this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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Steam Deck

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[–] picassowary@lemmy.world 61 points 2 years ago (33 children)

isn’t the Deck also just like… better than those devices? like obviously they have more compute power and whatnot but everything i read about the ASUS one was that the extra hardware power meant nothing when everything was bogged down by Windows and other issues

[–] brawleryukon@lemmy.world 31 points 2 years ago (8 children)

The main problem with any sort of discussion like this is that "better" is going to mean different things to different people.

Is the one with longer battery life better?

Is the one with more powerful hardware better?

Is the one with trackpads better?

Is the one that can play non-Steam games with less hassle better, even if its UX is overall clunkier?

Is the one with a smoother UX better, even if you might not be able to play every single game you own on it?

Deck is going to be better in some ways for some people, and the Ally (et al.) will be better in some ways for other people. At the end of the day, the entire market segment is better for all of us because competing devices exist. Trying to turn this into a zero-sum turf war is only going to be detrimental to everyone. (Not saying that that's what you are doing, just speaking in general about what tends to happen when comparisons like this get brought up.)

[–] phx@lemmy.ca 23 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, honestly I pre-ordered the Deck and felt like it was a real gamble at the time. Like, "no way it's going to be able to play many major titles - especially given the dearth of AAA games on Linux - but I want to support the idea and am willing to give it a shot".

Then I got it and frankly I was amazed, not just at what portable hardware can do but also at the amount of work Valve has contributed towards the software side, Proton in particular. A year since I got it and award-winning AAA games run nicely. Not always out-the-gate but that's an issue for many systems.

Even if the Ally is better hardware (and I can't say one way or the other) Valve was the first to make a real investment in a hardware ecosystem for real portable PC gaming (no, I'm not counting cheap Chinese systems running dodgy software).

Also, kudos to AMD for the chip powering the thing, as it's a pretty damn good balance between power output and consumption.

[–] limeaide@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Same, I saw it as a gamble. I set my preorder, and saved up for the following months until the device released.

I had been looking into this space for years wishing it would get better and cheaper. It's the only thing that I have been willing to preorder and be a "beta" tester for in several years

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