Steam Deck had a strong end to 2023 and a great start for 2024
Steam Deck had a strong end to 2023 and a great start for 2024
While the Steam Deck is now two years old, and has since had the Steam Deck OLED refresh for a few months now, it seems there's just no stopping it.
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I didn't think Valve even expected this level of success, given previous flops. The company is a tad disorganized though, I don't see them taking full advantage of it or offering a real sequel or alternative sizes anytime soon. (My wife requires a lite version, like Switch sized, cause admittedly the deck is a bit of a behemoth and she admittedly has tiny Asian girl hands.)
Yes! If they release a SteamDeck Pocket, that's all anyone in my family is getting for Christmas from me.
Admittedly, at these prices, only one or two people will be getting gifts, but everyone else can gather around and watch them play, I guess.
Probably not a bad idea but will drastically affect ergonomics. SD is the only device I've even seen with joysticks and buttons on the same horizontal plane. Every other device drops the right thumb stick down, which means your hand is hanging off the edge, which quickly becomes uncomfortable.
Diversification is great so long as Valve is not stretching their resources.
Haha, usually a smaller screen means cheaper prices... but obviously they'd need to setup the manufacturing and supply chains and whatnot. Having cracked mine open, I know it really wouldn't be hard with parts they already use (it's already very thin and efficient).
They are just really stubborn about the track pads... and given Valves lack of hierarchical structure, it's hard for someone on their team to nix a feature as anyone involved and veto that decision.
But man, I'd buy so many as gifts--- well, one or two, but good enough!
I love the track pads. They make navigating desktop mode actually bearable. With some qol tweaks to the mapping, I find them downright enjoyable to use.
Without them the deck wouldn’t feel nearly as standalone-capable. Hardly any application in games that don’t need a cursor though, I’ll give you that for sure.
These days I'm mostly playing rhythm games and for those I much prefer the trackpads. Less finger strain, I can tap faster, less wear and tear for the buttons, less noise for my surroundings. And in other games with toolbars, even if they have console support, you usually have to sift through shoulder buttons to switch between your items. With the trackpads you can have a tiny macro pad right underneath your thumbs.
As someone with tiny hands who usually uses an extra small xbox controller, I still find myself loving the deck controls more, simply because there is more stuff to configure to my liking. Yes, I have some trouble reaching the shoulder buttons when my thumbs are on the pads, but so far that's been less of a problem in the games I play.
True about that stand alone nature, and I think they like to argue it let's you play mouse based games (which is true but I still like a mouse, haha).
I think a pocket version would be to at least rework it. How it does that, I'm not sure, though... PS Vita had a weird touch screen back plate, but that kind of sucked. Maybe a touch pad along the sides? Idk. But of joystick, dpad and touch pad, I think the former two win for gaming on average.
I would love that. I have a refurbished Steam Deck and I don't use it that much, actually I'm barely using it. I've been a PC gamer all my life, I have a pretty strong workstation and a gaming laptop.
So for me a perfect pocket Deck would be a smaller and lighter one, less powerful to play indie titles, 2d games or really old games like Fallout 3, New Vegas(40fps). Not to try and run Starfield on it or any new and demanding games. I play those games on my PC. The current Deck is too big and not really carry friendly in my bags.
Still I bought it to support the system, I would love for the whole gaming scene to move to Linux, even if most of my PCs run Windows. Maybe this in turn will also push app developers to also make their apps available on Linux.