I was on the edge buying the thing and told myself that if I use it 50 hours it’s a reasonable purchase. Now I’m sporting closer to 200h within one year I could not be happier.
Did you have any (self made) goals when buying Steam Deck? Did you achieve those? Or did you buy it and now it’s collecting dust? I’m curious
My Steam Deck is my favorite tech purchase ever.
It beats every console, handheld, TV, smartphone, headphones, PC component… You name it. I’m happy with how much I use it, how well it works, how games run on it, how it makes me actually finish games instead of just collecting a gigantic backlog.
So I don’t have one yet, but it’s on my list and I’m curious: what is it about it that makes you actually finish games?
I’m in the same boat as you. For me, the ability to be with other people not in front of my computer, would be my driver.
Honestly I knew from having a switch that I really enjoyed a portable gaming device. My main gaming PC has been running Linux since ~2015 so I wasn’t worried about compatibility issues with it being a Linux device.
So it was a pretty safe bet that I would like it. It’s honestly exceeded my expectations though, I’ve barely played any games on my PC at all since getting it.
Basically all this.
It’s become my primary gaming medium, and to be honest, it earned it’s price from the amount of time I initially spent setting up shit, which was a blast. Easily 50 hours of setup and installations before I clocked 10~20 hours of gaming, and I loved every second.
I use it every day, so much so that my main gaming PC barely gets used. I’m a dad now and it has made gaming not just possible but easy to do.
Almost every day. Its my primary way to play games or sometimes ill watch something on it. Its a game changer when traveling too. I bought it to support Linux gaming in general and due to its open nature.
How have you found offline mode to work while traveling? I remember hearing early on it was a bear to use without wifi without extra steps.
It works fine. The only thing is you need to be online to go offline so a quick tip is to have your phone as a hotspot and you can quickly hotspot to the phone to swap modes. Or do it before leaving the house.
Also I tend to play a lot of emulated games when flying to get as much from the battery as possible.
Good stuff, that’s not terrible at all, just the tinyest bit of preplanning - the phone hotspot is an excellent idea.
I’ve barely used mine. I just didn’t think through what use case I’d have for it and bought it since it was cool. I don’t travel much and I usually only want to game when I’m home anyway, where I use my main gaming rig. I thought I would use the deck in bed, but I find that it’s not as enticing as I thought it would be
been meaning try and sell it while it’s still got some value tbh, it’s basically brand new even though I’ve had it for nearly a year
I could have written this word for word. Haven’t quite gotten to thinking about selling mine, but not really sure why I should keep it either. I thought it would be a good way to motivate me to play older and indie games, but I’ve been staying busy with AAA games on my main rig.
edit to add: it has gotten me into playing Hades every now and then so it worked for that at least.
Maybe try making it an emulation machine? I use mine for both normal PC gaming and emulation while I’m working out of town.
Why didn’t the gaming in bedpan out? I have the same situation as you except I use it to game for 20 min to maybe an hour max while I’m chilling in bed before sleep
I’ve found some stands to really help that to be comfortable, mainly looking into “belly stands”
When I first got it, as any new toy, I used it non stop. I recently moved and resetup my office and mainly game on my desktop. Though on vacation playing steam deck in bed or before we went out in the morning was really nice. I have no regrets buying it even if I’m not using it regularly.
literally every day. I don’t want to sequester myself in my room to play on my PC, and I don’t want to monopolize the living room TV and have a big desktop tower looking ugly in the entertainment center, so the deck essentially gave me PC gaming back. I debated whether to buy it for months and months, and I shouldn’t have. My goal was nothing more than to be able to play PC games and to unlock emulation on a small screen with real controllers. I just finished playthroughs of metal gear solid 2 and fallout new vegas, and I’m starting red dead redemption 2 today (if the damn download ever finishes). The only thing I’d caution a new purchaser about is springing for the big hard drive and/or being willing to install an aftermarket one. SD cards seems like a reasonable sol’n but reports are coming in that the deck is hard on them because it does a lot of writing to the card, and that an SSD is a worthwhile investment.
