There's a reason we aren't as harsh on the Steam Deck. Actually, a couple.

Honestly, with the Raspberry Pi 5 costing as much as it does, I'd definitely check out some mini PCs on Amazon as well. There are several in the $100-150 range that are pretty decent, and won't require additional purchases like a case and additional storage.

If that's all you need, a Raspberry Pi 5 will fit the bill nicely. It's got two 4K HDMI outputs and it's roughly on par compute-wise with a higher end Chromebook. You won't be gaming on this thing -- it can just about play a YouTube video at 4K60 -- but it'll gladly handle your desktop stuff. As a bonus it's about an eighth the price of a Steam Deck.

That might be a reason to maybe consider some competitors of the Steam Deck that are a bit more powerful (but have their own tradeoffs, primarily that the wholistic experience just isnt going to be as good as the steam deck is right now), I don't know the Steam Deck might run 4k fine but I'd be hesitant to recommend it, that is so many fucking pixels lol

How good does it work on an external 4K monitor? Can you watch 4k video? I imagine youtube and browsing reddit or news online shouldn't be a problem.

Basically I'd like an ultra low power PC for boring desktop stuff on 4k monitor.

Probably not great for games but it could totally drive a 1440p or even 4k monitor if you're only using it for web/office/media playback. I'm curious to know if other people are using it as a general computer.

Edit: some people are totally using it as a general computer: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/frame-of-mind-developer-ended-up-coding-the-game-on-steam-deck-for-a-year/

That's just as gross as I was imagining 😬

Not sure if this counts but (Reddit link warning) someone managed to do it in a VM

You can even put Windows on it if you feel like committing blasphemy

Now I want to get MacOS on one just to make gamers twitch

Not sure about multiple monitors

Most usb-c ports with DP alt mode support up to 1 monitor at 4k@60Hz, or 2×1080p@60Hz, and I believe 2×1440p@30Hz. It comes down to bandwidth, so I think that as long as you're fine with one monitor running at a slower refresh-rate or lower resolution, you can have your primary screen displaying in high-res.

Of course, you have to also take into consideration the GPU performance, running higher resolutions will usually degrade performance!

I have a Steam deck, here's the answers to my knowledge:

1. Yes, you can connect a keyboard and mouse, and even in SteamOS they let you access KDE in a separate "Desktop mode"

2. Not sure about multiple monitors but you can connect at least one. There are docks made for it to do just that (the USB C cable has display port support I think)

3. It runs a 4 core/8 thread AMD laptop chip so assuming you get a mouse/keyboard it should work pretty well.

4. It has a 5W mode in the power settings in SteamOS so I'm assuming around that much at idle.

5. You can put other distros on it, it's completely unlocked. You could even put Windows on it if you wanted. I'm not sure how easy the install process is though since I've just left SteamOS on mine.

In short yes. I use it as a mini pc, with dual monitor set-up.

Can you actually use steamdeck as a desktop PC though?

Depends on how many pixels you "need". Running high resolution monitors, even for basic stuff can get costly performance wise pretty damn quick, but in my opinion that isn't really asking the same question as whether the Steam Deck can be a good desktop.

You can absolutely use the Steam Deck as a desktop, I frequently use my Steam Deck in desktop mode... using the onboard controls. **The only real limitation of the Steam Deck so long as you don't expect it to be a top of the line gaming pc, is that most people who buy it are never truly going to be able to give anything else other than a mouse and keyboard an honest go, they are too impatient and won't believe it can work but the sky is the limit for joystick+gyro input (our touchpad + gyro) for computers/gaming.**

And if you're that much of a graphics nerd, you own a PC.

A game that was released last year has absolutely zero knowledge of this 8k PS5 so it's not going to magically render at 8k or 40% improvement. Some might get a framerate bump if frame sync can be turned off - the game might have been GPU bound and therefore with a better GPU it yields a better framerate. Sometimes. And AI upscaling might give a pseudo > 4k effect but it's not really true 8k.

A handful of games might get patched to avail of the improved rendering capabilities when they detect PS5 Pro. Minimal stuff really. Maybe the config file will improve draw distance or turn on certain effects like raytraced shadows / reflections when it knows the console can handle it.

Hardly seems worth the vast additional expense especially if somebody already owns a PS5 though. Moreso because Sony are trying to stiff people into buying the cheaper "digital" version which basically means any physical collection won't work with it.

I really like my PS5, but I see no value in a model costing *80% more* and being only current for half a generation.

All that for an "up to" 40% performance increase.

I don't care how much of a graphics nerd someone is, that just isn't worth it.

Yep quite right, I was just clarifying because you said "low res. 720p or maybe 480p" - the Steam Deck is 800p native. Total agreement.

I'm so glad Valve did not give in to the tech-number-nerds who want 2K resolution on tiny screens, saves so much battery life.

I'm going to look up all of their games eventually. They go hard on the systems and that's a severely lacking quality these days.

Rogue Trader is cool, I'm only a few hours into it though. But man, the camera kills me. It's got a weird rubber band effect to it that I don't like.

But it's mostly a nice improvement, or at least some different takes, on the WotR systems. My main complaint about their games is even with auto end turn on it never automatically ends any turns.

WotR for the win. never played Kingmaker. And I just got Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader. I don't understand how these games aren't more popular.

I feel like BG3 is big just because the camera zooms in close to the characters.

We hook our Steam Deck up to a 4k projector and it looks amazing. The built in upscaler from 800p to 4k is astonishingly good. Obviously not AS good as native but and many games are limited to 30fps but holy smokes it's more than good enough.

Steam Deck screen is only 800p so that's the resolution for all games. And it's perfect for the screen size.

I'd be happy if it played Owlcat RPGs at near full settings. Those games are allot more fun than BG3, imo.

I digress though. It'd be nice to be able to play recent games again. If the deck can do that on my TV, I'm down.

I imagine certain scenes especially in the 3rd act would put alot of strain on the steam deck

In general the Steam Deck is not the kind of device that is going to run things at max settings. You are gonna play at 720p30FPS low settings but be happy you can play at all on a train or airplane. It’s really meant to be a competitor to the Nintendo Switch than a replacement for a gaming PC.

You can stream from your PC to your couch or bed if you are at home.

Definitely not on Steam Deck.

It couldn't play at max settings?

I didn't play much of it but it ran well when I tired it. I just decided it was the type of game I wanted to plat with all the settings maxed on my laptop.

It is.

From my experience a couple months back its crisp.

Not the highest graphics, and it took a little getting used to from a high-end PC, but it was really nice. In certain aspects even preferable xD

It might do now. They've done a lot of improvements.

