The Steam, Netflix and Super Mario 64 deck

This week started very slowly when, out of nowhere, Valve gave us some very important hardware news. We’ve also learned that Netflix is ​​trying to break into gaming, auction fever is gripping the retro gaming world, and more games are being postponed until next year.

Valve announces portable Steam Deck

On the same day Nintendo Switch OLED pre-orders opened – probably just a coincidence – Valve announced its own handheld device: the Steam Deck. This mini PC would run any AAA game and can be used just like a traditional PC as well. The Steam Deck runs Arch Linux-based SteamOS 3.0 and has Valve’s Proton Compatibility Layer to run many games made for Windows. It has an integrated 7-inch screen with a 720p screen but will be accompanied by a docking station that allows it to connect to an external screen at resolutions up to 8K. It’s more or less the Switch Pro that the OLED model wasn’t.

Instead of pre-orders, Valve used a system called Reservations, where users could reserve a console for a small fee before its launch in December. This was intended to reduce scalpers’ wholesale purchases, as you could only purchase the console through Steam, you had to have an account that had previously made a purchase on the platform, and could only purchase one Deck per account. The system opened up with a few glitches – and scalpers are already showing up with listings on eBay – but it looks like people were generally able to get a reservation.

Super Mario 64 sold over $ 1.5 million at auction

A sealed copy of Super Mario 64 became the most expensive game of all time when it sold to Heritage Auctions for $ 1.56 million. The game was worth so much mainly because of its near perfect condition – it got a very rare 9.8 Wata score, which is a score given by retro game reviewers Wata Games based on the purity of the game and its packaging. . He surpassed the previous record holder, a sealed copy of THE Legend of Zelda, which was sold in the same auction house shortly before Super Mario 64 for $ 870,000.

There’s a bit of auction fever in the retro gaming world right now, as new copies of older games virtually overlap to set record prices. The copy of Super Mario 64 was just the latest treasure to accumulate in large numbers at Heritage Auctions. The auction house has been dealing with game rarities on a regular basis since the Nintendo PlayStation was sold there last year. It was also the place that sold a sealed copy of super mario bros for $ 660,000 earlier this year.

Netflix would like to join the video game market

A report of Bloomberg this week hinted that Netflix has designs on the cloud gaming world. The streaming service has a new initiative to add cloud games to its platform, and the initiative is led by former EA executive Mike Verdu. Apparently, this new service will be added at no additional cost to subscribers. It’s an intriguing idea, but we still lack details on exactly how it will work.

The gaming market is undoubtedly attractive to Netflix as it seeks new avenues of growth. It’s unclear exactly how the games will fit into the Netflix platform – will they be simple, mobile-friendly games, or AAA console titles that stream on Netflix? The company is allegedly working on a cloud gaming service, but we don’t know what that will look like within the service.

Even more games are delayed

Unfortunately, there is some negative news this week. Still, other games have been delayed, either later this year or until 2022. The worst delays are those with only a vague new release window. First of all, we heard that Ghostwire: Tokyo, one of Bethesda PlayStation’s next two timed exclusives, is being delayed from October 2021 to early 2022. Capcom has also announced that it is delaying the multiplayer title Resident Evil Re: Verse at the last minute from July 2021 to 2022.

At the very end of the week, Ubisoft revealed that it was delaying the two Rainbow Six Extraction and Republic of the Cavaliers, two of his main versions of tentpole for this exercise. In both cases, he said the games need more development time. Extraction is postponed from September 16, 2021 to January 2022. Republic of the Cavaliers is delayed from September 2 to October 28. These are far from the only delays so far this year, but still disappointing.

Games released this week