The Steam Deck - a Switch competitor coming in december 2021

[Daymanmb]

I already have a desktop PC, don't need another one.

I actually dont know why youd buy a steam deck if it wasnt for the portability... I guess if you have a potato computer and cant upgrade parts because of cost? The switch I understand, you dont have an option for it to be non-portable.

[Fencers]

I actually dont know why youd buy a steam deck if it wasnt for the portability... I guess if you have a potato computer and cant upgrade parts because of cost? The switch I understand, you dont have an option for it to be non-portable.

Or moving/having a PC setup near a television is inconvenient or not feasible in the space.

I really couldn't put a full-on PC or HTPC in either my living room or den. Impossible in the master bedroom.

[Toybox]

Some thoughts as an owner after a few days:

The WiFi issue needs to be addressed urgently, as it drops way too frequently. It's a known software issue, so should be easily fixed.
The UI often feels sluggish in a way similar to an old phone/family PC running a modern Windows install.
The screen resolution is perfect, though the colours are good at best.
The speakers are great, but the fan noise gets renders anything sub 30% inaudible, & anything below 60% unpleasant to listen to.
The fan kicks in even with incredibly low powered games such as visual novels & old SNES-era titles, & at its quietest, it's still loud enough to cover up the audio.

On a brighter note, the in-game performance is remarkable. 30-45fps in Elden Ring with Medium textures at native resolution without any tweaking? Sweet. The unit feels really good in the hands, though the controller will take some getting used to, as my thumb seems to be a lot more vertical on the Deck than the 45 degree angle it typically sits at when using an Xbox Series controller. The included case is also top notch, so no need to worry there.

Pretty much every issue I have can be addressed with software updates which Valve are currently throwing out constantly. Everything seems to work as you'd expect once in-game, but if you're still disappointed you didn't manage to get one early on, don't worry, you're absolutely going to have a much better experience than the launch folks are.

[Unholyground]

Bungie blocked destiny 2 from working on the steam deck. That was a shitty move.

[Fencers]

I got pushed to Q3!

You got time to hand deliver decks, Gabe? While I sit here in the Q3 purgatory! *shake fist*

[Tech614]

Bungie blocked destiny 2 from working on the steam deck. That was a shitty move.

Sounds like Bungie isn't confidant in the security of proton so sounds like a valve problem to work with them on the compatibility and ease their concerns. They're gonna have problems with this in a bunch of multiplayer games if they just try auto adding support on their own instead of working with the devs on it. No dev wants a potential giant ass security flaw in their online game just cause valve checked a box to make your game run on proton when it was just coded to run on windows.

[Lucetia]

Sounds like Bungie isn't confidant in the security of proton so sounds like a valve problem to work with them on the compatibility and ease their concerns. They're gonna have problems with this in a bunch of multiplayer games if they just try auto adding support on their own instead of working with the devs on it. No dev wants a potential giant ass security flaw in their online game just cause valve checked a box to make your game run on proton when it was just coded to run on windows.

From what has been mentioned Valve has fixed that on Proton awhile back and it's up to the devs to enable it. Bungie, based on interviews, just doesn't care and don't want people playing it on Linux at all and only want people to play on Window installs. From what I've seen in the past they are very anti-Linux.

[Vash The Stampede]

I don't get why people are upset about Nintendo taking down Switch emulation videos on the Steam Deck. Of course they don't want people to emulate games from their current console on a competitor's product.

If Nintendo was smart they'd port their games to PC, and maybe even bring it to Steam. Nintendo emulation is such a big deal that the community for these emulators are huge. Honestly you don't need videos to do Switch emulation on the Deck since the Deck is a PC running Arch Linux. Anyone who knows Linux will know how to get Nintendo emulators working on the Deck. It's not like Valve makes any money from these emulators either. It's time for Nintendo to open their eyes and do what Sony and Microsoft have been doing and that's port their games to PC.

[Tech614]

If Nintendo was smart they'd port their games to PC, and maybe even bring it to Steam. Nintendo emulation is such a big deal that the community for these emulators are huge. Honestly you don't need videos to do Switch emulation on the Deck since the Deck is a PC running Arch Linux. Anyone who knows Linux will know how to get Nintendo emulators working on the Deck. It's not like Valve makes any money from these emulators either. It's time for Nintendo to open their eyes and do what Sony and Microsoft have been doing and that's port their games to PC.

Ah yes that great Sony support of PC model, aka porting a years old game that is done selling their consoles once every 6 months. If Nintendo did that it wouldn't stop people trying to emulate switch, nor are people emulating switch really the target audience of Nintendo to begin with.

[Tech614]

The people emulating switch are most assuredly their target audience. It’s people who want to play Nintendo games. They’re just people who want the games to run well, or with more features.

Ah yes, the people emulating the switch are Nintendo's target audience which is why they remain the console market leader in every market even while it exists. Genius take.

