category’ that will have long-term benefits. In that sense, Valve is willing to be aggressive with the Steam Deck’s pricing.

“Nobody has ever said, ‘Oh, we have a giant success where clearly there’s huge demand for this, but our margins are too thin.’ Right? And a lot of people have overpriced things and killed the opportunity, and sort of convince people that it’s an uninteresting category from the get-go,” Newell said. “So we’re definitely… our view is… we’re doing this for the long haul. And there’s a lot of opportunity. And so far, everything we’re hearing from our partners, mainly because they’re the ones that we’ve talked about it the most, is a lot of enthusiasm that this is something that they’re really going to be happy to see the PC community pushing into this space.”

The Steam Deck is set to release later this year. Be sure to check back later this month for our full interview with Newell, where he talks more about the Steam Deck, Half-Life: Alyx, and working from New Zealand during the pandemic. In the meantime, we’ve got an extensive hands-on with the Steam Deck itself, as well as an FAQ with some of the developers behind the new device.

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We spent two days playing the Steam Deck and talking to Valve about its origins, capabilities, and its future as a platform. So before we left, we asked them a bunch of questions about the Steam Deck that we thought you’d want to know the answers to. Here’s what they had to say:

IGN: First of all, what’s in it? CPU GPU wise, what is in this thing?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: So there’s four cores of AMD, Zen 2 CPU with eight threads, and eight CUs of RDNA2 GPU. These are all the latest architecture.

IGN: How much RAM is in it?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: 16 gigabytes.

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IGN: Storage wise, what are we looking at?

Lawrence Yang: We have three SKUs and it’ll be 64 gigs, 256 gigs, and 512 gigs.

IGN: Is the storage upgradable?

Lawrence Yang: The internal storage is not, but every deck will come with a SD card slot. So you can put an SD card slot, whatever size you want. Whenever you want.

IGN: Price?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: The 64 gigabytes storage will be $399. The 256 gigabytes will be $529 and the 512 gigabyte will be $649.

IGN: Is there a difference in performance with regard to the storage speed – flash memory versus NVMe – as you step up and go higher?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: Yeah. As we go higher, the read and write speeds are going to be faster.

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IGN: And then next up, screen size and resolution. What are we looking at there?

Greg Coomer: It’s a seven-inch screen. It’s a 720p native resolution.

Pierre-Loup Griffais: The aspect ratio is 16 by 10. So the exact resolution is actually 1280×800. [Editor’s note: The 512gb version also has a premium anti-glare etched glass treatment on its screen.]

IGN: Battery life? That’s a big one in any handheld device. What are we looking at there?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: Well, there’s a wide variety of experiences there. It’s about 2-8 hours, depending on what you’re doing. You can play Portal 2 for four hours on this thing. If you limit it to 30 FPS, you’re going to be playing for 5-6 hours.

IGN: What is included in the box?

Lawrence Yang: The Deck itself. It will [also] come with the power adapter [and] a carrying case.

IGN: Are there built in microphones in this for multiplayer chat?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: Yep.

IGN: Is there a cellular connection? So I can download games from anywhere or is it wifi-only?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: Wifi-only.

IGN: Is there an ambient light sensor in it for the, to auto adjust the brightness of the screen depending on the lighting conditions?

Lawrence Yang: Yep.

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IGN: What operating system does it run?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: This is running the new version of SteamOS.

IGN: Is it for gaming only or can it run other PC applications? Can it do other things?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: It can pretty much run anything you can run on a PC.

IGN: So we can go to ign.com on it?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: Absolutely.

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IGN: Is there a docking station or any way to play it on a bigger screen?

Greg Coomer: Yes. We’re producing a dock. It’ll be sold separately.

IGN: Is there a price on that yet?

Greg Coomer: We don’t have a price for you today.

IGN: Okay. Will that be available at launch?

Greg Coomer: Don’t have that answer for you, yet.

Pierre-Loup Griffais: There’s plenty of existing off the shelf solutions that I don’t think will be providing this nice experience, but a similar function.