Even on PS5 it was an absolute mess in co-op. 30fps (if you were lucky) all round, constant freezes (several seconds) when swapping characters, many many crashes. Whenever we told it to save, we'd have to both touch nothing to make sure it didn't crash while saving. Oh, and there was a bug meaning only the player who chose to sleep for the day would get any companion progression.

Was BG3 smooth? I'm getting jealous if it was. It's a hot mess on my shitty PC.

Wow 8hrs, I've never gotten more than 2 on a laptop

You can do that with just a smart tv though

Hooked up to a TV or monitor it’ll do 4k. You can even use FSR upscaling to actually game at 4K, but there’s still a performance hit and I don’t think any recent games are actually playable in 4K. (Upscaled to 1080P, on the other hand, is a different story.)

What does it go up to? I currently play on 1080p anyways

Playing Accounting Tycoon on the Steam Deck.

What's there not to like?!

Ah, my kind of fun.

This is why people think PC gamers are assholes

Not everyone is terminally online, dude.

The Steam Deck is a slightly funny shaped x86_64 laptop. It has an AMD APU in it. You can hook it up to a monitor, mouse and keyboard and do your taxes on it if you want.

Yeah, you can, haha (almost like the switch). You stick it in a dock with HDMI out and add a controller by USB, USB dongle, or Bluetooth.

Steam Deck + USB type C dock + HDMI cable + bluetooth controller. You're done

Sure, but don't expect incredible graphics on a 4k display. It's a handheld after all.

Yep. Connect using Bluetooth or via a USB dongle/dock.

That's what I would do with it too. Good question.

Plugging it into the TV & playing Jackbox games where everyone uses their phones as a controller is a great party trick.

Yes? Durh?

I have an Orange PI Pro 5 16GB on a box that smoothly runs a full blown Ubuntu Desktop version and would fit in a pocket though it's maybe a little too thick (from memory the box it's about 3x5x2 cm).

Total cost was about $170.

The board itself would fit a thinner box, but you might have to 3D print one.

Mind you, a N100 Mini-PC that costs the same is even more capable as a Linux Desktop, but it's significantly larger and will definitely not fit a pocket.

You can find cheaper SBCs capable of running a Desktop Ubuntu but in my experience (with a $35 Banana Pi P2-Zero) if you go too far down the price scale Desktop Linux performance stops being smooth, even if the board is a tiny thing.

It was actually quite surprising for me recently when I found out some of these things are perfectly capable Linux Desktops.

Decktility maybe

https://github.com/ByteWelder/Decktility

You can probably encase a Raspberry PI with a battery and a touch screen, micro SD cards can go much higher than 16, and install Linux. Keep in mind that the Linux touch UIs aren't really great imo, the best experience I've had so far is the steam deck.

At some point in my career I've actually designed mission critical high performance distributed server systems for a living, so I'm well aware of that.

You can still pack thousands of users per server and have very low latency as long as you use the right architecture for it (it's mainly done with in-memory caching and load balancing) when you're accessing gigantic datasets which far exceed the data space of a game where the actual shared data space is miniscule since all clients share a local copy of most of the dataspace - i.e. the game level they're playing in - and even with the most insane anti-cheat logic that checks every piece of data coming in from the user side against a server-side copy of the "game level data space" it's still but a fraction of the shared data space in equivalent situations in the corporate world, plus it tends to be easilly partitionable data (i.e. even in MMORG with a single fully open massive playing space, players only affect limited areas of the entire game space so you don't really need to check the actions of a player against the data of all other players).

Also keep in mind that all the static (never changing or slow changing stuff) like achievements or immutable level configuration can still be served with "normal" latencies.

Further the kind LVL1 ISP that provides network access for companies like Sony servicing millions of users already has more than good enough latency in their normal service and hence Sony needs not pay extra for "low latency".

Anyways, you do make a good and valid point, it's just that IMHO that's the kind of thing that pushes the running costs per-player-month from one dollar cents or less to, at most (and this is likely quite a large overestimation), a dollar per-player-month unless they only have tens of players per-server (which would be insane and they should fire their systems designers if that's the case).

Web servers are different from game servers. You need a lot of performance and fast low latency servers to keep up with realtime game play. Webservers however dont need that and can benefit of load balancing accross multiple servers. Scale of economy helps a lot, but with game servers the cost doesnt change much because a session has to be on a single machine.

As for distribution costs, most of the cost is manufacturing and physical distribution of discs. So yeah, they are making a killing by continuing to take a a huge cut from game sales when most of their distribution is online.

They're expensive when you're not already building a CDN for delivery of massive files all around the world. Economies of scale quickly matter there.

They're stupidly cheap to operate per user when you have millions of them, which is how companies like Facebook manage to make a profit from merely showing adverts to users and with no subscription fees.

Remember that Sony gets a cut from games being distributed to their platform, so online fees are just them double dipping for extra profits.

They're stupidly cheap to operate per user when you have millions of them, which is how companies like Facebook manage to make a profit from merely showing adverts to users and with no subscription fees.

It makes sense because servers are expensive to operate. The real scam is nintendo where you pay for P2P multiplayer...

It's the same on xbox

It was MS that started that back on the OG Xbox.

I think all the F2P ones (and a handful of others like FFXIV) are exempt from it. At least on Playstation.

is it for "internet" or access to ps servers?

Never told that it matters 😇 I game on an nvida 980 endeavourOS PC myself. Steam deck is probably able to run more games than that 😂

My point is that it has at least not to crash instantly on try to start. There are some games that do that on the deck 😇

The deck can run windows, so if it didnt run in compatability mode in linux itll work in native windows. Now if you were to put a limitation that it must acheive 30fps in any game, you might have a point, but... thats really grasping for straws.

High end windows laptop

And I see that one can argue that try running it is good enough, but instant crashing file would I myself not call a member of the game library. If that would be the case, any device that is able to download files has the “biggest game library“

So what would hold that title?

Fair, still not biggest library on earth

Lol

But you can still not run all games that a high end desktop can

Can run most windows games via proton atleast.

But has not the power to run all the games a high end desktop can.

Yeah but a Deck is a Pc, which can absolutely run Windows. Therefore, they are the same thing. A high end PC AND a steam deck feature the "Biggest game library on earth".

Doesn't even have to run well. The fact that you can attempt to play it in the first place let's it win the medal.

Any version of Playstation can't even attempt to play half the games on a deck ;).

steam deck can run windows afaik

Yes, but it has still a bigger game library as steam deck has and thus calling steam deck having “bigges game library on earth” is just bullshit.

But maybe there is a joke in that, that woooshed over me..

I think they mean "console library"

Steam deck has an emulator so it should

But then you are running windows...

You could put Windows on the deck if you're inclined to do so

At this point, it'll be easier to count the games that *wouldnt* work on the steam deck.

