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.
Pretty much daily.
I work from home, and my work computer and personal rig share a desk - by the end of the work day, sitting in the same chair at the same desk to stare at another screen started feeling like a chore and I had all but quit gaming.
The Deck has changed that. Not only am I loving gaming again, but I’ve found myself playing genres I never would have on my PC (things like Vampire Survivors just feel great on it, but I had no interest in them on my PC)
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.
Well, mine has 100% restored PC gaming which abandoned about 10 years ago, and has improved the experience by light years. At home, I use the deck in my living room and family room docked, and anywhere else as a handheld (pooping has changed forever).
At work, I use it an lunch breaks, and during boring meetings I don’t need ta focus much on.
The library of games available would be unthinkable to me as a kid. Most modern PC games, and everything prior can be played either natively, or via emulation.
I also call mine a Gabe-Boy. lol
If you’re on the fence, GET IT.
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.
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 play for maybe an hour or 2 every couple of days. I recently docked it to the living room TV and now the wife plays a couple of hours a week now too.
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 don’t have one, so I can’t speak for myself.
But my coworker, who works later into the night (before I take over the night shift) seems to falll asleep playing it most days.
While I disagree with this on a professional level, I’m not about to stir the pot if his work is getting done.
My night shift coworkers bring in PS5s and Xboxes and set them up every night. I felt guilty bringing in a switch or 3DS on holidays I knew would be dead when I worked on nights. A handheld seems somewhat acceptable to me as it can just be turned off and thrown in a bag when it gets busy.
Now that I’m on days I read semi related technical books of things I’m interested in or hack around on a pi or Arduino that may or may not lead to something useful for work. That way I can say I’m learning my job better even if it’s stuff I’d do in my free time. Boss seems to like that.
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.
I use it pretty much daily since I got it last year. Ive predominantly using it to clear my backlog of games that ive accumulated over the years.
In the past 12 months, ive finished GTA 4
GTA 5
Red Dead Redemption 2
Sniper Elite 3
Sniper Elite 4
Metro 2033
Final Fantasy 15
Fallout 4 + DLCs
Fallout New Vegas + DLCs
Bastion
Bomber Crew
Guacamelee
Halo Spartan Strike
Halo Spartan Assault
Portal
Portal 2
Star Wars Jefi Fallen Order
I’m currently playing Doom 2016 and its amazing.
Plenty of other games to get through like Cyberpunk, Witcher 3 and maybe another play through of Skyrim and Fallout 3. Ive played through them several times on Xbox but I want to do it again on Steam Deck.
I’ve barely used mine. I just didn’t think through what use case I’d have for it and bought it since it was cool. I don’t travel much and I usually only want to game when I’m home anyway, where I use my main gaming rig. I thought I would use the deck in bed, but I find that it’s not as enticing as I thought it would be
been meaning try and sell it while it’s still got some value tbh, it’s basically brand new even though I’ve had it for nearly a year
I could have written this word for word. Haven’t quite gotten to thinking about selling mine, but not really sure why I should keep it either. I thought it would be a good way to motivate me to play older and indie games, but I’ve been staying busy with AAA games on my main rig.
edit to add: it has gotten me into playing Hades every now and then so it worked for that at least.
I use it as a steam link when I’m home and load it up with emulators in case I’m away from my gaming PC.
the proton support this great, I just love having less fan noise and pleanty of battery.
Missus doesn’t let me near it. Overall, it was a good purchase but next time I’d go for one with smaller breasts… and no gaming addiction 🤭
I mean I knew about the breast at the time of purchase, but gaming addiction…
Once a month, on average, I’d guess. I just thought it’d be a nice way to game in the living room. It is, and I’d buy it again. Prior to opening it I would go months between times that I play. I wish I had more time to customize it, really, as the control scheme offers so many possibilities. But I can game or I can bind, and not both.