Lawrence Yang: Any USB-C dock that you can buy off the shelf will work with this and it’ll do USB, ethernet, and HDMI. All of the things you would expect from a dock. [Editor’s Note: Since this story published, we’ve seen questions about the output resolution in docked mode. It is not limited to 720p, but performance will be impacted if you increase the resolution.]

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IGN: What peripherals, headsets, controllers can we use with it?

Greg Coomer: Anything that can be plugged in via USB and anything that can be plugged in or accessed via Bluetooth. There’s an onboard USB-C connection.

IGN: Excellent. Yeah, I tried my Apple AirPods earlier and they worked just fine. So I don’t even have to buy anything else for Bluetooth audio.

Pierre-Loup Griffais: Yep.

IGN: Can I play VR off of it?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: I mean, it has all the connectivity. You would need [a lot] to do that, but that’s not really what we’re optimizing the performance for.

IGN: So you can try it, but your mileage may vary.

Pierre-Loup Griffais: Yeah.

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IGN: Can you adjust graphic settings within it or is it sort of locked into a specific settings profile based on the horsepower of the machine?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: All the normal options that you’d get in PC games are accessible. That being said, most games start with a pretty balanced graphic settings that work really well out of the box.

IGN: Is the core hardware, not the storage, but is it the core hardware upgradable in any way?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: Not really, due to the small form factor. Everything is pretty, it’s pretty tightly packed.

IGN: Can I log into my Epic Games Store account?

Greg Coomer: Again, you can really do anything that you would expect a [Linux-based] PC to be able to do. So the answer to those things is yes.

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IGN: How about mod support?

Greg Coomer: Really the same answer because a PC can do those things. So we’ve built this device to support all of that.

Pierre-Loup Griffais: And the version of Steam that runs on this is the same version of Steam just adapted with different UI and control. So all these features, team workshop, and all that built-in support for mods will be there as well.

IGN: How about multiplayer? How does that work with the device? Be it a local multiplayer or otherwise?

Lawrence Yang: Yeah, I think same story as with any PC. So it has connectivity so you can play multiplayer games, you can play local multiplayer with multiple controllers connected to it. All of the things that you would expect.

IGN: So all you need for multiplayer on a split-screen/same-screen multiplayer would be a second controller input, via Bluetooth.

Pierre-Loup Griffais: Or use a phone and Steam remote play app.

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IGN: What other buttons are hiding on it?

Pierre-Loup Griffais: Yeah. There’s a set of [four] extra buttons on the back for programmable rear buttons.

IGN: How about supply? We have a chip situation globally, but scalpers and bots have rained on the parade of many it would-be next-gen gamer as well. Do you anticipate being able to meet demand this Fall?

Greg Coomer: We’re using a reservation system that we’re going to roll out shortly after this announcement and we’re really going to use that, [but] obviously can’t make all of the devices at once that we think people will want over the next year or two.

Greg Coomer: So as those become available and as they’re manufactured, people will be able to reserve and then purchase those in a queue-based system.

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IGN: What’s the reasonable shelf life for this? What is the sort of long tail of it? Is it something that is going to be upgraded or will there be a 2.0 version of this in a few years? Do you anticipate or want other hardware makers to use the same SteamOS and make their own version? Do you look at this as a platform?

Greg Coomer: We look at this as just a new category of device in the PC space. And assuming that customers agree with us that this is a good idea, we expect not only to follow up in the future with more iterations ourselves, but also for other people, other manufacturers to want to participate in the space.

Pierre-Loup Griffais: All the technologies and the OS and the building blocks that we’ve been working on over the years, that kind of means the Steam Deck will be available free of charge for people that want to build devices like that as well.

Lawrence Yang: We want to make sure people know that the SteamOS 3 is available free, for a free license for any manufacturer that wants to make a similar product.

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Have more questions about the Steam Deck? Leave them in the comments below and we will do our best to get them answered by Valve.