While this is technically correct, it still doesn't matter. I have built my own high end PCs in the past and it is a huge waste. I'm not even sold on the steam deck yet - I do all my non- critical stuff like lemmy on this 10 year old shit tablet running Android 7

For my use, I would still want the battery/portability. Just without an internal display because I use a 1080p HMD and like playing on the Deck in bed, etc. Add a capability like the joycons but symmetrical and with all of the Deck's inputs, and I'd be quite happy.

Yeah I’d love a modern stream machine kinda Deck plugged into a TV.

For now PlayStation is nicer for TV where I can get better performance from the couch with quick resume and all. If I could get a static Deck without portable power consumption limits and decent output on a 4K display that would be ideal. But right now the Deck works docked but when blown up to TV size so many games are a low rez mess. If we could get a proper SteamOS that I could install into a media center PC I’d make it myself. All I’d hope for then is a second gen Steam Controller.

Don't they HAVE TO open their messaging app now with the "EU Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act"?

EDIT: Huh, no they don't (link) cause they are not "core platform"...

You can still install whatever OS you want on it, unlike a PS5. It would be nice if you could get into desktop mode without signing in once, but that's not the end of the world. You need a Steam account to even buy it in the first place, and they're not tracking you nearly as much as say Microsoft.

If it could use apple's messages.app then i would be so happy.

That's an Apple problem, not a Steam Deck or Linux problem. Apple refuses to allow support on non-Apple hardware.

That's not the cause- benchmarks have been done on the matter, as you can see slightly down the comment chain. You've simply attributed the slow load times to what you think is the issue.

I've been told (haven't done it myself) that the ps5 controller pairs extremely well with the steam deck + dock. I would ask around though- I have an actual Steam Controller that I use, myself, but I don't think you can buy those anymore.

I'm a PC couch player, I've played with a controller for the last decade with my 75" TV.

I'd definitely get a dock for it.

You guys are selling me big time on this.

Usb-c port, so yes, though you may need an adapter.... And a long cord.

Unless you also grab the dock, but then you also need a controller.

Load times have always been bottlenecked by the CPU, so it's not a massive surprise that the SSD is about on par with a decent SD card.

On the PS4 an SSD was faster than a HDD, but not by a massive amount. At least it was quieter though.

In the steam decks case yeah.

Yep. At some point maybe Valve will change that, but for now, it's a great way to get a steam deck. And even if they do change/fix that later, you're not really missing out on anything- everything will be the same speed it always was for you.

You think a microSD is only marginally slower than an nvme SSD?

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/x0wdd8/disk_benchmarks_results_emmc_vs_nvme_vs_microsdxc/

Found some benchmarks. Load times appear to be influenced by the CPU doing decompression. It's not the SD being as fast as a SSD, but rather the SSD being as slow as a SD because of this. That's... interesting.

Does it have a USB port to plug in my external hd filled with games?

Well, sometimes load times matter. In Borderlands 3 going off SD card instead of disc drive caused a minute or more of loading time when launching the game.

Jesus. That's a great deal. Makes me consider getting one instead of a new laptop.

Not to mention you can just toss a 1tb SD card in, with no skills needed and only minimal cost difference.

Yes, accessing your data off an SD card is _marginally_ slower than off an NVME ssd.... but we're talking, iirc, milliseconds. If it _really_ bugs you later down the line, then you can upgrade the SSD.

That's the 512gb version even. You can get the 64gb version for $296 right now, which is a great deal. Upgrading the SSD later is pretty easy too.

That's $346 in USD, if anyone is interested.

Thank you for the correction, although I was only talking about the desktop environment. I understand the immutable part of it :)

It doesn't have cups? You should be able to install it and plasma's ctrl+p should work with it.

Hi there, just a small correction. Compared to existing linux distros, it's slightly different. Steam OS is an immutable OS, which means you can't edit the root partition (Like you can't edit the C:\ drive in Windows).

This is both good and bad.

Good -> Users can't mess up their device while trying to mess around with it. Updates are smooth because Valve knows the previous state of the OS.

Bad -> It's bad only for extreme power users as it's not fully customizable. You can't run your own kernel, install certain build packages to do some advanced stuff. But this is a tiny tiny bad.

Overall, Steam OS is great and I believe will be the gateway for the general PC crowd.

I'm using Fedora KDE right now for their Wayland support, because I wanted stuff like FreeSync on my AMD GPU, but I do miss Cinnamon. And Autokey.

Thanks to KDE on the SD, I've switched my main DE on my desktop. Still have a soft spot for XFCE, but KDE Plasma on the SD was polished and was very "coherent".

One thing the SD is missing for being a complete "serious" computer is printing support. I'm sure I could it installed, the SD is eminently hackable, but a Flatpak solution or a Steam default solution would really justify using a SD in Desktop mode for school and work.

It was my steam deck that convinced me to just wipe windows from my laptop and install Kubuntu which is basically the same as steamOS. I had no idea Linux desktop was so good these days. Bye bye windows! I love my steam deck but I also still need a laptop form factor, I can't always dock it and use it as my PC.

To me, it's looking like a replacement for a PC and a portable device, and does not need to compete against a console. And that's what I'm looking for. I'm just sick of the rising price of video cards, and the worsening state of Windows. I've had plans to upgrade my video card for a while now, and could never justify it. I feel like it's as viable now to get a Deck and a PS5 Slim or a Pro than to get a PC and another portable. PC gobbles up too much power as a desktop nowadays and too expensive as a premium machine.

I pretty much only use mine in desktop mode and I'm currently playing world of warcraft on it lol!

There's a workaround where you can install Chrome then install ipp/cups printing from the chrome web store, then save whatever file you need printed to Google docs.

I've been complaining about printer support. It's pretty much the last piece of the puzzle for a school focused SD.

I don’t know what the KDE devs eat

LOL loved that

I don't know what the KDE devs eat, but they are somehow maximising both features and performance.

Incredible.

Indeed... I avoided it for years because I bought into the "it's too heavy" narrative.

Then I saw a phoronics benchmark sayin it was actually faster and lighter than lxde if you turn effects off

I tried it then and was blown away, never looked back

More people should thank KDE for the desktop mode.

That sells it for me. Steam Deck is in my future. Windows will not be my next OS.

That is KDE Plasma for those who are curious. It is one of the main desktop environments in Linux. It is my daily driver on my main PC. It is the most customizable desktop I know of. There is nothing you can't change.

I had to use mine as a desktop for two weeks while my PC was undergoing a repair. It was wholly uneventful: installed OpenOffice and had a wholly normal workweek. It’s perfectly fine to use as a regular, boring desktop if you need it to. Absolutely love the Steamdeck. Every gamer should have one.

I used mine for a few months for work. only problem i had with it was it struggled with multiple external monitors. i got it working but i had to fiddle with xrandr everytime i docked it and put it into desktop mode

This was a couple years ago now though, it might be better now.

