Why I Won't Be Buying The Steam Deck

The rest of my links are in my about page! :D

[eagleearberry]

The fact that valve opened up the steamdeck for everyone to do whatever you want is already enough a reason to support this.

[_IQ.points]

The concept is so good that even the execution not being the best doesn't hinder it by much. It's already great but there is so much potential in a newer version.

[zacksstuff]

I absolutely love my Steam Deck. I just have the base $399 64 gig model, which I supplemented with a 1 TB MicroSD, and I've had no complaints. Spent all day today playing it, mostly Firewatch and GTA V. Battery life has been good if not stellar, I've been seeing around 2.5 hours for demanding stuff and 4+ hours on less demanding games. I've been using the 40hz mode, which is a solid compromise between smoothness and battery life. And as a bonus, I picked up a USB PD battery bank, so if I'm gaming on the couch or somewhere stationary, I can just keep it plugged in and play for hours. All in all, I've found it very worth what I spent on it.

[derekfurst]

Lots of things factually wrong here.

Valve did not make steam machines. Valve made steamOS. People sold computers than ram SteamOS and valve had a link on steam to buy them. Valve took down the link after Microsoft backed off of their shenanigans with the windows store. SteamOS is still around and version 3 is amazing

The steam controller is still supported, they halted production because of a spurious lawsuit by scuff gaming. Valve just won the appeal from that lawsuit last year. I predict a version 2 might be in the cards.

Steam link hardware is still supported and updated. They stopped making them because they migrated to the software version.

No valve hardware is unsupported. All of it still receives updates

[mnusasusplus]

I didn’t regret, wanted to try, so I sold it for 900$ after one week.
For me small display, small font, not such beautiful graphics as I got used to see on my rtx 3080, 30 and even 40 fps for me is not enough, my eyes are getting tired after such low fps, fast battery draining, really 1 hour with game F.I.S.T and 60fps - it is all what you can wait from Steam deck and if you want to play longer than 1 hour - you need powerful powerbank, something 65W from Baseus for extra 70$ and overall for comfort gaming more than 1 hour you have to connect: gamepad, powerbank and maybe monitor, it is not portable gaming with many compromises.

Unstable working of non steam store (logout from epic game if you use Heroic or Lutris launcher after each reboot), for some non steam games you need uplay or origin installer and epic game will not install it, small buttons (comparing to normal gamepad).

After a few evevning attempt to play in something I asked myself "what am I doing? Why I need this?"
When I sold it and play again in F.I.S.T. on my PC I realized how many details I loose on Steam deck and 144 GHz...
Maybe will buy second generation to try again.

[Aethelbeorn]

I love Steam Deck bashing videos. It brings me closer to getting my order email sooner. :)

[blehmeh]

4:50
This already a feature that Valve has implemented on Steam for Linux. Shaders for your games on Linux cache automatically even when you're playing a Windows game on Proton. I can't find a huge amount of information for it online, but I believe this feature is enabled for Windows too.

[MadmanEpic]

I've been using the Deck for about a month now and I think the battery life concerns are pretty dramatically overstated. It's definitely _possible_ to tank it to an hour and a half (much lower isn't possible due to a hard cap on power consumption), but in the vast majority of games you can definitely get at least 3 hours. The battery life you'll get really comes down to your game settings; if you run the thing at full bore for maximum framerate and graphics, it's obviously not going to last long, but it has a lot of options to help you optimize that further. Dark Souls 3 out of the box lasts in the ballpark of an hour and a half because it shoots for high settings at 60fps, but bumping the settings down to medium/low and setting the screen to 45hz from the quick menu gets it to a more comfortable 2.5-3 hours without feeling like much is lost in the process. Something like Cyberpunk that's extremely intensive on every computer is going to have poor battery life no matter what you do, but on the flipside emulation and less intensive games often pass the 6 hour mark. I've never seen it hit the mythical 8 hours they say it can do, but the 2-8 hour play time they say it has really isn't that far off, especially with the stated goal being playing modern AAA games at 30fps.
The way I see it, intensive games getting some graphical or performance cuts for battery life is going to happen on any handheld, and because the Deck is just a PC and is targeted at existing PC gamers, the process of making those compromises is on the user's end. I think that's fairly reasonable, especially since the software gives you a lot of ways to make those cuts easily, and it bugs me when people take the absolute worst case scenario as representative of what using it is actually like.