After rumors in May, Valve has now officially announced the Steam Deck, a handheld gaming PC arriving later this year. IGN has an exclusive hands-on with the Steam Deck as part of this month’s IGN First, as well as an FAQ with Valve about the device, but here’s the essential info.

The Steam Deck has a form factor similar to that of a slightly larger Nintendo Switch but with the capabilities of a full gaming PC. It runs a modified version of Valve’s SteamOS, complete with a new console-like interface for easy navigation of both the Steam store and your Steam library, but it also provides access to an unrestricted computer desktop where any third-party applications can be installed (including non-Steam games or launchers).

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In terms of hardware, the Steam Deck has a 7-inch, 1280×800 resolution, 60hz LCD screen, a custom AMD APU featuring a 4-core, 8-thread CPU paired with 8 RDNA 2 compute units for the GPU, and 16 GBs of LPDDR5 RAM. Practically speaking, that makes it a substantial amount stronger than the Switch, allowing it to run modern games impressively well – as a point of reference, I was able to play Jedi Fallen Order on an in-development Steam Deck at “High” graphical settings with little-to-no issue. It can even suspend running games like a console, and Valve says the intent is really to give players access to their entire Steam library on the go. 

To better enable this, the controller setup on either side of the screen has all the buttons, triggers, and full-sized joysticks you’d expect from a modern gamepad and more. The sticks are actually capacitive, meaning they can detect when your thumb is resting on them, and below each one is a small trackpad that can be used for mouse inputs. There are also four back buttons on the rear of the Steam Deck that can be mapped however you see fit, and the display is a multi-input touchscreen.

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Additionally, the Steam Deck has bluetooth support for any device you could connect to a regular PC (including headphones like Apple AirPods). It can also be “docked” and hooked up to an external display, as well as a mouse and keyboard if you want to use it as a more traditional PC. While Valve will be selling an official dock separately, any third-party USB-C adapter should work just as well – and those who simply want an experience closer to that of a regular handheld or console can ignore the more computer-y aspects entirely.

Speaking of selling, the Steam Deck will be available in three different models – importantly, however, the only major difference between them will be storage size and speed, with their graphical capabilities otherwise identical. The base version will cost $399 and have 64 GB of storage, followed by a $529 model with 256 GB, and finally a $649 version that has 512 GB and an anti-glare etched glass screen treatment. The latter two Steam Decks will also have faster NVMe SSDs, and all three will allow you to install and play games off of a Micro SD card to expand storage capacity further.

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The Steam Deck doesn’t have a hard release date yet but it’s currently set for a holiday 2021 launch, and Valve President Gabe Newell told IGN that hitting these price points was ‘painful’ but ‘critical’. A reservation pre-order system will be rolling out in the near future, with Valve aiming to avoid the chaos and unpredictability of recent console launches, and all three price points will also come with a tailor-made carrying case. 

We’ll have lots more information about the Steam Deck all month long as part of our IGN First coverage. In the meantime, be sure to check out our extensive hands-on impressions, and if you have a question that wasn’t answered here you can check out an FAQ with Valve about the Steam Deck. 

There are some really good deals today, but the highlight is definitely Nintendo Switch OLED preorders going live today at 12 noon PT. If you already have the Nintendo Switch, you might not consider this a big deal. But for first time Switch buyers, I’d recommend getting the new model. The OLED screen upgrade itself is definitely worth the $50 price bump. In other deal news, grab an ASUS ROG RTX 3070 Gaming PC for a mere $1599.99, save over 50% off the Logitech G920 Racing Wheel for the Xbox Series X, score a computer desk for as low as $28, and decorate your gaming space with some smart LED strip lights.

Preorder Nintendo Switch OLED Today at 12pm PT

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The newest Nintendo Switch model, featuring a larger OLED touchscreen display, new dock, and new Joy-Con colors, will be released on October 8 for $349.99. However, Nintendo tweeted today that preorders will go live today at 12pm PT. It’s very possible that this console will go out of stock very quickly. If you’re planning to buy one, don’t hesitate!

