Three years later, the Steam Deck has dominated handheld PC gaming
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Now that it has been three years, while I'd like to have one, I feel like I'll just wait until whatever the next version is - even if that means waiting another year or so.
I don't need one, particularly, and I don't want to be caught at the tail end of this hardware.
I was on the fence of asking for one for my birthday late last year for exactly this reason.
What tipped me over was that I took a look at my Steam library and realized I literally have hundreds of indie and AA games that I've never played or have less than 4 hours in that I always meant to go back to.
And that was it, I decided the Steam Deck was going to be my indie gaming experince platform. It has been amazing at doing this, and I've been chewing threw my indie game library like crazy, and have picked up so many more that I'm loving gaming again! I can see myself keeping the current steam deck around and will be used regularly for at least the next 5 years.If you're looking for a portable machine that'll tackle most modern & higher end games, either look at the alternative SteamOS portables or wait for the next Steam Deck (the touch screen, D-Pad, Sticks, and dual touch pad make it the best choice for best I out options for game compatibility).
However, if you want a great machine for indies, AA, older AAA titles, and console EMU, the current hardware is amazing and worth the price
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I wonder how many people, like me, who really use their Steam Deck as a Pirate Deck.
If I see a game I like on Steam Store I simply go to STEAMRlP and grab it pre-installed. Then I run it through Wine/Proton. Installing dependencies is very easy, thanks to Wine-/Protontricks.
Now, some games I do buy afterwards. KCD2 is one example. The Last Flame another. When I know that I enjoy it, I know what I get for my money, then I can make the decision to buy it.
Well, while probably not universally true, but I'm guessing that if you can afford to buy a steam deck, you can probably afford to buy games
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Handheld PCs have been on the market for 20 years. Comparable to steam deck (x86_64) at least since 2016 GPD Win
Yes but they were not made for gaming.
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I wonder how many people, like me, who really use their Steam Deck as a Pirate Deck.
If I see a game I like on Steam Store I simply go to STEAMRlP and grab it pre-installed. Then I run it through Wine/Proton. Installing dependencies is very easy, thanks to Wine-/Protontricks.
Now, some games I do buy afterwards. KCD2 is one example. The Last Flame another. When I know that I enjoy it, I know what I get for my money, then I can make the decision to buy it.
Is there a guide you'd recommend following?
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There’s a reason for that, and it’s more than the usual Valve fanboyism. The Deck is objectively a better user experience than the alternatives, Steam Input is a masterpiece, Linux runs games better than Windows now (thanks, Gabe), and the community around it is friendly and super helpful to everyone.
Even a device with better specs will have trouble surpassing the Deck if they can’t cover these areas as well.
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Is there a guide you'd recommend following?
I'll reply tomorrow with a guide. Gotta create a Lemmy community for it and then I'll make a post-guide on how to!
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That's just, like, your opinion, man.
I think it's perfectly sized. No need for change. And the OLED model is noticeably more lightweight than the original LCD model, so the newer one isn't too heavy.
Interesting detail, I didn't know that about the oled model
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I'm with you, I have large hands but I'm a serious gamer. An hour in and I'm already feeling it's weight and feeling the fatigue. It's a very impressive device, but it doesn't suit me and my needs at all.
Bought an r36s and it's glorious. Playing all the classic SNES and PSX games I didn't play back in the day. Can grind in an RPG for hours one handed and it fits in my pocket. Bonus is that it's so cheap if it breaks or gets lost it's no big deal.
Hell yeah, that's what's up! I'd definitely like to have another console to run emulators on, that isn't the deck. Lol.
Odin 2 still has my attention.
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Is there a guide you'd recommend following?
I am currently editing the guide, will finish tomorrow. but you might have luck following it already. Check out
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38810596 -
If you mean the switch, then it has been thoroughly squashed. If you mean phones, well I think we can agree they are not really competing for the same customers, and if you think they do, most people are buying phones for reasons other than gaming. So you'd need a way to section the market for "gaming phones" (yes, that's a thing).
Hahaha You are delusional. Switch has sold over 150million units.
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The whole handheld gaming market is pretty small. There's the Switch which outsold the last couple gens of Xboxes and PlayStations. Good luck beating that. Besides that you have smartphones which just about everyone owns and only a handful of brands being especially popular. Then you have dedicated Android having handhelds and handheld emulation machines which are extremely niche.
So either you're looking at extremely popular and widely owned handheld devices with extensive histories and customer loyalty or extremely niche devices. Not really a great comparison.
the whole handheld gaming market is pretty small
Wat!
Sourced from wikipedia: switch has sold over 150 million units.
150 million
small
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Hahaha You are delusional. Switch has sold over 150million units.
Yes, it squashes the steam deck, that's what I said.
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the whole handheld gaming market is pretty small
Wat!
Sourced from wikipedia: switch has sold over 150 million units.
150 million
small
Small as in not a lot of competitors...
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Small as in not a lot of competitors...
Its no different to the console market. Essentially a duopoly
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Its no different to the console market. Essentially a duopoly
Ok and? What's your point?
I'm just saying there's not much competition in the handheld space. Either you have massively popular products with an extensive history or extremely niche devices. The handheld PC market is still fairly nascent and Steam Deck dominating it and popularizing it so much (even if it's not that much compared to, say, the Switch) is still significant.
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It's not really ever an issue to rebind keys manually, it's just time consuming. The point of auto-rebind would be time saving for nonstandard keyboard users.
I use BÉPO AFNOR and some games don't like É instead of W, autorebind only works for me in games that actually have modern keyboard management and use key codes and/or understand Unicode, dead keys, etc. I'm better off setting the keyboard to US QWERTY
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