If they where actually depriving their target audience of their games they wouldn't be selling the way they do. Keep the amazing takes coming.

[Video Games]

Considering the lack of ethusiams i see, deck seema pretty doa. Still itching to get mine though

[Tech614]

Considering the lack of ethusiams i see, deck seema pretty doa. Still itching to get mine though

Its too large and clunky to be a good hand held and it's too weak to be a home console/pc replacement. It's probably the most niche enthusiast product on the market tbh.

[Varolyn]

Considering the lack of ethusiams i see, deck seema pretty doa. Still itching to get mine though

This is pretty much what happens whenever another company attempts to challenge a niche that Nintendo has a firm hold of.

I remember when the PSP came out, everyone was raving how it would be the deathblow to Nintendo, since the PSP was much more powerful than the DS and at the time the Gamecube wasn't selling that well. But despite it's power, the PSP sold about as half as many units as the DS did, and the PSVITA ended up being a flop.

Steamdeck essentially is another PSP situation.

[Video Games]

Its too large and clunky to be a good hand held and it's too weak to be a home console/pc replacement. It's probably the most niche enthusiast product on the market tbh.

Prolly yeah. Its still a nice upgrade from my gpd max at least

[Tech614]

Steamdeck essentially is another PSP situation.

Steamdeck wishes it was as good as PSP. If someone told Gabe he could sell 80 million steamdecks he would probably spit out his drink laughing.

[Video Games]

This is pretty much what happens whenever another company attempts to challenge a niche that Nintendo has a firm hold of.

I remember when the PSP came out, everyone was raving how it would be the deathblow to Nintendo, since the PSP was much more powerful than the DS and at the time the Gamecube wasn't selling that well. But despite it's power, the PSP sold about as half as many units as the DS did, and the PSVITA ended up being a flop.

Steamdeck essentially is another PSP situation.

Eh. Psp sold 80 million which is super huge. Most of the hype for a new console is the new exclusives, but obviosuly this doesnt have any. Just games you can already play now

[KevyB]

This is pretty much what happens whenever another company attempts to challenge a niche that Nintendo has a firm hold of.

I remember when the PSP came out, everyone was raving how it would be the deathblow to Nintendo, since the PSP was much more powerful than the DS and at the time the Gamecube wasn't selling that well. But despite it's power, the PSP sold about as half as many units as the DS did, and the PSVITA ended up being a flop.

Steamdeck essentially is another PSP situation.

You have no idea what you're talking about, as someone who owned 7 PSPs until the GO model i am more than well versed in where it suceeded in and where it failed.

First of all the price was always an issue, for one PSP you could get 2 DS's or a DS with a couple games, on top of that the UMD format was plain expensive to buy games on and was a bit clunky when you had a bunch of games with you, compared to the SD card sized DS games.

But while i could go endlessly into the more nuanced reasons as to why the PSP wasn't as commonplace as the DS there are only a couple that really mattered, one of them was the game lineup - the PSP didn't really have that many "fun" games and outside of obscure UMDs one couldnt even get in the west coupled with sony's idiotic attempts at controlling the market (remember lik-sang?) left an otherwise fantastic piece of hardware rather lacking for content. The PSP VITA was a failure because it came out when there was nothing in the least interesting coming out for the PSP lineup anymore, game wise it was dead hence why the VITA was heavily focused on the playstation store integration and trying to get some PS1 games rolling, but by the time the vita came out all of us hardcore PSP fans got disillusioned with the lack of good games and simply didn't care about the handheld scene at that point.

Now the other issue was, the PSP didn't really have that good of a battery life, whereas a DS could easily be used for the whole day, a PSP would go out of charge within 2-3 hours, and depending on how the UMD was spinning even less, this of course was offset by having access to jailbroken firmware and just being able to dump your games to memory cards (ah yes, the proprietary mmc format sony used along with the disgusting prices were another issue that limited the accessibility of a PSP compared to the cheap costs involved in and around the DS), but it still wasn't that good without an external battery pack/case.

As such nobody was "raving" anything about the PSP being a deathblow to nintendo except maybe shit-tier journalists and other fake gamers, everyone who actually cared was aware just fine that they served 2 completely different types of gamers, and nintendo was far ahead in the casual content market which was much more accessible to people who never gamed before, whereas the PSP always appeared (and was) a much more involved device.

Now in regards to today, that situation has *absolutely nothing* to do with the deck/switch, simply because the deck is superior to the switch in practically every aspect, you can run *all* the games on it - which completely negates any sort of content gap, its battery life is fantastic and even better if you care to tweak your settings right AND (most of all) the cheapest deck costs barely more than a switch, a far cry from the near double price of the PSP-DS. And lets not forget about the crazy repairability and ease of access to replacement parts that the deck offers - another factor which will make buying a deck a better peace of mind purchase.

