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.
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.
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.
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 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.
I play with my deck every day, probably more than my actual PC these days.
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.
I was just excited for a portable, powerful Linux based machine and wanted to see it succeed so we could get more of them as time went on.
I use the thing daily docked and portable for gaming, 3D modeling, coding away from my main PC…it’s been great. If it broke today I’d buy another. Or even better, I’d just pick up the easily available replacement parts and fix it.
Was absolutely worth it!
I didn’t have any specific goals besides being able to play games while sitting on the couch or while traveling. And then I played through the entire Arkham and Yakuza series on it (and some other smaller games in between). Currently playing Ishin on it and no signs of dust yet, the opposite. The skin I put on when I got the steam deck now shows quite some signs of use.
I played it a lot when I got it - it was a good excuse to play some games that have been languishing in my library. Recently I haven’t used it a ton except when on travel, but my fiance has played a lot of games on it, and it opens up the possibility of us playing PC games together. So I’d say it’s been well worth it overall.
It’s been amazing for me. It actually helped me slash through a bunch of my backlog. Games I’ve finished on deck: Aperture Desk Job, Axiom Verge 1&2, Braid, Bro Force, Darq, Deaths Door, Eternal Hope, Guacamelee 2, Inside, Journey, Limbo, Ori 1&2, Portal 1&2, Shady Part of Me, Stanley Parable, Stella, Stray, Trine 1,2,3&4, Unbound (Worlds Apart), Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves (so 4 & Lost Legacy), Vesper, and Yooka-Laylee. Currently playing Hollow Knight. Performance has been great, even played Sea of Thieves with friends online and it was solid. I go through periods where I don’t play much but with the deck it seems easier to just fire something up and dive in. Especially because of quick resume.
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 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.
I bought a decent dock for it so it kinda spends more time plugged into TV than not but yeah had one for about 6 months still use it.
I use it a lot, it is ny main gaming machine, i couldn’t be happier with my purchase