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ASUS ROG RTX 3070 Gaming PC

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Scoring an RTX 3070 gaming desktop PC for only $1599.99 is already a great find, but if it’s an ASUS ROG desktop, which generally boasts great build quality and sleek gaming-inspired aesthetics, it’s an outstanding deal. At the time of this post, you can order it now at Best Buy and receive it in about 2 days. That’s a much better proposition than waiting months for a standalone RTX 3070 video card.

Govee 32.8ft (2×16.4ft) RGBIC Smart LED Strip Lights

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These LED strip lights are very inexpensive at only $1 per foot, but it has a lot of features. These are “RGBIC” strip lights, which means that the LEDs have built-in IC chips which allow the strips to display multiple colors simultaneously. You can also control the lights wireless via either WiFi or Bluetooth. Pair it with Alexa or Google Assistant for voice control as well.

Cheap Computer Desks on Amazon from $27.99

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If you’re shopping around for a computer desk and you don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars, or even $100, or heck, if $50 is out of your budget, then have we found the desk for you. This 39″ computer desk is currently only $27.99 (just enough to get free shipping even if you’re not an Amazon Prime member). It measures 39″ long x 20″ deep x 29.5″ high and is tastefully decorated with a splice board design. Bigger sizes are available, all under $50.

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Logitech G920 Driving Force Racing Wheel for Xbox

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Factor in the $100 Dell gift card and you’re basically getting this racing wheel set for only $135 (it retails for $400). This is one of the best racing wheels you can get for the Xbox or PC, and easily the best racing wheel under $200 (if you factor in the Dell gift card). It pairs beautifully with Forza Horizon 4 and will probably work just as well with the upcoming Forza Horizon 5 game that’s coming out November 9.

LG GX Series 55″ 4K OLED Smart TV

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The 2020 LG GX series OLED TV has the same panel and internals as the CX OLED that everyone loves. What makes it different is that the GX, or “Gallery Series”, does not include a tabletop stand. Instead, it includes a wall mount that allows it to mount almost perfectly flush with the wall. Even with an ultra-slim 3rd party wall mount, you can’t mount a CX OLED TV nearly as flush as you can with a GX OLED TV and the included mount. The GX series is usually priced a few hundred dollars higher than the CX OLED TV, that is until today.

Today Only: WD Elements 6TB Desktop Hard Drive

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If you’re in need of extra storage, Newegg has got you covered. For today only, take an extra $25 off the already discounted WD Elements 6TB external hard drive, bringing the total to just under $100. At only 1.6 cents per gigabyte, you can’t go wrong with this deal.

AtGames Legends Ultimate Home Arcade Cabinet

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The AtGames Legends Ultimate Home Arcade is finally back in stock at Sam’s Club. It’s been unavailable for a while and sells for considerably higher on eBay. If you’re not a Sam’s Club member, you need to pay a 10% surcharge, but at least shipping is only $10. This is a full-sized cabinet that’s much more robust than your typical Arcade1Up cabinet. It features a generously sized high-definition 24″ LCD monitor and two player setup (each player gets a joystick, six action buttons, and a spinner). There’s also a trackball for precision gameplay like in Centipede. Speaking of which, the biggest draw are the 300 licensed arcade and console games that are preinstalled. That includes classics like Missile Command, Asteroid, Space Invaders, Burger Time, Fix It Felix, and much much more. If you have the technical know-how, you can also add in your own games with a USB flash drive.

QuakeCon 2021 is coming this August and the multi-day event will be all-digital.

Bethesda announced the news today, stating that QuakeCon at Home is back and will take place from August 19 to August 21. This year’s QuakeCon will include livestreams that feature updates on existing and upcoming games, tournaments, charity fundraising, giveaways, and more. Oh, and puppies too, apparently.

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QuakeCon 2021 will officially kickoff on August 19 at 2 p.m. EST with a global stream event that will include “special influencer streams, Bethesda’s own Community teams from across the world, developer appearances, and game updates — all streaming in support of charitable causes.”

