Thoughts on the Steam Deck

 

Last time I wrote some 'Thought's on' I wrote about mobile gaming. This time around I thought I'd write some thoughts on the Steam Deck.

 

Why did this happen? well recently I had a short break from work and in that time I dug up my old hand held consoles like my Nintendo DS, DS lite, 3DS and my PS vita. It was pretty fun to play and bought back a lot of nice memories. 

 

Handhelds are really practical since they are so portable and is one of the reasons I love them so much. I can go travelling and entertain myself on the flight or when visiting family, and I’m bored. Sure, mobile phones now have some great games and handheld and console game ports, but it doesn’t beat having a real controller rather than using touch screen controls. 

 

The most recent home console and handheld made by Nintendo, the Nintendo Switch, really appealed to me has I could have console sized games, but I could take them on the go and be able to finish them rather than having to wait till I get home. Sure they had indie titles too, but this just added to the appeal has I got the old school style games I liked from the last few handheld eras.

Valves Steam Deck

When Valve announced the Steam Deck I wasn’t that interested in it. But post launch has it got into the hands of others and I saw the reviews I found that I started to get interested in it mainly has I started to learn that the Steam Deck could be used has a handheld or be connected to a monitor or TV in the same manner has the Nintendo Switch.

What’s the appeal?

I think one of the main appeals to me is that the system is based on an open platform allowing different OS’s (Steam OS based on Linux seems appealing to me) and can be used with emulators, etc. Whereas on my older handhelds I would have to use some sort of custom firmware, this machine could have something tailor-made for it, meaning I could revisit a lot of old games on this. 

 

And also rather than having to start from scratch with my game collection like I’ve had too with every generation of handhelds and consoles I have access to my steam library, it really saves me on money and games but not all games have controller support. 

 

Saying that, a lot of my games I own on Steam are quite old, so can run on low-end hardware quite easily. I also play a lot of Visual novels and side scrolling games, so the Steam Deck would really be tested by this hardware wise.

I wish I could get one…

As much as I want a Steam Deck, I just haven't pulled the trigger one one...yet and I'm not sure why.

What are the alternatives?

Aside from the Nintendo Switch, which is the right form factor and has the unique Nintendo Games you come to love, I took a look at some alternatives. 

These were: 

• Ayaneo Next Advance - features an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U CPU, AMD Vega 8 GPU clocked at 2GHz, 16 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, and 2 TB SSD and more powerful than the Steam Deck but way too expensive for me. 
• GPD Win 3 - The GPD Win 3 takes Steam Deck and Switch's basic layout, and adds a full Blackberry-style QWERTY keyboard, so you can type with your thumbs. It’s a bit smaller than the Steam Deck, with a 5.5-inch, 1,280-by-720 touch screen, but it packs an Intel Core i7 16 GB RAM, and a 1 TB SSD. It uses Intel Iris 12 integrated graphics, which might be less powerful than the Steam Deck. 
• Ayn Odin – An ARM-based Android device with loads of potential, and low prices across full line. It uses an eight-core, Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor; 4 GB of LDDP4 RAM (8 GB on the Pro model); and 64 GB of onboard storage (128 GB on the Pro model).

Out of the ones I checked out, the Ayaneo Next Advance and GPD Win 3 were way out of my budget, and the Ayn Odin was pretty expensive for an ARM device and would mean I can't access my steam library (but I could find emulators). 

There are some newer alternatives coming out as these alternatives were released around the same time as the Steam Deck.

My own alternative

I ruled out all the alternatives for cost reasons and the Steam Deck due to availability, and instead created a Steam top. Basically, I used an 11-inch laptop with Steam installed has a substitute and carried an Xbox controller in the laptop bag. Not exactly has portable has the Steam deck, but it's about the size of my tablet. 

 

If I need anything smaller, I have a phone (ARM based) I installed games on and have a blue-tooth controller to use with it. 

 

I might blog about my experiences of what I did, and how things faired in the future.