I play Gran Turismo on the PS2 emulator lol. It's just as good as most recent racing games.

The only game that is a PS5 exclusive that I really want is the new Gran Turismo. But I'm not going to buy a PS5 just for one game.

Every other game I want on the PS5 is eventually going to be on PC anyway.

That's what I'm saying. I'm not going to buy a console just for... Idk, Spider-Man. And then have everything else on PC.

Even the Switch can be easily played on PC.

I dont know abut ram but its very unlikely that CPU will be a bottelneck in most games . Its not a high end pc targeting 120 frames per second where cpu matters more.

There of course will be exceptions ( space marine 2 apparently might have lower framerates on ps5 due to cpu so its unlikely that ps5 pro will fix this but who knows ).

The dollar ain't buying what it used to either.

Also, remember that our prices include VAT, so we slap 20% on it right there. That £700 is £583 excluding the VAT.

That's still 10% more than in the US doing a direct currency conversion, but it's not quite as bad as it first looks.

Still a lot of money for a games console though, especially a mid gen refresh. Paying at the start of a gen for 8 years gaming ain't too bad when you look at it per year. PS5 Pro will be over 4 years, and on that alone is piss-poor value.

No, but it's been getting stronger relative to the dollar consistently over the past 2 years. But we aren't seeing that in prices.

I'm not expecting it to be like ~2007 time where £1 was $2.

But things should definitely be better than it was 2 years ago, relative to USD pricing.

I mean, a pound don't buy what it used to. We've had rampant inflation, and it's going to be hard to keep any next gen console in a price point that we think of as suitable. I mean, this is the first gen where the price has gone *up* during it. PS2 slim went down to under £100 by the end. I paid about £80 for a GameCube late in the gen. I remember Xbox having to give money back to people because they launched at about 300 and Sony immediately went down to £199. It was carnage.

£299 felt like a standard price point for ages. My Amiga 1200 cost about that in the early 90s, and I paid the same for a PS2 nearly 10 years later, and the Xbox 360 was about the same.

£700 feels like a piss take though, and the sales figures will surely reflect that. PS6 has got to be under £600 I reckon, and we're probably about 5 years away from that.

The PS5 Pro pricing is testing the waters for PS6 pricing. If they can't sell well, they can easily drop prices (the PS5 Pro barely costs more than the PS5 to produce). They're just gathering data on what people will accept.

Doing that with the PS6 is too risky. Sony botched the launch of the PS3 and it backfired on them hard letting MS get a foothold with the 360. MS then did the same with the XBone launch and the PS4 ran away with it.

If people signal to Sony now that the PS5 Pro is way too much (it's £700/$913 here ffs), then the PS6 will be cheaper. Don't accept their greed.

Ps5 pro Gpu is apparently way more powerful, but it might be bottlenecked by the similar cpu and ram to the base model

I have a PC that can push 4k120, it's overblown and a luxury if anything.

It's not "proper gaming" unless your 1000W water cooled gaming rig is heating up your entire room to 100°, just to show you the latest in ray traced puddles /s

4K 120Hz is my minimum acceptable standard these days, as I've stated earlier. 1080p120 minimum for handhelds.

The Steam Deck is absolutely strong enough for "proper gaming," whatever that means.

That's the point I'm making. They're too cheap for proper gaming.

*Edit:* Or more like prices are so out of control that $700 is no longer a lot of money for a decent gaming system.

Which you bought for 700 also, eh.

Because the Steam Deck is just computer hardware. I can already install whatever OS I want to and Steam won't know that it's a Steam Deck anymore.

• Take Steam Deck

• Wipe OS and install Bazzite/Nobara

• Install Heroic Launcher / Non Steam Launcher

• Install games from them

Nuclear apocalypse happens and internet is down

• Get ISOs of games in a USB drive

• Plug it into the deck and install

Beacause, **Today**, I can already load another OS on the Steamdeck. Not so much on the PS5.

If we can argue that Sony will stop supporting the PS5 in the future, who's to say in the future, (without the good leadership), Steam won't restrict what can be put on the Steam Deck? We have a lot of arguments for wanting a Steam Deck and an alternative OS to boot for gaming, but saying PS5 will be bricked in the future is not a strong one.

Saying the Steam Deck is digital only is like saying a tower computer is digital only. That's purely false. If you can put it on a tower computer, you can put it on the Steam Deck.

All the Steam Deck, like many modern tower computers, needs for physical copies is a USB media reader.

It plays piracy-reclaimed games just fine.

While valve has a lot of deserved goodwill, that's always the problem - they're well-behaved, but set up in a way in which the customer has no leverage if they where to change their approach tommorow.

Good thing drm-free games run just as well on the steam deck.

The crazy thing for me is that I have a little handheld specific for dos games. The problem I run into every time is having to setup computer keyboard bindings for each game to play them using the built-in controller. I really want retroarch or another dos emulator to do profiles for different games and I haven't seen that yet.

That doesn't make any sense. I can play multiple games from 2017 with no problem at all. I play games from 2012 and up just fine too. That's something the devs messed up for that specific game, or it's a problem with your PC.

Yes, I know. And I already can't play it due to changes in hardware.

That's a 2017 game

Fucking auto correct...

It was Nex Machina.

Unless they change CPU architectures.

well. there's already winlator (basically box86 / wine-wrapper for android).

Not as polished and far as Proton is, but the bones are there.

A CPU architecture change wouldn't be a deathblow.

Ex Machina the movie or the 1984 "game"? That's before Mario was even a thing.

You can play DOS games just fine right now, so yes it's a good bet. And a far better bet than the PS6 being backwards compatible.

Unless they change CPU architectures.

And even then it's no guarantee. Plenty of games needed support from the likes of GoG to run. Hell, I couldn't even play Ex Machina because I had a HDR monitor and the game detected that and completely broke. Disabling HDR in Windows did nothing.

All (most?) of your games will run on your future computers.

After over 3 decades as a gamer and tech user this is maybe the single most consistent important benefit for any open platform were you can just install Linux.

The rest is nice but this one means that 10 or 20 years from now your hardware might have been repurposed for something else and still be useful and in use whilst a closed platform will just be more junk in a junkyard or sitting in a box of those things you've kept just because you don't like to throw expensive stuff away but will in practice never use again.

Also I'm that scenario, you know Valve only gave it up for something dramatically better.

Device, maybe. What happens to the games bought from a DRM monopoly?

These devices have different use cases. Steam Deck also is digital only. If a publisher decides to kill a game, they can control whether you can or can't play the game. PS5 Pro is expensive, but so are video cards nowadays. PS5 Pro is just following a trend set years before, including the shift from physical games and cost. The only way to stop anti-consumer trends is to stop buying expensive hardware (PS5 Pro included). Also, give some love to physical copies of games.

