From: Dylar at 2022-08-27 05:00:27
maybe i should get one
You can. Seriously, new Decks are created all the time, and there are no minimum requirements for reserving. Even so, only a few people have received their reservation. If you seriously want to get a Steam Deck, you’ll need to click this link. Reserving on that site essentially guarantees that you’ll get a Steam Deck.
From: Mister Taxi at 2022-08-28 01:34:29
did you consider any of those handheld pcs that are kind of the same form factor as the steam deck
I did, briefly. One of the things that sort of put me off on most of those handhelds is that they’re targeting Windows, they’re not well integrated with Steam, and their inputs left a lot to be desired.
The Linux aspect of the Steam Deck was important to me because I’d love to finally be able to get rid of Windows on my gaming rig without having to keep a dual boot partition or KVM passthrough setup to play some games. By having the Steam Deck as a first class user of Steam it may incentivize some gamedevs to actually spend the time getting their games working with Proton because it’s a market they want to sell into. It also felt like a way to reward Valve for investing in getting games running on Linux. I know that their motivation in doing so was to get games running in more places so they sell more games, but I still appreciate that they did it. We’re at a point, paradoxically, where the Linux gaming handheld seems like it’s less fiddly than most of the Windows handhelds I’ve seen, if for no other reason that the Linux handheld has all of its driver updates and software updates rolled into a single download - they can be tested and validated together, as opposed to trying to chase, say, GPU driver updates on a handheld.
The integration with Steam was important as well. I was looking at one of the Ayaneo devices and it seemed like it didn’t have very good integration with either Big Picture mode or the Holo interface that the Steam Deck ran, but I will admit that I have only looked into that superficially. The level of polish and integration made actually using the Deck feel less like using a handheld computer and more like using a dedicated gaming machine, and I appreciate that in something that I’m going to be using during downtime away from my job. Further, having an official Steam handheld also gives developers a stable target to chase, much like with consoles. It’s a known quantity and it helps other PC handheld buyers because they can feel confident a given game will run well on their device if their device meets or exceeds the Steam Deck’s specifications and if the game runs well on the Steam Deck.
The input situation is a place where I think I’m atypical. I loved the Steam controller, but there were three places where I felt it fell flat - build quality (it felt way too plastic-y), lack of a left side D-pad (the touchpad was not the same even if you set it to the mode where you had to press it), and the lack of a right side thumbstick (forcing people to use the touchpad which felt slightly uncomfortable in my hands). There were a lot of things that it did well despite those issues - the back paddles were decent and the touchpad-turning-on-gyro-when touched support were both game changers for me. It feels like the controls on the Steam Deck are what the controls on the Steam controller should have been - the only two places were it didn’t deliver here are the haptics (the Steam controller haptics were so good that it could PWM the motors to play songs and used this feature to play a little chime when you started the controller) and the triggers that didn’t have soft pull/full pull. The addition of the d-pad, right thumbstick, smaller square touchpads, and additional back button make the input situation amazing, and the added bonus of the touchsticks being touch sensitive (the Deck can tell when you have a thumb resting on them) are great because if you don’t feel like using the touchpad you can use “right stick being touched” as a trigger for the gyro for gyro aiming.
I probably could have bought a Windows handheld and been happy and just lived with the rough edges, but as much as I love to hack on things I hate, hate having to maintain or troubleshoot my gaming rig. Every moment spent managing that - updating drivers, chasing down game crashes, Windows version updates where settings get reset - is a moment I’m not gaming and relaxing, and the Steam Deck felt like a product, not a device. It felt like a console but without all of the bullshit DRM that a console forces you to use (though to be fair, it still does do Steam DRM, so it’s not a magic unicorn - you’re just not forced to only run signed binaries under a hypervisor). There are ways it could be much better, and I hope that Valve can address some of those things in a later model or with software updates.