[Wesmoen]

The battery part is really dependable on what you play. Limiting wattage, refresh rate and GPU clock speed for 2d or older games adds hours for one charge. Default is set to full sucking power for no good reason.

I do play Civ 5 on 40fps, instead of 60fps. Visual novels on 15fps and modern games on low 50fps.

I love to tinker to get most out of it.

Luckily, newer powerbanks are quite good complimentary items for this device. Fast charging with the official charger is unbelievably fast.

You can work around the battery issue, if you like.

[spicynachos]

i think the 1-2 hour play time is only if have the fps uncapped and playing the most demanding games.

[SeQuence]

you can't get your hands on the hardware but want to dip in on the hype, we got it.

[ilyamikhin]

These 2nd gen waiters remind me of people not buying ps5s and waiting for ps5 pro. There is always something next gen down the road, you are never getting the final bersion of a product as things get obsolete all the time.
If you like the product today - then go for it.

For stean disadvanatges - battery life i guess is an issue if you only plan to play AAA on max settings for 3 hrs straight without the opportunity to charge.
And i do get that size is big and if you are looking for smth super portable then yes steam deck aint for you.
The rest I thibk they nailed it.
Mine is arriving next week and cant wait

[shroomer]

I wouldn't really worry about the game compatiblity thing. I've been playing games on Linux ever since I learned about it and the only complaints I had were competitive shooter games which ban you because they are lazy with their anti-hacking software (Apex Legends, Fortnite, etc) and Epic Games being a bit shifty. But otherwise I have a better experience on Linux than I do with Windows.

[ezzahhh]

Love how the reason given is due to wanting to wait until the 2nd release when here in Australia there is still no sign when we will get even the 1st release decks lol

[saladgreens]

I'm not sure if this is what you were saying or not but the game compatibility issue is purely software, not hardware. Meaning if that is your only concern there is no point in waiting as I highly doubt steamdeck2 will run different software. Also meaning that as time goes on more and more games will become available.

Personally I'm wavering on buying it. I put down a 5$ deposit really early on. Still haven't gotten an email, but I did buy a switch, and am working on upgrading my pc.

Back then for me personally, it made a lot of sense as my primary gaming device. Now, I'm not so sure.

[RustingPeace]

The steam controller got discontinued due to a lawsuit

[Plumtopia]

One thing you have to remember with the steam machines is that valve didn't make them. Which was where a lot of the issues came from

[origTacoking]

6:42 Come on man you gotta do a little bit more research than that. battery life depends on what game you're playing And you said it yourself you would love playing retro games on it and that's where you get most of your battery life from

[bluekewne]

I got mine this month and I've been enjoying every minute with it - been playing through my massive backlog of both AAA & indie games that I've acquired over the last couple of decades (Steam sales, free giveaways, etc - in one day I installed the same amount of games I have on my Switch; which I've had for 5 years).

From intensive games like Resident Evil 2 Remake to older games like Wolf Among Us to weird obscure indie games like Super Mega Zero - I absolutely love this thing and can't put it down.

[gustavadolf]

I got the steam deck fairly early and it's amazing. But I think the battery argument is exagerated. Sure the battery life is really low when playing demanding games at the best possible performance, but i usually only do that while charging. On the go I can always limit fps and tdp, enable fsr and lower graphics settings to save power. It won't look as nice but it lets me play Kingdom Come: Deliverance longer.