I think the best thing about this gen is running those slightly too ambitious PS4 games at 60fps.

IIRC they also just recently launched a new setting that allows you to permanently set the target resolution for all games (this might still only be in the beta branch though).

Previously you had to go into each game's settings from Steam, and change the resolution there (which might be how you missed it).

You can also change the resolution in gaming mode

I just straight up cannot do this. Either I'm spending time with family and giving them the attention they deserve. Or I'm spending time focusing on the game and the attention it needs for me to enjoy it. Multi tasking just leads to me ignoring both.

If it's a small child and you just need to make sure they're not killing themselves then I can do that. But besides that, to me it's one or the other.

Honestly I think it's a stage of life thing. As I got older, got married, and had kids I found it increasingly hard to find time to play on my PC. The steam deck is perfect for short sessions you can stop and resume anytime, and I don't have to fight the kids for the TV or abandon everyone to sequester myself in the office.

It would be a handheld console that would play their console library. They'd beat the Steam Deck's sales volume as fast as they could manufacture them. Also, the Steam deck doesn't do the triggers, which is a meaningful loss in plenty of PS5 games.

My actual point, though, was that the build quality for the price is really good.

I probably would have bought a "PS4 in portal form factor" for twice the price, but streaming isn't worth it.

Which brings us back to the Steam Deck, which can also stream PS5 games like the portal, except in HDR (if you have the OLED).

The whole reason I bought my Steamdeck was because I couldn’t get the Portal (thanks to scalpers).

Now I hardly ever turn the PS5 on because I am playing tons of games on Steam instead. When I do I am usually running something over my LAN via Chiaki to my Deck so others in my house can watch TV.

I won't buy a portal. I probably would have bought a "PS4 in portal form factor" for twice the price, but streaming isn't worth it.

But I have a friend who did, and have had my hands on it, and it is a genuinely really high quality implementation of the mediocre concept.

I'm not a playstation fan but I'd buy a PS5 pro before I'd buy a steam deck TBHQ. I have a negative interest in portable gaming.

Oh, that's cool. Now I just need €680 for a Steam Deck.

You can even stream from the PS5 to the Deck too, thanks to Chiaki4Deck (easily installable on desktop mode from the "Discover" app).

It's almost as if they're two completely different markets

Why $100?

It works with any USB-C hub - I spent $15 on a hub and $5 on an HDMI cable.

You will probably want to get a usb dock and video cable for at least $ 100 though, to be on par with the PS5

Nice

Yes.

Two actually

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT-_EXXc08M

Those flash deals were awesome, I pretty much stopped caring about sales when they ended. Now I mostly use the wishlist and wait for games to come down

Shit yeah, no wishlisting, no ignoring, no gifting. Its pathetic.

At least the original PS3 store was decent for its time, but they ruined that.

I honestly realy dont mind lack of info but the loading time is horrendus if you want to browse current sales or just check the game info . And while my internet is not that great there is a day and night diffrence between steam and Psstore.

Interesting. My Steam remote playing from my PC through my house is excellent. I do it to my Steam Link, I used to do it to my phone, and now I also do it to my Steam Deck.

It's the Playstation-made remote play apps that suck on my PC or my phone.

Both my PC and my PS5 are hardwired the same to the router, and both have all the ports forwarded and blah blah.

PC streaming is extremely hit and miss. I ended up with Moonlight/Sunshine for playing from my nVidia Shield and that works a charm. Steam streaming never quite worked right. There's a ton of options, and unless you pick exactly the right ones for your setup, it'll do stupid things.

I have massively better quality, stability, and latency with the RemotePlay app over the internet from PS5 than I do with Steam in home streaming actually in my house. It's still not good enough for high precision games, but Steam isn't close.

PS4 can't stream for shit because it can't do the encoding.

My record that I’ve never been able to match in Tokyo Jungle was in remote play on the PSP from the PS3. When I got a PS Vita TV I tested remote play, got sidetracked and spent the afternoon playing Destiny. I’ve played a couple of times World of Tanks on the phone with the official app (and a gamepad obviously, I’m not insane lol).

Sony’s very, very good at this. Granted the AMD video encoding is not as good as the Nvidia one annoyingly, but it’s up there as average quality.

Now I will say this… if you ever tried it using WiFi? Yeah, for whatever reason Sony’s WiFi chips are a dumpster fire on home consoles, acceptable on handhelds. That would’ve entirely explained your experience.

Now, if you want actual garbage, look no further than the Xbox: when I got the Series S I tried it wired to my desktop, and it was a laggy, overly compressed mess. Far worse than the time I tried OnLive through a VPN because it was not available in Europe, and that’s an achievement.

Playstation Remote Play is garbage no matter the location or setup. I've tried many over many years in multiple houses. Sony is horrible at this.

Chiaki for Steam Deck/PC and PSPlay app for Android are insanely better quality for remote playing Playstation.

The PlayStation store is also a miserable shopping experience. If you don't know what game you want or just want to browse, good fucking luck finding it there. No screenshots, no gameplay, no user reviews, no related games to compare to, no info about if your friends are wishlisting or playing it. Just a choice of buying the expensive version or the more expensive version, and good luck figuring out which DLC is already included in the deluxe editions.

PS remote play is fantastic (for what remote play is. Streaming still sucks.)

Steam sales have been crap for years though.

You used to be able to pick up games a year after they came out for like £5 on a flash deal. These days stuff is still full retail price years after launch just so it looks better during the few sales a year. We need to get back to the days of cut price re-releases (Playstation Platinum).

I got a shitload of games from bundles though. That at least is cheap on PC, along with Epic delving into their Fortnite war chest to bribe us with actually free games.

Think the best way to game cheaply on consoles is to pick up physical discs second hand (although a lot of games don't even launch on disc any more), and be on the higher tiers of PS Plus for all the games. There's some really good stuff on there, more than enough to keep me busy.

No, the OP did.

Edited for clarity.

>But misrepresenting its utility as a modern living room PC doesn't help anyone and is just going to leave people disappointed.

Did I do this?

I love my Steam deck, and bounce between how heavily I use it vs the switch* or PS5 depending on the games I'm into at the moment. But misrepresenting its utility as a modern living room PC (like the OP) doesn't help anyone and is just going to leave people disappointed.

The PS5 is probably my smallest library (and mostly PS4 games, a lot of which were before I had a PC), but it's definitely plenty capable and I don't regret the purchase at all. (The controller is also the coolest non graphics addition to gaming I've experienced in a long time).

*The switch desperately needs a 3rd party replacement for the controllers, though, because the joycons are bad brand new.

how cheap physical copies of PS4 and PS5 games go for when you catch them on sale.

