In an interview with IGN, Valve's Lawrence Yang and Erik Peterson opened up about the future of the Steam Deck, the still-to-be-released dock, and much more.
The interview is well worth a read, but here are some of the most interesting tidbits:
The Steam Deck Dock
The official Steam Deck dock is still delayed but was recently spotted at the Tokyo Game Show. As Lawrence Yang clarifies, the dock is still facing supply chain issues, which are slowly being resolved.
Valve and Japan
This interview took place during Tokyo Game Show, as such, there were several questions about Valve and Japan.
As Valve clarified, Japan is an important market for Steam and the Steam Deck (and PC gaming in general, as it's considered one of the fastest-growing PC gaming countries right now).
This has been obvious from the amount of games from Japanese developers that regularly land in the Top 10 games for Steam Deck. To quote Peterson:
"Honestly, the reaction from Japanese publishers and developers has been immensely, immensely positive. They are so excited about it, and we've been hearing that from them from the beginning because we were sending them units."
Windows support on the Deck, and SteamOS for other devices
Valve also reiterated they were still working on an official SteamOS installer for different devices.
This would bring the Linux-based operating system to many more devices. That way, you could install SteamOS on your Gaming PC at home. The official installer will also bring dual-boot support for Windows.
The "Verified for Steam Deck" program needs work
Lawrence Yang clarified why some games work on Steam Deck but don't get the official "verified" tag. He explains:
"For the former, for the unsupported case, we have a very stringent bar for what we designate as an unsupported title. If a title plays and a cutscene is a black screen, we call it unsupported even if gameplay and everything else is fine [...] As a customer, I wouldn't want to buy a game and have it open and there's a black screen with audio. I'm like, "Why did I waste my money on this?" That's why we're extra stringent with calling games unsupported, but we've definitely heard the feedback of unsupported games working, and that's why we are continuing to try to iterate and make things clearer for customers so they know what to expect."
But it seems that more and more developers want to get the "verified"-badge, so they started collaborating with Valve to optimize their games for the Steam Deck.
There are many smaller details in the full interview, so we highly suggest you give it a read:
