Even though it feels like the last Steam Next Fest just wrapped up, Valve has already confirmed the details for the autumn Next Fest. Valve today announced that the Steam Next Fest will be returning in October, serving up another collection of game demos that anyone can download and play. As with previous Next Fest events, this one in October will last for a full week.
Steam Deck reservations opened at the top of the hour, and if you were expecting Steam to buckle under the rush of people looking to reserve one, your expectations were right on the money. Unfortunately, many of those looking to reserve a Steam Deck were greeted by a number of issues, whether they saw the same error messages over and over again, fell victim to a laggy checkout process, or even had their accounts locked for trying to make too many purchases in too short a window of time.
After announcing the Steam Deck yesterday, Valve is wasting little time opening up reservations for the handheld PC gaming device. Reservations are opening later today for the first batch of Steam Decks that will be available in December 2021. Here we'll tell you not only how to reserve one, but also what you should know before reserving.
Yesterday, Valve revealed the Steam Deck, a handheld gaming PC that is meant primarily for playing Steam games on the go. In its announcement, Valve confirmed that the Steam Deck will use a custom AMD Zen 2 CPU and a discrete RDNA 2 GPU, yet announced a starting price point of $399. That's a pretty low price to pay to get into PC gaming, and it seems that Valve is going to feel it, as Gabe Newell has described that pricing as "very aggressive" and "painful."
Today we're looking at the Valve Steam Deck, a gaming machine with built-in game controls that runs SteamOS. This device's industrial design owes to several machines that've found some measure of success in the past - the Sega Game Gear, Razer Project Fiona, and the most obviously similar recent powerhouse of a device like this: Nintendo Switch. But might this be a device that's too idyllic to make it to gamer hands in the real world?
Today Valve revealed the latest in one of the most important gaming events of the year: The International 10 - Dota 2 Championships 2021. This event will take place in the year 2021 in Bucharest, Romania, in the country's largest stadium. In Arena Nationala, the battle for the Aegis of Champions will roll on October 7 through the 10th, followed by a Main Stage play event on October 12, and an October 17 final battle.
When Microsoft revealed Windows 11 yesterday, it also announced that it was redesigning the Microsoft Store. Microsoft very clearly wants the Microsoft Store to be the central hub for apps in Windows 11, as it revealed yesterday that it's letting developers keep all of their revenue from in-app purchases when they use their own "commerce engines." This push to build out the Microsoft Store doesn't stop at individual apps, though, as Microsoft would also like to host other app and game stores.
It's time again for a wide range of games to appear on Steam with prices slightly lower than usual. The Steam Summer Sale is one of several such events hosted by the game store in which gamers have the opportunity to spend massive amounts of cash on games they might never actually end up playing. It's also a decent place to look if you're hoping to find a game you've been waiting to buy for some months, but haven't been able to pull the trigger on because of its original, still-at-launch pricing.
Valve has long been trying to get game developers and publishers to see Linux as a serious and profitable gaming platform and not simply because it loves the open source operating system. It basically wants games to be free from their reliance on Windows and Microsoft's development frameworks and, eventually, to have them available on its own Linux-based Steam OS. Steam OS and Steam Machines have largely failed but Valve seems to still be pushing for Linux support for Windows games and its latest attempt is to get NVIDIA's fancy DLSS technology to work on some of those titles.
Although gaming handhelds have been around since the days of the Nintendo Game Boy, the Nintendo Switch definitely kicked up interest by a notch, revealing a potentially profitable market for portable devices that can run AAA titles, even in medium or low settings only. That, in turn, has created a series of devices and concept designs inspired by the Switch, except running PC hardware and PC games instead. Given that trend, it's not surprising to hear that Valve, best known for the Steam PC gaming platform, is planning to jump into that fray and no later than the end of this year even.
For years now, Steam has been the go-to digital store for PC gamers. To say that Steam is huge in the realm of PC gaming is probably understating the reach that the platform has, even with the Epic Games trying to claw away market share from Valve and grow its own store. After establishing itself as the leader in digital PC sales, it's now possible that we could see Steam games could come to consoles in some fashion later this year.
HTC just revealed the HTC VIVE Pro 2, complete with options for upgrades. This new headset will be sold in at least two packages - one with the whole "full-kit" experience, the other with the headset alone. This should allow those users who already own a VIVE Pro (the first one) to avoid paying maximum cash for the parts they already own - and likely still already have installed at home.