Buy them while you can folks, sony et al is working OT to kill this option

Well also the change to pixel based screens from CRTs meant that you needed higher resolution for the picture to look comparitively good.

That, and monitor/TV size increased a lot at the time when flat panels became a thing, so you need a higher resolution just to achieve the same pixel density you already had on a smaller screen.

Black and white TV was fine 60 years ago and it's fine now

20 years ago was pre-bluray, so the most common video media was dvd with resolution of 720 × 480 (480p). So 720p was really good 20 years ago.

It was not. 30 years ago, it would have been very good, though, as a lot of media was still SD.

Yup. As someone who hasn't had a dedicated gaming PC in about a decade, I've been really happy with the PS5 + Steam Deck combo (well, plus Switch, but that thing collects dust until Nintendo releases a Mario platformer).

I recently got a laptop that's not made for gaming specifically, but can handle them pretty well (with Proton), and that has scratched any itch I've had for PC games that don't lend themselves to Deck or console (your RTS games and such).

At risk of giving away the game... I think people would be very surprised to see how cheap physical copies of PS4 and PS5 games go for when you catch them on sale.

Y'all just picky. 720 was fine 20 years ago and it's fine now.

Yeah. If Valve releases a remotely viable desktop console OS, I'll immediately build one for my living room. If for no other reason, to keep the rest of the family away from my SteamDeck.

That's always been their plan, but it's getting hit with Valve Time. My guess is that they won't do it until all issues the major with NVIDIA GPUs have been fixed, as a public build that doesn't run properly on a majority of machines wouldn't go well. The latest driver is pretty good, but the Big Picture mode is still pretty much unusable.

At the very least they're currently trying to bring official support over to other handhelds, as they've already confirmed that they want to official support for the ROG Ally and pushed out a update to SteamOS for the controller support.

If that happens, will that affect Microsoft's share price?

Honestly I think the trick for valve there would just be to release a build of steam OS people can install themselves into desktops (if they don't already) and just have folks building their own machine for TV pc use.

It won't have the same performance as a PS5, but the new Minisforum MS-A1 with a user-upgradable CPU is a really interesting proposition. The Ryzen 8700G is pretty good, but I would expect solid upgrades to be available in the next few CPU generations.

I currently have an Nvidia Shield Pro (2019), and it's fine. I have Moonlight installed and can stream from my desktop PC using Sunshine (I do this on my Steam Deck, too), but I don't expect that Nvidia will make a replacement, and I don't know if I would get it if they did.

The software outside of Steam's big picture mode isn't ready for a full Linux couch experience, but it's close. The two projects to watch are KDE Plasma Bigscreen and Waydroid (some people are starting to get Android TV working) which would be a nice bridge to use apps designed for a TV UI until native Linux versions become available.

Isn't that kind of what steam machines are supposed to be?

Like, they’re cool and tempting. But not anywhere near the price of a full unit when I have an already perfectly functioning one! If I could say swap the panel on the Deck (with relatively little effort), I would likely consider buying an upgrade kit but that’s not possible. Same thing with the PS5: if I could just buy the new gpu and replace the old one, I probably would. Never mind that it’s an apu so in this instance it’s really replacing the entire guts of the device, that’s a minor detail XD

I think mid life upgrades targeting new customer and hard core types.

Regular folks just buy generational upgrades.

Yeah, I don’t see any reason to upgrade either of mine. Really not worth it.

Also drives home the point the PS3 was insanely priced.

Cool chart.

It really makes the point to me that the PS1 and PS2, when adjusted for inflation, and for relative compute power, were just such a fantastic deal.

I was recovering from some serious console-purchase fatigue, when I bought my PS1 to replace my garage sale purchased Super NES. It was a big deal to me.

I've paid PS5 prices (inflation adjusted) for a game system a few times (my first Switch and SteamDeck), but they've been a lot more mind blowing than what appears to be on offer today.

Disclaimer: My favorite game is 8-bit, anyway.

So the most comparable console there is $456, and this is $700.

That is bad.

The PS5 Pro barely costs more to produce.

$700 is bad. $913 is awful.

Just because the PS3 (a console universally panned as being way too expensive) was similar doesn't mean PS5 Pro pricing is alright.

Charts like that are great, I love to see them. However, they need to have a year for the inflation-adjusted dollars else it’s nearly meaningless when referred back to.

I'm not sure what this proves 🤔

That’s the average local + state sales tax in Washington. State sales tax is 6.5%, local varies from 1.2% - 3.85% (Seattle, for a total of 10.35%)

I found it on This website. WA is listed at 9.38%. I'm guessing your county or city has an additional sales tax.

I live in Washington state and I'm pretty certain the sales tax here is 10% (slightly higher than your maximum figure of 9.56%). It's a pretty well known trick here that you can account for tax just by decimal shifting and adding (ex: 5.29$ without would be 5.29$ + 0.529$ ~= 5.81$ with tax). Is that 9.56% an "in practice" figure that accounts for rounding down? I'm curious where you read it.

Thanks for the correction!

Yep, but the states with sales tax get tired of getting cheated out of their tax revenue. The specific example where I saw this was a major hardware store chain in Oregon (no sales tax) right near the border of Washington (6.5% sales tax). They asked everyone “Washington or Oregon” at the register and checked ID for anyone who said Oregon.

Quick search says that Washington considers it a “sales and use” tax, so anything purchased out of state, but intended for use in Washington is supposed to be taxed. Kinda messed up, really.

In most countries it’s the sale point which matters, not which state you reside in, for indirect tax. I would assume it’s the same in the US. For example if you’re on holiday in a different state or country, they wouldn’t charge what you’re charged back home.

In Washington alcohol is so expensive that any reasonably sized party of alcoholics it's cheaper to drive across the entire state to buy in Idaho (forgive this disaster of a sentence structure I'm awake like 5hr early because of cats)

Convenience. Unless you live *right* near the border, it's probably faster/easier to shop in your own state than drive all the way to another.

But if you *do* live near the border of a state without a sales tax, then it's pretty common to shop in the neighboring state, especially for larger purchases.

As in if you live in a state with sales tax but down the road is a state without sales tax- why ever shop in your state?

Mostly the states are quite big, so it's not worth the trouble. But along various state borders, it distorts the shopping experience in odd ways.

I've been to towns that are missing common retailers entirely, because everyone drives to the next town over (in another state), to avoid a tax.

We also have a rich history of driving across state lines to purchase stuff that's illegal in our own state. It's also illegal to bring it back, but the borders aren't patrolled, so the only way to get caught is to have a traffic violation while doing it.

Or so I've heard. I never break any laws, myself.

To put details to other person’s point: Even if you lived pretty close, for a lot of things, the gas cost would probably offset a lot of the savings. For big things for sure it would make some sense but for other things it just wouldn’t make any sense. You’d have to live *right* on the border *and* have a town with stores that carry whatever you’re buying also be pretty close.

