Polysics
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I’m sorry man but you are just plain wrong on this front. Try any games that are on Switch and compare them to whatever settings you need to get 30+ fps on a Steam Deck. A couple that come to mind would be The Witcher 3, and The Outer Worlds. The Switch versions of those games are absolutely abysmal to play, but on the Deck you can absolutely play both of them all the way through just fine. No one on the planet should expect a Steam Deck to hold up to a proper gaming rig or even a PS5 Pro, but to say it’s worse than a Switch is just ignorance or a flat out lie.
They are, in almost every way, taking the console model approach. Updates when there is a significant generational leap and not just yearly updates because AMD made a slightly faster APU (though they did the switch to switch OLED thing but no one complained about that because they kept the LCD models for sale and the OLED really is nicer), selling at a loss (and making up for it in game sales) and of course, the ease of use that a console interface offers over a traditional PC interface.
Then they step it up beyond that by making it as open as possible (software/emulation, games from any source, it’s really a PC) and making the hardware repairable (making parts available and easy to fix in the first place,) and of course, cheap games and practically every game you’d ever want.
What the other handheld PC companies are lacking is (with some exceptions) repairability, that console experience, and price. Us nerds that can do whatever with technology will do it, so a legion or an ally or a gpd will sell just fine to that demographic, especially for the frame rate chasers. But for most of the rest of people, they would just get a switch or a PS5 or Xbox because it’s just plug in and game, and at least in the case of a Switch or Xbox S, the cost of entry is way lower than a PC, be it a gaming desktop/laptop, or even many of the handheld PC competitors. Yes you can build comparable cheap PCs to an Xbox or PS5, but that means building a PC, and most people don’t want to do that (I’m not talking to you, I know you have a sweet rig.) Yes I know games on PC are usually cheaper especially Steam sales or key seller/bundle sites, but console gamers often don’t consider that, and initial cost of entry is very important to non-enthusiast type people in any given hobby.
There’s a reason why Nintendo consoles sell so well despite being behind the competition in raw horsepower. It’s the console model (and in their case aggressive exclusivity of their famous IPs)
The things keeping Sony and Microsoft in the competition are basically the console ease of use, and their all you can eat subscriptions. Even they both realized that they can get more sales putting their games on PC, but that still means forking over MSRP for a single game, so those ps+ and gamepass subs are keeping them afloat at this point.
I’m a huge tech nerd and have been deep in related industries for over 20 years. I know how to do whatever I want with any pc hardware or software, I own a steam deck, and a rog ally, a proper beefy gaming desktop, a gaming laptop, a Switch, and a PS4. Despite all that, in the past 2 years, easily 90% of my gaming has been on the Steam Deck. It does everything I need it to and more, and it does it anywhere, anyhow. If I want to tweak and tinker with it I can, but more importantly, I can just PLAY GAMES with almost no friction. At home, on a break at work, at the airport waiting for my flight, cozy in bed, wherever, whenever, and fast, and easy.
The Steam Deck is the swiss army knife game device that childhood me always dreamed of, and now it exists. That is why it’s outselling it’s competition, and genuinely making PC gaming a viable thing for the masses. No it won’t beat Nintendo anytime soon, but it’s gaining steam on them and other consoles faster than any other attempt ever has before, and it will only get better.
It’s actually both horror and porn.
You can download a demo version on itch.io it’s actually fun and you don’t necessarily have to play the parts with boobies.
They absolutely took the console business model on the Steam Deck. Just like the other big guys Sony, Nin, Micro. Sell the hardware at a loss with the promise that the customer will buy the associated products, in this case, the games from the steam store. The bigger and better difference of course being that you can do whatever with the steam Deck. But Valve knows that the majority will still get their games from Steam because it’s just easier that way.
It’s the old razor blade model. Sell the handle cheap because you know people will buy the razors for it, and they most likely buy your brand of razors since you bought their brand of handle.
Printer companies (at least home consumer ones) do it too but are slimy about it. Get a printer for $50 then buy ink for it that often costs twice as much.
I’ll take a wonderful experience over a repetitive “make rank number go up” game any day of the week.
Don’t get me wrong, I played all the online multiplayer stuff, many MMOs, all the FPS games, RTS, you name it. But even in those universes I preferred something like Left 4 Dead over something like Counter Strike. At least with a co-op game like L4D the gameplay was more interesting and felt more immersive. CS, Overwatch, even good old Quake in multiplayer mode just felt so repetitive that I got tired of them after 15 minutes of “get flag, kill enemy, twitch around the map like a hyena on meth”
An old single player rpg with a great story was always going to capture my interest more than those online games. An MMORPG is more like an MMO and less like an RPG. And for games with less of a story to tell, a great platformer or adventure game where there was actual progression and new mechanics/challenges to discover level by level, was just more engaging than running Dust 2 a hundred times a night.
Now a days with games like Witcher 3, BG3, Cyberpunk, Hades, and the like, I just can’t bring myself to plug into those perpetually repetitive online experiences. Especially when if I do want to do some multiplayer, a game like BG3 has a wonderful implementation of it. Something like that is the kind of multiplayer I can get down with.
And also, plenty of others have said it already but I’m old and I got shit to do man. I can’t be gaming on someone else’s clock. Steam Deck has really helped get me back into gaming through. That thing has been a godsend. Knock out a chapter in Justice before I go to bed, it’s like reading a bit of a good book before bedtime. Love it.
Justice is great by the way if you like the Yakuza series but want something a little less goofy. Same studio.
Edit: I am dumb, of course the source code is out there. I have visited this repository a thousand times but my monkey brain can’t remember what I ate for breakfast.
https://github.com/yuzu-emu/yuzu
Everyone download the hell out of it and never let this die.
~ ~ ~
If it isn’t already open source, Yuzu team needs to get that shiz open source post-haste. Let’s get that code absolutely everywhere.
When that popular manga app Tachiyomi got legal bonked, the bajillion forks of it kept some semblance of the original going.
I know there’s money to be made and something like an emulator is considerably more complex than a book reading app/scraper, but it would at least give the project a chance of not dying forever.
100% agree