Speedrunner Crescendo has set a new blindfolded world record after completing Super Mario Bros. in 11 minutes and 55 seconds.

This news comes by way of Eurogamer, which reports that Crescendo posted their world record run yesterday on YouTube after attempting to beat the record for over 40 hours. Crescendo beat the previous blindfold world record for a Super Mario Bros. completion, which sat at 14 minutes and 46 seconds since 2016, by nearly

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“I started planning this run on May 29 and started doing full-game attempts on June 19,” Crescendo wrote in his world record video’s description. “I played in one-hour sessions once or twice per day. All told, it was 40 hours of attempts.”

Crescendo also mentions that he’s a musician, which actually came in handy when going for this world record. That’s because, in some sections of the game, Crescendo had to accurately count in seconds to perform a perfect series of jumps when required to progress in the level, as Eurogamer points out.

He also used fireballs as a tool to determine how far away certain things were and broke specific bricks to determine his whereabouts on a level.

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Eurogamer cites the speedrun subreddit and how people there are discussing how particularly difficult Super Mario Bros. is to speedrun, let alone speedrunning it while blindfolded and breaking a world record in the process. They specifically mention AKittyCat’s comment as they explain the difficulty in speedrunning Super Mario Bros. compared to Super Mario 64.

“64 has the benefit of being 3D and Open world-ish allowing you to take your time in certain areas and has more sound clues to go off of to help navigate,” AKittyCat said. “SMB1 has time limits, a much more unforgiving play style, and basically no sound clues to go off of for navigation help outside of hitting a block or an enemy.”

Crescendo says he is working on a tutorial video to teach would-be speedrunners (or those simply interested in the madness that is this incredible feat) how he broke the world record. Crescendo broke this record just days after Summer Games Done Quick 2021 wrapped up its charity efforts, in which it raised $2.8 million for Doctors Without Borders.

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For more speedrunning, check out IGN’s Devs React to Speedrun series where developers of games like Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, Mass Effect, Fallout: New Vegas, Hades, and more react to speedrunners completing their games in record times.

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

It’s the end of another week that probably could have gone better than it did. No matter, though. Forget it all by scoring a cheap palate cleansing game to play over the weekend. You could take advantage of 50% off a CoD or AC. Or maybe just stock up on a heap of cut-price Steam stuff in preparation for the arrival of your Steam Deck.

Purchase Cheaply for PC

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Battlefield 2042 details cross-play and progression, robot dog jeep stuff, call-in tablets, AI Soldiers, unique specialist gadgets, a watered-down class system, so many rocket launchers, the lack of some playable interior spaces, and teases for EA Play Live happening soon.

By Aaron Sampson on July 15, 2021 at 5:28PM PDT

Battlefield 2042 is about to release a ton of information at EA Play Live, but don’t tell that to DICE community managers who tracked down Daniel Berlin, Senior Design Director to answered a lot of questions ahead of time in a massive blog post.

We now have confirmed details about many different aspects of the game. There will be cross-play and progression, both of which are being tested later this summer. We learned about the robot dog, whose name is Ranger, and how it will follow you and protect you with its life. We learned that players use call-in tablets to bring vehicles down mid-battle and also that the system is limited by team points that vary based on map and mode. There were details around how AI soldiers will fill or balance matches. AI soldiers will also do many of the same tasks as players but can’t be specialists. It was confirmed that Sundance’s wingsuit is a unique piece of gear and nobody else gets one. We learned about the new loadout system where anyone can make a choice between carrying a rocket launcher or bringing items such as ammo or health packs. Finally, we got more details on maps such as out of bounds being expanded, skyscrapers not having much in the way of interior spaces, and penguins being confirmed on the Breakaway Map.

Battlefield 2042 releases October 15 or 22, depending on which version you get, and makes a lot of changes to the formula, such as a new specialist system, larger maps, a freeform weapons system, a revamped Conquest mode with sectors, storms such as tornadoes, map-altering events like rocket launches, and a massive 128 player count. Up next, we are expecting to learn about the not-battle-royale Hazard Zone mode, remastered classic maps, and what the newly branded Ripple Effect studio, formerly DICE LA, is making.

Robert Downey Jr. is set to co-star in a TV adaptation of The Sympathizer for HBO and A24, with Oldboy director Park Chan-wook serving as director.

This news comes by way of Deadline, which reports that HBO has ordered the A24 drama series adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer, written by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Downey Jr. will co-star alongside the show’s lead that has yet to be found.

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The Sympathizer is a spy thriller novel with a dash of satire about a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy in the final days of the Vietnam War. Exiled to the United States, the spy’s story represents a “blistering exploration of identity and America,” according to the novel’s description. It’s also described as a “gripping spy novel and powerful story of love and friendship.”

A search is underway for someone to play the spy in question as well as the rest of the cast, which will be predominantly Vietnamese, according to Deadline.

Oldboy director, Park Chan-wook, is set to direct the movie and they’ll serve as a co-showrunner for the series alongside Don McKellar. Downey Jr., Susan Downey, and Amanda Burrell from Team Downey will executive produce the show with McKellar and Chan-wook alongside Kim Ly and Niv Fichman from Rhombus Media.

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The Sympathizer will be one of the first roles for Downey Jr. following his ten-year run as Iron Man in the MCU — don’t forget about last year’s Dolittle, though — and according to Deadline, Downey Jr. was especially interested in this project over several other offers thanks to the “incredible story” and the “opportunity to show his incredible range as an actor.”

According to Deadline’s sources, Downey Jr. will play multiple supporting roles as the series’ main antagonists, “all of whom represent a different arm of the American establishment… including an up-and-coming Orange County congressman, a CIA agent, and a Hollywood film director, amongst others.”

The Sympathizer isn’t the first collaboration between Team Downey and HBO — the two companies teamed up for HBO’s Perry Mason last year. It’s also not the first collaboration between HBO and A24, as the two teamed up for 2019’s Euphoria.

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There’s no word yet on when to expect this adaptation of The Sympathizer, although it could be some time as the production is still casting for its lead and series ensemble.

While waiting for this series to hit HBO, check out our thoughts on Team Downey’s last movie in IGN’s Dolittle review and then check out our thoughts on Downey’s last go as Iron Man in IGN’s Avengers: Endgame review.

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

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.