You still have to waste 30 minutes of your time driving over there. I'm not wasting 30 minutes of my time to save $5

Texas has 8.25% but New Mexico is 5.125%

Sunland Park, NM (which is part of El Paso, TX metro are has an additional city+county tax of 2.125% so the taxes are the same as in Texas (the numbers may be slightly off, but the final tax rate is very close to Texas)

In some cases like that, where you’re in a state that has no sales tax, but near the border of one that does, they’ll actually check ID and charge you sales tax if you’re from the sales tax state.

Vancouver Washington residents drive to PDX for their jobs, to shop, eat dinner etc...

The highest state sales tax is 9.56%, most states are 6-8%. Though some major cities also have a small sales tax as well.

No sales tax in NH either.

how does this work if you live close to another state? As in if you live in a state with sales tax but down the road is a state without sales tax- why ever shop in your state?

It varies state by state, some like Oregon have 0% tax, but most will be around ~~13%~~ 6-8% or so iirc.

The US doesn't have a *national* sales tax, so it depends whether the individual state imposes a tax or not.

If you think 26% is bad, in Russia it's going to be priced at around ₽80-100k(~$883, VAT included), but the median monthly salary is ₽43.500 - $480... That's well over 100% median household income given that over 38% families only have a single parent. And I'm pretty sure that's not even the worst out there, think like Argentina has an extortionate import tax or something?

I don't remember exactly, but some relative poverty lines start at 60% of median household income.

• £700 / (£32,400 * .6 / 12) ≈ .43, thus 43% of monthly income for a poor household in the UK

• $700 / ($74,580 * .6 / 12) ≈ .19, thus 19% of monthly income for a poor household in the US

I hope median household income is netto, otherwise this is skewed.

Anyone know the cost in the US including tax? Don't they leave that off?

Yeah and recently got an argument with someone saying that the SD was no competitor for the Switch.

In my opinion both are directly trying to fill a market where you can play games anywhere.

It's true that Nintendo also has their own closed games that can only be played on their hardware (officially at least).

But beyond each console's game library the need for having a portable console is a more important factor.

I get that but damn, between a Switch or SD who'd choose for a PS5?

I personally already have a Switch (since launch), so many great games on it, which dimimishes the SD's selling point for me. Those two really do thread in the same waters.

I haven't even picked the LCD 128GB SD...just didn't pick the option with max storage. Also haven't picked the PS5P with the Disc reader..

But anyway. This meme is very specific (and pointless) and it is just targeting a minority who would be choosing between a high end console to play at the sofa on the big screen and a handheld to play anywhere.

I think the main SD group of people, is people who want a handheld, and that group of people generally choose between SD, Nintendo Switch, or other handhelds (like the Asus ROG etc).

Some would go with Nintendo because they just care about Nintendo games. But the majority is just looking for a handheld to play any good games anywhere.

To answer the last question. I have a PC, a PS5 and a SD. So some people who own a SD would buy a PS5. If I'm on my couch I use the PS5.

If I'm at the terrace, or on a flight, etc. I use the SD.

Jokes on you I don't have any friends

... and you have to pay for PS Plus repetitively to play games with friends.

I feel like that's cherry picking, like I'm comparing the cheapest Dutch webshop price for a new PS5 and it's € 549,99 vs the Steam Deck which is only purchasable through Valve's store for... € 419?

Wait why tf do people buy PS5's here‽

Midnight Suns is the one I know of, and they fixed it early on. :)

I've had to fuck around with my Windows saves (backed to the cloud) when installing the Linux version of Wasteland 2 and the two Pillars of Eternity games and I eventually just gave up and installed them with Proton so it would download the saves to the right place for them to work.

If you play Deadfire on multiple Linux devices you need to install with Proton compatibility otherwise cloud saves don't work at all because Steam doesn't back up the right folder (it uses the Windows folder name which has a lower case o in the word Of), that means that if you wipe your hard drive and rely on cloud saves then you're fucked because Steam will have created an empty folder to backup.

And remember, as I said, the Deck installs the Windows version by default but if you have Linux on your PC then chances are cloud saves between your Deck and PC won't work unless you force the Deck to install the Linux version of games.

It is rare to see a game get this wrong, the last one I saw was a Borderlands. If you look at a game's Steamdb cloud listing, they list Windows's save location, and then Mac/Linux saves are expressed as a rewrite rule.

Cloud saves on PS are handled quite simply - if you didn't pay for your very own PS Plus then go fuck yourself. I have lost dozens of Aloy hours on my brother's PS4.

Yes, the Steam Deck can use saves you have in the Steam cloud. You can also probably manually copy the files over.

The Steam saves, yes, the Steam deck would play them just fine.

Either through Steam Cloud as others have already said, or something like Ludusavi.

Um... Yeah? You about Steam Cloud, right?

Besides that, if it's a none-Steam game you could just... Transfer the same file to the Deck. Did with a couple of games through Google Drive.

Only issue you'll probably have is if the cloud saves are for a different OS, so if you're playing on Windows make sure it's the Proton version of the game that's installed on the Deck, if you're playing a native Linux version of the game on your PC then make sure it's the native Linux version that's installed on the Deck (usual defaults to the Proton version).

It's just an issue with the cloud save feature being too dumb, the path to the save folder isn't the same on both platforms so it doesn't sync well (although I think it does on some games).

As others already stated, its possible, provided the game itself is compatible with Steam Deck. While there is the Steam Cloud that saves and loads saves automatically (which does not cost you anything BTW), some games do not support the Cloud. As this is PC basically where you have access to the filesystem, you can copy files over. Only thing that is a problem is, that Steam Deck will not get recognized as a drive if you plug it to USB connection. That's a whole other story, but to answer your question, yes.

The oled version contains a different soc iirc

It's probably not worth the effort. It's one of the more complex mods, and the screen with additional resolution comes with a bunch of drawbacks, and the anti-glare coating isn't _that_ big a deal.

Ah, I didn't realise that. But I mostly use my Steamdeck docked for gaming on my TV so personally haven't bothered looking into a screen upgrade.

Both of those are still upgrades though - they didn't say "upgrade the screen to LED". It's a good callout though!

You cannot put an OLED screen in an LCD model.

They have different internals. The screen upgrades that exist for the LCD are to swap in the anti-glare coated version, or a higher resolution.

I bought 512GB OLED and then immediately swapped the SSD to 2 Tb

You can also upgrade the storage and screen if you want.

gpu?

I'm not sure if it's the meme but here (Europe) there is a huge difference in price between the basic 512GB OLED SD and the basic PS5 pro option.

569€ vs 800€.

