Steam deck discussion

[iLikeBananas]

On 2/7/2022 at 6:23 PM, Srius1 said:

I never understand how big this market is or what the point of devices like this are. If I’m home, I have a pc. If I’m traveling, I can survive a day or two without gaming. Or use one of the many cloud services. Or just my phone.

 

These portable devices are a blessing on long train rides... or plane flights. Not like we have a lot of those lately, but a 5 hour ride is a lot more enjoyable with my noise canceling WH-1000XM3 and laptop.

[M2704]

On 2/7/2022 at 6:23 PM, Srius1 said:

I never understand how big this market is or what the point of devices like this are. If I’m home, I have a pc. If I’m traveling, I can survive a day or two without gaming. Or use one of the many cloud services. Or just my phone.

I never understand why people think everyone is like them. 
 

It’s a device that’s basically just as convenient as a Switch. I never use my switch when traveling - I do use it when at home, on my couch or bed, when my wife or kids are using the tv or just because. 
 

if the Deck finds even a fráction of the audience the Switch has, it’s a succes. 
 

If it’s not for you, it’s not for you. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an audience. Going by reservations, that audience surely is there. 

[FliP0x]

I am almost certainly not going to get a Steam Deck for myself (I don't need it and would not use it often), but it is definitely a huge addition to the gaming hardware space.

The success of the Switch proves that there is a market for "powerful" (*cough* Switch not so much) handheld devices. One could say that Nintendos own IPs (Pokemon, Zelda, Mario) may have largely impacted sales, and they probably did, but there is still a huge market for handheld devices. 

The Switch mostly brings games specifically made for the Switch to handheld, with some PC/Console ports that made it onto the Switch in recent years, but the Steam Deck supports full PC games natively. No ports, nothing is cut or compressed - the full experience.

 

While, in my opinion, the Switch is mostly for casual or moderate gamers, the Steam Deck targets all spectrums of gamers - from entry level casual to enthusiast. eSports players will obviously avoid the Steam Deck, but the Steam Deck, compared to the Switch, is way more powerful and probably already has a larger game library than the Switch.

 

One more appeal for the Steam Deck is customizability. I just recently did a calculation with possible options one can take when building a Steam Deck.

In my opinion, the best possible route is getting the base model and provide your own SSD and MicroSD, depending on what you want.

However, since 2230 M.2 SSDs are not widely available, I only found a few (and probably) inaccurate listings on Amazon.

 

For example, one could get the base model for 419 €, provide a 256 GB M.2 for about 100 €* and get a cheaper mid-tier variant for 30 € less (and still get additional 64GB eMMC storage).

It's also possible to put in your own 512 GB to match the highest tier variant, although I only found one listing for a 512 GB M.2 2230 with various prices (average 300 €*), so if you were to replicate the highest tier, without the anti glare screen, you'd end up paying more (based on the price I found), but still get additional 64 GB eMMC storage.

 

* based on the listings I could find

 

If you want even more storage, you can add a UHS-II MicroSD as well, which should perform close to eMMC 5.1. I found a Kingston 512GB UHS-II for 138 € on Amazon.

 

I am personally more looking forward to a Steam Deck 2 than becoming an early adopter of the Steam Deck.