The QuakeCon staff will reveal exclusive content for the community as well, according to Bethesda. The official QuakeCon Twitch team will lead the charge on charity fundraising, streaming games to raise money for QuakeCon-supported charities. Bethesda says some community players will be featured on the team’s page during the event and those curious about joining the team can sign up here.

Some of the charities involved include Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, The Trevor Project, and UNICEF. The con’s annual animal charity t-shirts are back too, according to Bethesda, and the profits from these shirts will be split between Custom Ink, Dallas Pets Alive, and FOUR PAWS. The two shirts available this year can be seen below:

Partners for this year’s QuakeCon include Alienware, BAWLS, Fractal Design, Pecos Pete, Razer, SteelSeries, and more. QuakeCon 2021 will begin at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, August 19 and the con will formally end a couple of days later on August 21.

While Bethesda didn’t reveal what games event attendees can expect to see, the company’s blog post does include tags at the bottom for Deathloop and Doom Eternal, although this could be in reference to the con’s charity shirts.

While waiting for QuakeCon 2021, read about how Deathloop will be a PS5 console-exclusive title until at least September 2022 and then watch Bethesda’s latest Deathloop gameplay walkthrough trailer. Check out this story about how Doom Eternal now has ray-tracing and more thanks to its next-gen upgrade after that.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Handheld gaming PC’s are not a new concept, and while they have become more popular thanks to successfully crowdfunded devices such as the GPD Win, they have not broken out of a niche.
Valve is much better positioned than others to enter this market and this is a smart move
/1 https://t.co/lZ1DVDfKMa

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) July 15, 2021

A fix for the issue preventing Switch owners from picking up an expansion for Streets of Rage 4 is currently being worked on and will arrive in the “following days” according to developer Dotemu.

Fans of the latest entry in the long-running beat-’em-up franchise can pick up the new DLC starting today, titled Mr. X Nightmare. The expansion adds multiple new characters, a survival mode, moves, weapons, and more to the game. Currently, anyone playing the game on PC, PS4, and Xbox One should have no problem purchasing the DLC.

Switch owners however have encountered a bug that prevents them from purchasing the expansion. On Twitter, Dotemu acknowledged the issue, saying, “We are all hands on deck to remedy this issue for fans and will be posting updates on the ETA for when we anticipate the fix to be live.”

However, Switch players won’t be able to purchase Mr. X Nightmare for at least the next day. In a follow-up tweet, Dotemu said that “our best projections are that the fix will come in the following days but beyond that, we are unable to give a more accurate timeframe.”

Along with the DLC, a massive patch has hit Streets of Rage 4. The patch addresses issues with every character in the game, with some changes being applied to the entire roster while others received more specific buffs or nerfs.

Since its launch, Streets of Rage 4 has received regular DLC drops, with the latest adding Shiva to the beat-’em-up this past May.

Destiny 2 Update 3.2.1.1 is live now, fixing three issues. Hotfix 3.2.1.1 fixes an issue where players could exit the play area during the Glassway Strike boss fight.

Players were using the glitch in the Grandmaster version of the Nightfall Strike to slip into an area where the bosses couldn’t damage them, allowing them to fire at the enemies in safety. Grandmaster Nightfalls are some of the toughest challenges in Destiny 2 and give out some of the best rewards, so the bug essentially allowed players to easily farm it.

The update also solves an issue where the Worldshaper ornament for Izanagi’s Burden would sometimes cause ADS issues when zooming in. The third and final fix in this update is that an issue where the Catalyst Competitor Triumph was not showing for players who completed it during the Guardian Games.

This hotfix comes in the wake of the mid-season update, which focused on balancing weapons in the player versus player modes as well as fixing bugs. Many of the gun balance changes came from Bungie’s desire to rework the entire class of “special” weapons that had been taking over the PvP modes. The patch also included a nerf for the Exotic scout rifle Dead Man’s Tale, which had also been dominating the Crucible meta.

Bungie also detailed how it will be overhauling the reputation system when Season 15 starts on August 24. The changes to the system are aimed at streamlining reputation resets as well as lessening the impact winning/losing PvP matches has on reputation progression.