SteamyDeck

Every company manufacturing devices that primarily run on battery should be required to make these changes, throwing away a perfectly good product because the battery has degraded is wasteful and anti consumer.

Thank you late stage capitalism for ruining my favorite hobby, Jesus Christ.

At the end of the day, they know they have enough of a market share with digital that all of this noise around physical won’t impact anything. People have to get comfortable withholding business from these platforms if they want them to change course, and I’m hoping next gen is when gamers really start to push back on that front.

Love my steam deck, zero desire to spend good money on a walled garden handheld with minimal exclusives.

The poll numbers in no way reflect the reality of the market, where a vast majority of game purchases are digital.
Do I wish consumers had stronger protections and companies were obligated to keep online platforms open and accessible much longer? Absolutely. If anything, the RAM crisis will damage sales more than this bad press.

Well I guess that answers the question of how they’re handling libraries across handheld and console. Not happy that gamers have been forced out of having the option, but I’ve been all digital for almost a decade so personally I’m not bothered.

My digital OG PS5 is going to be my last console anyways, fees to play online and drawn out AAA development schedules means there’s barely any exclusives this gen that I’m even remotely interested in. With the recent experiments around surge pricing and the anticipated $1,000+ pricing, I would sooner buy a Steam machine than a PS6. Way more indie games/early access and free online play and cloud saves ftw.

@JJtheTexan just seeing how many little refinements they added to steam deck OLED after a relatively short amount of time that made a big difference, it makes me more excited for gen 2 of the deck and machine. Unfortunately I won’t be getting the machine, but hopefully the next one has a better price to performance ratio.

@JJtheTexan id rather they move forward even in this climate. Yeah the price is trash, but it’ll undoubtedly sell out at least initially, and they’ll have real world user data and feedback to iterate the second generation with.

I’ve put in maybe a couple dozen hours collectively in the past yeat, and that was mostly on prime 4 which was a huge letdown. I think it’s a well designs console but Nintendo IP these days I just find underwhelming.

Man, **** late stage capitalism and AI. We were on the cusp of a gaming renaissance with the launch of the Steam Deck and numerous other handheld PCs coming to the market, and the Steam Machine was going to be a way to ween my console friends off of their boxes and onto a beginner friendly gaming PC. AI killed 100% of that, since basic living costs have skyrocketed and $1,000+ for an entry level device is just not doable for so many people. 2026 was going to be the year that 100% of my gaming friend group was going to be on the PC platform in some form or another, and now that won’t be happening for the foreseeable future.

All my third party games are purchased on PC, and I’m indifferent to JRPGs. I went in hoping for a new entry in a major Nintendo franchise and left sorely disappointed.

I’m just not sure why I would bother upgrading when this generation has been so slow for first party exclusives. This was the generation that I hopped into PC gaming, and between my steam deck and desktop setup, I think this generation of consoles will be my last.

At least right now the switch 2 specs are solid for most current releases which is really cool to see. Still would rather play on pc/steam deck, but glad the switch 2 crowd have a solid version as well.

Valve’s vague post about the Steam Machine made me nervous enough that I bought a 16L hp omen prebuilt with a 5060ti 16gb on sale for president’s day. I figured if steam machine is going to creep up to $1000 with those specs, might as well spend a bit more and get something significantly more powerful. Depending on launch and pricing, I may consider it for my tv, but I’ll have to wait and see. At least for now I have a fairly future proofed pc so I can ride out the ***** storm for a while.

I wanted to love prime 4, but the story and writing being so poor really killed the game for me. This was the last Nintendo IP I cared about, and at this point I'm just gonna skip their consoles and go the emulation route for their older games.

@ramu-chan I think it's weird to put DF solely into the "cutting edge tech" box, when they have a whole section devoted to retro games and have repeatedly talked in their podcast about wanting to branch out. There's plenty of overlap between people who like cutting edge tech and people who like to learn about retro tech and what was cutting edge in the past.

@LawrenceMurray agreed. For me personally, that mostly doesn’t affect the games I play. For the ones that aren’t on Linux, I’ll play them on the ps5 for the foreseeable future.

Can’t wait to play this at 120hz on my 65” OLED.

@GrizzleyPete Since buying the steam deck I've been buying all third party games on steam, and even many new releases are steam deck verified so I don't feel like I'm cut off from newer games. I know I'm trading performance for portability, but I don't mind. Right now I've been playing Persona 3 Reload and Death Stranding, and I can also play my top multiplayer games with friends (Overwatch, Phasmaphobia, Deep Rock Galactic, etc.). Gaming is where I do most of my socializing, so being able to play multiplayer without paying for an online subscription through Nintendo or Sony is a big deal, and offsets the cost of a steam machine pretty quickly.

I have a few Sony exclusives on my PS5, but I don't buy games at launch and I'm always working through a backlog, so I have no problem waiting until they launch on PC. By the time I bought God of War Ragnarok it'd been on steam for at least a year.

Nintendo is weird because I grew up loving their franchises, but I've either grown indifferent or actively don't like the direction they've taken certain series. I barely used my Switch 1, and I thought the extra horsepower and bigger screen would get me to play my Switch 2 more, and that has not been the case. I'm cautiously optimistic about Metroid Prime 4, but otherwise I can't muster any enthusiasm for their other exclusives and think I'll stick to emulating my favorite games.

So yeah, still certainly niche, but a great fit for me for the above reaons.

I think I’m definitely in the minority here, but as someone who’s only PC gaming hardware is a Steam Deck, I’ll be buying this day one regardless of cost (short of it being $1,000+ bucks). I’ve been toying with the idea of a compact gaming pc build, but have been put off by costs. If i can get an ultra compact gaming desktop with discrete graphics for 600-700 bucks, then I’ll be pleased. I think this will be the last generation of game consoles for me, and I can fully transition to steam hardware and pc gaming and no longer have to pay for multiplayer and cloud saves. Exciting stuff!

I’m still bitter about Sony fumbling the Vita, but glad to see they’re re entering the space. With the state of handheld gaming, I think I’ll just wait to get a steam deck 2, where I can play Sony exclusives on the go without being locked into the restrictions of the ps ecosystem.

@GrizzleyPete at least for me personally, I’m someone who has historically been a console gamer who occasionally plays an old pc game on whatever laptop I’m using at the time (any pc gaming I did died when I switched to MacBook). Currently I own a ps5, switch 2, and steam deck (and don’t pay for Nintendo online or ps plus), and my steam deck has quickly become my go to for playing games to the point that my ps5 and switch 2 are getting used less and less. The steam machine would be the perfect fit for me as someone who 1) wants to move away from consoles altogether since I get multiplayer and cloud saves for free, plus ps exclusives on pc, and 2) doesn’t want to touch a windows pc. Yea the specs could be better, but the trade off for something that’s closer to the convenience of a console while still being a pc is worth it.