Steam Deck Evolved: 1 Year Later

The best and the Awe­some Steam 🚂 Deck 🎉❤

I final­ly picked up my Steam Deck this past week and I absolute­ly love it! I am a long time gamer (ear­ly 80s pre-NES) and games on PC for some­time dur­ing adulthood.I stopped PC gam­ing about 10 years ago and com­ing back to hav­ing access to my Steam library, not to men­tion Lin­ux, has rekin­dled my enthu­si­asm for PC gam­ing. Well done Valve!

Only If they make ship­ping avail­able for more coun­tries I could buy one.

this will be good for 5 years as long as they keep that price

I got myself and my 12 year old daugh­ter (at the time) a reser­va­tion. In the last 6 months she’s made it her own and it’s replaced her OLED switch com­plete­ly. She was excit­ed to show me how to change the pic­tures of her games with plu­g­ins and what not and how she can talk to her friends in game now. To be suc­cinct, if my 13 year old daugh­ter can fig­ure it out on her own, so can you 😂

You are com­plain­ing about set­ting up Gog or Epic Store on the deck being not that easy AND THEN com­par­ing it with the Switch for ease of use? You’d prob­a­bly com­pare it rather with “jail break­ing” the switch.…

Steam Deck is the best price to per­for­mance ratio in the hand­held space. I don’t care if you show me the Aya­neo 2 or GPD Win 4. They might be tech­ni­cal­ly slight­ly bet­ter but they’re also 2–3x more expen­sive. And who knows the lev­el of soft­ware and cus­tomer sup­port you’ll get from them? Valve has an estab­lished ecosystem. 

With all that said, I still haven’t got­ten one. I may still wait for a much small­er one or if Valve knocks anoth­er $100 off from it. I was play­ing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for hours yes­ter­day and it got me think­ing 💭: Maybe the 8th gen is the GOAT for gam­ing? For years, I kept say­ing Dou­ble Dash is the GOAT Mario Kart game. I’m so wrong. We have it bet­ter now.

Not to diss my beloved 6th gen but there were still graph­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions from pop-in and poor draw dis­tance. I felt PS4 is when graph­ics got per­fect­ed. Was­n’t real­ly a fan of the 7th gen but the 8th gen pol­ished what the 5th through 7th gen tried doing with 3D graphics.

Since I have a mod­ded PSP, mod­ded PS Vita, Switch Lite, and mul­ti­ple Android smart­phones with emu­la­tors on them, I don’t feel the need to keep play­ing old games from 20–30+ years ago. If I got a Steam Deck, it would be most­ly to play games released with­in the last 8 years. 

I want NEW gam­ing expe­ri­ences. Leave the past behind. Not play that favorite PSP game for the 100th time. I know nos­tal­gia is a pow­er­ful drug espe­cial­ly in gam­ing, but we need to try out NEW expe­ri­ences and Steam Deck offers this with the best price point.

I believe the PS Vita is the best PlaySta­tion ever made. I believe the Switch is the best Nin­ten­do prod­uct ever made. They’re con­sid­ered part of the 8th gen even though their graph­ics are clos­er to 6th to 7th. I would take those two hand­helds over any home con­sole I’ve owned start­ing from NES lead­ing up to PS4. I pre­fer them portable. I believe Steam Deck will sur­pass Vita and Switch thanks to its raw power.

Valve made the PS Vita 2 that Sony nev­er gave us. It made us the Switch 2 at least 2 years before the real Switch 2 comes out. Would­n’t it be cool if Sega released anoth­er portable for us? Get back in the hard­ware busi­ness. Be even cool­er if they released a smart­phone. Same with Nin­ten­do. And Sony should release an Xpe­ria Play 2.

I say own them all. Get the best of all worlds. Nin­ten­do, Sega, and Sony all raised me, so I will always sup­port their prod­ucts even though each of them can piss off their cus­tomers. But you real­ly can’t go wrong own­ing a mod­ded Vita, Switch, Android smart­phone, and a Steam Deck. You have basi­cal­ly every gen­er­a­tion of gam­ing cov­ered includ­ing the cur­rent 9th gen that PS5 is liv­ing in and you can play all 50 years of gam­ing on-the-go. No need to be teth­ered to a TV set. 

I hear Final Fan­ta­sy VII: Rebirth is a PS5 exclu­sive. A PS4 own­er like me won’t get it. But I got a feel­ing it will even­tu­al­ly be released for the Steam library. There ya go. Steam Deck is the plat­form of choice for gam­ing on-the-go for the fore­see­able future. We know Nin­ten­do can be stingy with pow­er­ful hard­ware or offer­ing their first-par­ty games at more afford­able prices. 

The Switch was real­ly the first pow­er­ful hand­held (or hybrid) that Nin­ten­do had ever cre­at­ed. I always felt from Game Boy all the way to 3DS, they nev­er gave us the best hard­ware. The 3DS was­n’t all that more pow­er­ful than the PSP! The graph­ics are just beau­ti­ful on the Switch even if its Tegra chip is 8‑years-old. It’s a portable Wii U and the Wii U was slight­ly more pow­er­ful than the 360 and PS3. 

This blows my mind that I can get PS3-lev­el graph­ics on-the-go with­out over­heat­ing. For some­one who grew up on the NES, Genesis/SNES, and PS1 but skipped the 7th gen except for the Wii, it real­ly does amaze me with the tech we have now in our hand­helds and smart­phones. I think some­times we take it for grant­ed or are too spoiled by it all.

Thank you, Valve. Thank you, Gabe. You made the great­est gam­ing device ever cre­at­ed and at such an afford­able price. Cur­rent­ly $359.99 as I type this as it has a 10% dis­count. Own a pret­ty pow­er­ful Android smart­phone with Snap­drag­on 870 or high­er, a mod­ded Vita, a Switch, and Steam Deck. You will have every gen­er­a­tion of gam­ing cov­ered. Hon­est­ly, you only need the Steam Deck. Android smart­phones reach Wii emu­la­tion at best.

The 8th gen­er­a­tion of gam­ing is the GOAT. Not the 6th or 4th. The graph­ics and the awe­some indies are what made the 8th gen the GOAT. 

PS4
Switch
3DS
Vita

Sor­ry, not an Xbox fan. I see no dif­fer­ences from it com­pared to a PC library. While Steam Deck is the GOAT gam­ing device. Bet­ter than any hand­held or home con­sole I’ve owned from the past 35 years.

You should play DEMON’S TILT on it!

My steam deck arrived yes­ter­day and I’ve had a blast try­ing out var­i­ous games on it.

I love my steam deck mat­ter of fact its the rea­son I recent­ly bought a gam­ing pc asus tuf intel i7 with RTX 3070 so i can play my steam library games on either one and since my lap­top is win­dow base it means i can pur­chase games that aren’t cur­rent­ly deck sup­port­ed and play it on the gam­ing lap­top and if down the road it gets deck sup­port then boom I’m good to go