Valve released a big Steam Deck update this week in the Stable channel that the company says can improve performance for its handheld across the board, and even grant up to 10% more battery life for the original Steam Deck in certain situations.
The manufacturer releases consistent hotfixes and small updates to the Steam Deck beta channel, but they usually fix a couple of things that most players typically won’t notice. However, SteamOS 3.6.19 is huge, with countless updates thanks in part to two big changes: a move to a more recent Arch Linux base, and an update to Mesa 24.1 for the graphics driver.
There are a lot of fixes, so we won’t get into all of them, but all of this will allow for faster OS updates in the future, improve the reliability of microSD, SD cards, and other hardware; implement improved recovery in the event of some crashes, and updated the general responsiveness of the Steam UI. Players who like to use desktop mode will also get an update to KDE Plasma 5.27.10. This wasn’t a huge fix, but it’ll help to enable thumbnail previews for videos in the file launcher and fix crashing issues.
Both the Steam Deck OLED and LCD got this update, although there are small differences. It’s definitely something LCD owners will want to install, though, as one of the big bullet points involves battery life improvements that can potentially lengthen the runtime of your handheld by “up to 10% in light load situations.” They’ll also get overclocking controls if you don’t care about battery life and want to maximize performance. For OLED owners, there are Bluetooth improvements and a fix to a memory leak problem for users on 3.5.
Interestingly, buried in the patch notes is a bullet point that says, “Added support for extra ROG Ally keys.” Does this mean that we’ll be getting SteamOS on other platforms in the future? Maybe on its competitor, the Asus ROG Ally? We’ll have to wait and see.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.