But to shorten this all out, no, nintendo has never had to contend with something like the deck - which can do everything the switch can *and* better while also having a far, far longer life cycle due to the fact that at the end of the day its a pc that's not closed down and nonsense like an e-store getting shuttered will not affect its functionality in any way, it is truly a PC gamers handheld - a market niche that has NOT been filled until now.

For gods sake man, you can literally play switch games on the deck, this was never a thing for the psp, and it would absolutely have made a huge difference.

TLDR; dumb design decisions, arrogant attempts at controlling the market, and a content drought throughout the PSPs lifespan are the primary reasons it did worse, and none of those things were "unfixable", Sony was just too inexperienced and still too arrogant to not screw it up.

[Vash The Stampede]

Ah yes that great Sony support of PC model, aka porting a years old game that is done selling their consoles once every 6 months. If Nintendo did that it wouldn't stop people trying to emulate switch, nor are people emulating switch really the target audience of Nintendo to begin with.

Who said anything about old games? If Nintendo wants to stop emulation then they need to release current games as well.

Ah yes, the people emulating the switch are Nintendo's target audience which is why they remain the console market leader in every market even while it exists. Genius take.

If they where actually depriving their target audience of their games they wouldn't be selling the way they do. Keep the amazing takes coming.

Nintendo hasn't been a console market leader since the Wii and Nintendo DS. I'm not saying the Switch is doing bad in sales but you'd be ignoring the Playstation market share sales since the PS2 era.

Considering the lack of ethusiams i see, deck seema pretty doa. Still itching to get mine though

How do you figure this since the Deck has been sold out and it's $1,500 on Ebay? They have a reservation for ordering one for October 2022. They literally can't make enough to supply demand though I'm not sure if that's a supply chain issue or just demand is too high, or both.

This is pretty much what happens whenever another company attempts to challenge a niche that Nintendo has a firm hold of.

A niche that nobody is competing against them in because the mobile phone and tablet market has pretty much dwarfed them. If Sony wanted to compete they'd make a tablet not another PSP.

I remember when the PSP came out, everyone was raving how it would be the deathblow to Nintendo, since the PSP was much more powerful than the DS and at the time the Gamecube wasn't selling that well. But despite it's power, the PSP sold about as half as many units as the DS did, and the PSVITA ended up being a flop.

PSP failed because no original games for it plus it used a mini disk system. As a PSP owner I just put my games on a SD card and never used the disk ever again. The Vita failed because cost and that Sony has proprietary SD cards which costed a fortune, plus again no good original games for it.

Steamdeck essentially is another PSP situation.

Steamdeck is a PC that allows gamers to play their favorite PC games on the go. Unlike the PSP/Vita and Nintendo portables, you have a large library of games ready to go the moment you buy the hardware. Plus, you don't have to buy the same games again for another $60 like on the Switch. Also, you don't have to pay a monthly fee to access older games or just play games online. You also don't need a phone to talk to people through a game. You can even play Switch games unofficially on the Deck. You can literally buy a Steam Deck and continue to use it for years even if the hardware were to flop, because it is just a PC running Arch Linux.

[Video Games]

Who said anything about old games? If Nintendo wants to stop emulation then they need to release current games as well.

Nintendo hasn't been a console market leader since the Wii and Nintendo DS. I'm not saying the Switch is doing bad in sales but you'd be ignoring the Playstation market share sales since the PS2 era.

How do you figure this since the Deck has been sold out and it's $1,500 on Ebay? They have a reservation for ordering one for October 2022. They literally can't make enough to supply demand though I'm not sure if that's a supply chain issue or just demand is too high, or both.


A niche that nobody is competing against them in because the mobile phone and tablet market has pretty much dwarfed them. If Sony wanted to compete they'd make a tablet not another PSP.

PSP failed because no original games for it plus it used a mini disk system. As a PSP owner I just put my games on a SD card and never used the disk ever again. The Vita failed because cost and that Sony has proprietary SD cards which costed a fortune, plus again no good original games for it.

Steamdeck is a PC that allows gamers to play their favorite PC games on the go. Unlike the PSP/Vita and Nintendo portables, you have a large library of games ready to go the moment you buy the hardware. Plus, you don't have to buy the same games again for another $60 like on the Switch. Also, you don't have to pay a monthly fee to access older games or just play games online. You also don't need a phone to talk to people through a game. You can even play Switch games unofficially on the Deck. You can literally buy a Steam Deck and continue to use it for years even if the hardware were to flop, because it is just a PC running Arch Linux.

Because nobody is talking about it. Even people in this thread that have one have stopped

[Toybox]

Because nobody is talking about it. Even people in this thread that have one have stopped

Not much reason to talk about my hype for something when I actually have it in my hands Honestly, I used to talk about the Deck hype here, on a discord, & on the subreddit for a bit before it became a cesspit. Now I have it, I just share thoughts with other people who have it in the Discord really.

Honestly though, I still don't love it. The idea is perfect, the hardware is damn near flawless, but the software puts me off.