Steam Deck: First Anniversary

I have to say I'm very happy with it for the price I paid. Could it be better, sure, I wish the screen was better but I'm still very happy with it. I actually bought it on a lark because I'm 49 and I never really hand held gamed. Never got in to it beyond the beep-boop led games of the 70s/80s with boring family road trips. I watched many hand held platforms come and go and never could get in to using them. Always preferred the laptop, probably because with having a game thing I always needed my laptop.

When I would travel I carry a work laptop and a personal laptop and... Then lugging around another device, no thanks... Then that changed with the steam deck, my daughter mentioned it and I was like hell I have money to waste so I bought it. For the first few months I didn't do much with it. Kind of shrugged and continued to use my laptop... but one day I kicked it in to desktop mode to load some mods for a game. It dawned on me, I don't need a personal laptop anymore.

Now when I travel I carry my work laptop, my portable keyboard and monitor (which I always did anyway) and the steam deck with a dock. This perfect,less weight over all smaller form factor etc... Using the deck with the external monitor and keyboard let's me do everything I needed my personal laptop for, plus portable gaming. It goes everywhere with me now.

Could it be better, absolutely, but for the price I'm very happy with it. That's really how I evaluate things price for value. This is way more powerful than a similar priced laptop and more flexible.

Most proton games work flawlessly on steamdeck. The only issues after almost a year I encoutnered are related to anti-cheat and DRM.

You can dock it with any hub that supports 45W usb c power and hdmi. There are lot of docks and valid cables online - it's really not that difficult to get it.

So far Valve's support has been great and I'm not sure I agree that their infamous for abandoning hardware. The steam link has been merged into as a software project and steam controller still receives support though is no longer in production.

>• Valve is almost as infamous as Google for abandoning their hardware and projects.

In what way?

The Steam Machines didn't really take off, but they didn't sell any hardware for that - and they kept supporting the whole software side of things and progressing SteamOS, Proton, etc ever since - making the Steam Deck itself possible.

Steam controller and Steam link are still alive, get support and new functionality beyond the discontinuation of the hardware. The stuff they spawned, SteamInput and the Steam Link app, all still there and not abandoned.

Their VR stuff still gets updates frequently - the Vive, the Index, all still supported.

If anything, Valve are a good example of how to support your stuff long term even when the hardware hasn't sold as well as you'd like. This is really a bizarre view to me and the complete opposite of my experience as someone who owns at least something from every 'category' of hardware product Valve released. None of them feel abandoned whatsoever.

I'm in love with mine.

• Hardware is good enough and that's perfectly fine • It's repairable and can be easily opened • Software is open which is increasingly rare there days • Ability to play on TV, on couch (with headphones) and on monitor with keyboard/mouse is awesome • Being able to play old games is great (I finally finished Assasin's Creed 2) • It's still a PC where I can switch to Linux Desktop and tinker with stuff • Battery life isn't the best but I almost always have power source near me • Valve did awesome job with handling controls in games with Community layouts etc • I finally found sense in USB-C where I switch between Deck and Macbook with a single cable • Hacker community is vibrant • It's an emulation heaven :)

As a very happy Steam Deck owner, some of your points are valid, but frankly aren't so important (yes, not all games run, and if this was my only possible gaming hardware I would be upset - but I'm OK with only 70%ish of my catalogue being suitable for the Deck). The native windows option is completely uninteresting to me, but it would largely address the remaining portion of incompatible games, leaving only the performance limitations to contend with - those are quite real and can indeed degrade your experience, depending on what you're trying to play. Given the immense backlog in my personal games library I don't care - it's the perfect excuse to pick up some 4..10 year old titles and enjoy them - but I could be an outlier here. I have racked quite a few hours of Skyrim though, and it's awesome.

The docked mode doesn't come with a higher performance profile because you're already pretty much at the power/thermal limits of the device, and AC power won't address those. And the dock not being part of the box is a bit of a non-issue where a 15$ USB-C PD/HDMI hub allows you to plug it into a big screen and use it as a controller.

Worth noting:

Between the crazy electricity prices in EU (my PC when the 3080 is active uses over half a kilowatt, that's easily 400 EUR/year worth of electricity) and the crazy convenience of instant suspend/resume and being able to play on the go, I find myself using the deck more and more often compared to the PC.

--------Editing since you added a couple items to your post:

> Some Deck-exclusive features and API so that it can be an independent platform in its own right, instead of just a mobile PC. Maybe things like the advanced haptics of the PS5 controller.

Absolutely not! That's the complete opposite of the deck's philosophy.... it's awesome BECAUSE it's "just a mobile PC", and exclusivity deals are absolutely poisonous. It's already an "independent platform" - it's called Steam and millions of people love it to bits.