Not only is this upcoming Steam Machines release the first to support living room gaming PCs, it also comes with long-awaited features for Valve’s handheld. And More support than ever for handhelds from other companies – including Microsoft and Asus’ Xbox Ally series, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, OneXPlayer X1, and additional support for MSI, GPD, Anbernic, OrangePi, and Zotac.
The one that excites me most: Valve is adding actual hibernation and “memory power down” modes to Steam Decks — though just the LCD models to start — which will help extend battery life when you press the power button or leave them inactive. Some Windows machines currently sleep longer than Steam Deck, as they self-hibernate to save power, whereas Steam Deck has an instant sleep mode.
Plus, Valve has finally added a setting to its Gaming Mode to let you use your Bluetooth headset microphone – something I’ve been asking for from the beginning. (Valve added it to Linux desktop mode last year.) And the Steam Deck LCD is finally re-enabling Bluetooth wake, so you can turn on your TV-connected deck with a wireless controller from your couch.
comes with updates all types The improvements for Linux desktop mode look like they’ll also come in handy on a Steam Machine plugged into a TV or monitor, including desktop HDR, VRR display support, per-display scaling, “improved windowing behavior for games running in Proton,” and an upgrade to KDE Plasma 6.4.3, among other things.
And for Steam Machines or Steam handhelds plugged into a home entertainment system, they can now detect how many audio channels you have over HDMI to enable surround sound. (I believe surround sound was already a thing, so maybe it’s just a different and better automated implementation.)
There is also a new Arch system base and an updated graphics driver.
Perhaps most surprising is that the “non-Deck” section of the changelog is very large. Valve says that long pressing your power button to shut down, restart, or switch to desktop mode should work “on a wide variety of devices.” You should now be able to change the power mode of your processor on Xbox Ally, and Night Mode and screen color settings should work normally on the AMD Z2 Extreme handheld.
It also has “significantly improved video memory management with discrete GPU platforms”, you can limit the battery charge in any Lenovo Legion Go handheld (in desktop mode), and it should fix “washed out colors for Zotac and OnePlus handhelds with OLED”.
There’s a lot in this update, and it’s possible I’ve missed a feature you care about, so check out the entire changelog here and below.
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