Yours and my experiences are remarkably similar.
Well, mine has 100% restored PC gaming which abandoned about 10 years ago, and has improved the experience by light years. At home, I use the deck in my living room and family room docked, and anywhere else as a handheld (pooping has changed forever).
At work, I use it an lunch breaks, and during boring meetings I don’t need ta focus much on.
The library of games available would be unthinkable to me as a kid. Most modern PC games, and everything prior can be played either natively, or via emulation.
I also call mine a Gabe-Boy. lol
If you’re on the fence, GET IT.
Nothing better than loading it full of roms and playing the classics while my partner is playing a game or watching TV. I haven’t done anything too crazy with it but playing OpenRCT2 from the couch in 2023 is amazing.
Pretty much daily.
I work from home, and my work computer and personal rig share a desk - by the end of the work day, sitting in the same chair at the same desk to stare at another screen started feeling like a chore and I had all but quit gaming.
The Deck has changed that. Not only am I loving gaming again, but I’ve found myself playing genres I never would have on my PC (things like Vampire Survivors just feel great on it, but I had no interest in them on my PC)
I’m a sucker for indie games.
Since I’ve bought the Deck, I play Hunt Showdown on PC. Every other game is on the Deck, probably around 30 hours a month on the deck.
This is since februari, so already got my moneys worth.
I’ve got a 2500$ laptop with a 3080m and spend way more time on my deck playing indie titles.
While the majority of playtime still happens on my desktop PC, the Steam Deck has completely replaced my Switch. When I still used that one the biggest pain point besides stick drift was that I had to hack my console and then manually transfer save files and also double-purchase games when I wanted to take them on the go. Doing that got me (unsurprisingly) banned.
With the Steam Deck cloud saves are a free feature instead and I don’t need to buy games twice either, which probably already amortized a good chunk of the price of the Steam Deck. So yeah, pretty good value.
Oh my God, maybe 500 hours or more in a year. I actually stopped gaming on my PC. It was aging anyway, and I still think I’ll get a new PC to play starfield and armored core. But I have put some serious time into my deck.
I beat: Horizon zero dawn Breath of the wild Kingdom come deliverance Wasteland 3 Assassin’s creed black flag Dredge Children of morta
I almost beat: Tunic Outer wilds Hades
And sunk hundreds of hours into the roguelikes vampire survivors risk of rain 2.
I credit the suspend / resume feature as much as anything else. When playing through a big game, being able the press a button and instantly pick up where you left off, vs: booting your PC, launching steam, maybe launching a 3rd party launcher, loading the game, loading your save, then playing. It’s one second to start playing vs 5 - 10 minutes? So when you only have 20 minutes to play, you actually play.
I hope steam os becomes available on more powerful or custom hardware honestly, because going back to windows or even Linux feels like a chore after getting spoiled by suspend / resume on the deck.
I didn’t have a specific plan for how I wanted to use it but having it around encourages me to use it.
Because of the Steam Deck I was able to kick back with it in my hands and be like “eh why not start Yakuza 0 I’ve had it in my library for a while” and now I’m set on playing through the whole series since they’re remastered on Steam these days.
Also is nice to have it around for whenever I wanna kill a bit of time and run some roguelites or other casual games. But overall it’s made it much easier for me to drop in and try out my backlog of single player games since it’s so easy to start playing even if I’m not in the mood to sit at my desk.
I’ve also found fun use cases like leaving it in its dock and using the touchscreen to trigger Soundux soundboard with the audio routed to my main PC. Or using obs websocket to control OBS on my main PC from the Deck’s touchscreen, kinda using it like an impromptu Stream Deck (lol). All around fun to use as intended and also find cool ways to utilize it when I’m not gaming on it.
Few times a week, way more often than any other devices that’s not my phone. The way that it makes PC gaming accessible and portable is amazing.