If you think $700 is bad, it's **£700** in the UK... which is **$913.** 🤢

Also:

• median household income, UK (2022): £32,400 ($42,265)

• median household income, USA (2022): $74,580

A PS5 Pro is 26% of the typical UK household monthly income.

A PS5 Pro is 11% of the typical US household monthly income.

The US pricing is bad. The UK pricing is absolutely *insane.*

The OLED Deck starts at £479. Still a lot but not as egregious. The LCD Deck is currently £262 ($344), which is pretty great.

And for those who have not tried it, the desktop is fully functional (not some half baked version. My son uses the desktop mode as a full school workstation for internet browsing, email, teams, Google docs, etc

Eventually, Sony will stop supporting the PS5 and it'll be a brick. If Valve ever stops supporting the Steamdeck, it'll keep running.

You know what the main difference between the Steam Deck OLED and the PS5 Pro is? Customers wanted and asked for the Steam Deck OLED.

Sales on PSN are appalling compared to Steam as well. Plus you can also get Steam sales on other sites like Fanatical.

Steam also has better remote play, and Steam custom controller profiles with nearly any controller are amazing.

Also nearly no backwards compatibility issues, whereas PS5 will only play/stream limited games from the past.

Not to mention that you can buy the previous version for 300 € and get most of the same value (less storage, gpu, screen, battery)

Also the price scales wayyyy better.

Steam Deck starts at 313,65€ now.

if you have less money, buy that, get an sd card, and if you enjoy it put an ssd in later.

Cheapest OLED steam deck is $549.00 (USD) while the most expensive is $649.00 (USD).

So really either way not only all those positives, but it's also at least $50 cheaper (which you can use to buy several games on Steam...)

Subscription for Internet access is the one that's always baffled me. What a stupid business model. I guess devices not belonging to their buyers is not a new thing.

Both run games at 720p

This comment is brought to you by fsr

No joke, I'm tempted to buy a Steam Deck (or true Linux phone) because... It can run a local HTML/CSS/JS app on a browser with filesystem access and audio support. This is the power of having an OS that is not locked down.

Speaking of which, what would you recommend for me to run a local HTML/CSS/JS app on a browser with filesystem access and audio support? (No, Android is too locked down to meet that spec) Other required specs:

• Portable: Can fit in a pocket

• 16GB or more usable storage

• Bluetooth support

• Ideally low-cost

Edit: I figured out a way to do it on my phone! I used the "Simple HTTP server" app to self host the HTML/CSS/JS into http://127.0.0.1:8080/.

If I'm playing modern games on a TV? PS5 easy. But still the pro over the deck.

I love my deck. As the handheld it's intended to be. It's not powerful enough for an acceptable experience running a AAA 3D game on a TV screen. You can ignore the resolution and artifacts and just generally low visual quality and poor frame rate on a small screen, because playing the games portably at all is a huge step up. You can't ignore any part of it on a TV. It's fine for indie games, older games, 2D stuff, etc.

But it doesn't have the performance for a good living room experience if you're looking to play modern AAA games. (Ignoring all their bullshit rootkits on PC that block a lot of multiplayer games out completely, which are the games you have to pay for on PS. You just can't play most of them on Linux at all.)

And I can install games from other store fronts if I want.

Studios that can release games on consoles don't even target people like me. I'm not going to get a console to play 5 good AAA games a year.

A steamdeck however...

Some of the points in the meme are weaker versions of the full truth:

Desktop OS and you can substitute your own.

Biggest game library and you can also side load your stuff from other stores.

The most expensive Steam Deck is still cheaper in my country. €680. While the PS5 Pro is €800.

And many will just buy the cheaper version and replace the SSD by themselves. The 512GB OLED version plus a 2TB drive is only €50 more expensive than the 1TB version. So even with like for like storage it’s still cheaper than the PS5P

Since buying a steam deck I've spent more money on games I can play on it than I would normally for the pc.

That's still cheaper than buying a ps5 on its own without the extra cost of games.

One can be used in an airport/aircraft/train and the other can not.

One is fit for travelling and the other is not

*\*squints** Sir, that is an LCD model you have there.

Also the Steamdeck has games worth playing.

If I was forced at gun point to switch back to console gaming I'd pick the latest Xbox just because of the backwards compatibility.

PS5 Pro: PRObably not for you

I love the steamdeck. In almost always dock it and use it as my default computer.

If I did not NEED windows for a SINGLE work app, it would probably be my only computer.

Even if it's priced too highly, the PS5 Pro will probably sell pretty well. The Playstation Portal is very overpriced for what it is, and yet it's sold very well. There's a lot of Playstation fans with money to burn apparently.

Now that the Steam Deck and linux gaming has found some success I really hope Valve or someone else revisits the home console market with a similar approach.

You couldn't really build a PC for the same price as a PS5 with the same performance unless you're buying used parts in most places but that's not because Sony is selling consoles at a loss right now like the olden days. A large system integrator like Valve (or xbox if they want to change their formula) could offer similar perf/price without all the downsides of these locked down consoles.

Can you plug a steam deck to the tv and use a controller? Cause if not, I don't want it

My thing is if Sony wants me to pay computer prices, it better act like a computer. If it doesn't and the trend continues with PS6 then that's the end of me buying PlayStations.

PS5 Pro - only marginally better than an option that's only $450.

Steam Deck OLED - only marginally better than an option that's only $300.

Which do i choose? The $300 dollar deck and a $100 tb drive

Can you actually use steamdeck as a desktop PC though? Can it drive dual external monitors? Is it a reasonable "minipc" type thing? How much power does it munch on in idle?

Can I maybe put some other linux distro on it? So many questions

I'm legitimately worried about next gen, since Sony is doing the same thing with their pricing as GPU manufacturers.

That thing being, the increase in price is >/= the actual increase in performance. The PS5 Pro is a 75% price increase over the similarly disc-driveless $399 PS5 (hardware which is almost a half-decade old now).

The difference is that Steam Deck is actually cheap compared to what the competition does. It's also the first generation of Steam Deck and the upgrade with an OLED (and lot of other stuff too) is actually substantial. And there are multiple versions of the Deck available to choose less drive space. Imagine this was an option on PS5 Professional too. Contrary, the PS5 Professional is the most expensive console compared to its competition. It's so expensive, that it set a new bar.

That's the opposite of what Steam Deck does. Steam Deck is the only current generation game console that gets cheaper over time. Also one is a handheld format, which is hard to make cheap, especially because its compatible to PC hardware (and software).

A laptop because I have no where to go.

I would actually rather like a Steam Deck without a display but with at least one full USB4 port and the ability to split it similar to a switch.

Can you use a deck on an external monitor?

It is not “biggest game library on earth” I bet, that would still be a high-end desktop running windows…

Yeah, but can any of those play the saves I already have on my computer??

I already have a PS5, so the Steam Deck is much more tempting.