Valve surprised us all with a handheld console. The $ 399 Steam Deck will arrive in December, with availability expanding to additional regions later.
The hardware looks like an unholy alliance between Sega’s Game Gear and the Nintendo Switch and contains a 7-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 1,280 x 800 and a refresh rate of 60 Hz. There is also no lack of control options, with two thumbsticks, two fairly large square trackpads, an old-school D-pad, four main buttons, triggers, and a quartet of grip buttons.
Valve
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is barely a foot long. Esh. Valve made sure there was enough power inside to seduce PC gamers who already have an extensive Steam library. There is an AMD 2.4-3.5 GHz processor and a 1.0 to 1.6 GHz GPU with eight RDNA 2 processing units. Inside there is 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM. Valve promises a battery life of between two and eight hours on a single charge, depending on how much power you need for your games. Given the power many AAA PC games require, you can probably expect many experiences to be around the lower estimates.
While the Steam Deck may not be as powerful as your gaming PC, Valve uses Proton, a compatibility layer that allows games to run without developers having to work on porting titles – you apparently have access to your full library of games. That price point makes it a little more expensive than the Switch and the same price as the all-digital PS5. However, because of its steam hooks, it’s an entirely different proposition. How Well Do PC Games Play on a 7 Inch Handheld?
– Mat Smith
It’s good hardware for streamers.
Kris Naudus / Engadget
Elgato’s first $ 200 web camera isn’t that unique. It’s a chunky rectangular box that you can easily clip onto a monitor, and it lacks a microphone or something that approaches 4K resolution. It shoots 1080p at 60 fps, which should be enough for streamers that use the camera output as picture-in-picture. Continue reading.
The film contains three quotes that Bourdain never recorded.
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain launches today in US cinemas. Like many documentaries, the film brings together archive footage, including interviews and show outtakes, to tell the story of its subject in its own words. It also includes words Bourdain never spoke to a camera before his 2018 suicide, yet you’ll hear his voice saying it. The film’s director, Morgan Neville, explained to the New Yorker that there were three quotes for Bourdain to tell, and to do this, Neville instead created them with software and AI modeled Bourdain’s voice from existing audio. The system was apparently fed into an AI model with about a dozen hours of audio. Continue reading.
Emojipedia shared a list of character drafts
Emojipedia
Tomorrow is World Emoji Day, and it’s the deadline for new emoji designs. The list includes a melting smiley face (thanks to global warming), a saluting emoji, disco ball, beans, and new index fingers, and there are different skin tone options for existing hand emojis. This is noteworthy because, due to technical limitations, it was one of the few characters that you couldn’t change with a skin tone in previous versions of Unicode. Continue reading.
Think about paperclips, think about Clippy.
Microsoft / The Edge
Twenty years after leaving Microsoft Office, Clippy is back to ruin your day. As part of Microsoft’s update to 1,800 emoji, the one-time assistant replaces the paperclip emoji in Office, Teams and Windows. Microsoft is updating its emoji library to design the characters in 3D and to add animations to around 900 of the symbols. The company plans to roll out the new characters for Windows and Teams sometime during the upcoming holiday season. Continue reading.
And social enterprises need to do more to stop this.
The US surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a warning of the dangers of health misinformation, calling it an “urgent threat” that social media companies and technology platforms need to do more to address. The guide contains a 22-page report on steps individuals, health organizations, researchers and journalists can take to contain the spread of misinformation. Continue reading.
But wait, there’s more …
Candace Parker is the first female cover athlete for NBA 2K
‘Resident Evil Re: Verse’ is postponed at the last minute until 2022
Elgatos Stream Deck MK.2 supports seven cute faceplates
Millionaire sends his son into space
Can Richard Branson really call himself an astronaut after Sunday’s Virgin Galactic flight?
Aston Martin’s Valhalla hybrid supercar points to its EV future
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team independently of our parent company. Some of our stories contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.