and that’s the secret to a good product
While you’re all here what controller do you use for your deck? Been thinking of getting one of the hall effect 8bitdo ones, but I’m open to trying anything.
OG steam controllers for me!
Why would you use a controller with the steam deck? It is a controller.
Some people like a lighter weight and different grips. Lots of cases have a kickstand where you can prop up the deck and use your favorite controller.
Can’t it also dock to a TV or monitor?
If you have a dock. Maybe I’ve been unlucky but I don’t recommend the official dock. Every time I want to use the deck in a docked mode I have to rewire everything in the correct order to get the dock to output a normal resolution. Wire it in the wrong order and you either get no output or you get low resolution output with weird artifacts.
I have the thin silver JSAUX one and don’t have an issue like that, but sometimes it refuses to charge until I reseat the AC adapter.
Yes
I like the steam deck and use it as a controller, but you could make the same argument about the switch. Regarding the switch, my answer would be that while it is a controller, it is - IMHO - a poorly designed and uncomfortable-to-use controller.
While you and I like the ergonomics of the deck, others may not. One can hardly blame those people for wanting something they feel more usable.
I have the 8bitdo Pro 2 and I love it. Works great with or without a custom config, but in my opinion the config I use makes it worth it for the price.
Xbox Controller.
still loving and using it. grabbed bf1942 from the archive.org, now playing in lan with friendo and 255 bots. epic joy.
It’s also what got me to finally go linux full-time.
I had tried to a couple times before, but always ran into one too many snags.
When the deck was announced I thought to myself “that can’t work with every game, can it?” as I’d attempted that myself.
But I had to see for myself, and the improvements in proton were staggering. And it’s gotten even better since! Who would have though Apex Legends, Hunt Showdown, and a bunch of other holdouts and anti-cheat games would be running on linux within a year of the deck releasing?
it’s the year of linux on the toilet!
My toilet runs FreeBSD.
oh yeah? my bidet runs plan 9
In the early days I thought it would be some niche gimmick that would never take off. Turns out it wasn’t and it’s the best handheld gaming machine ever made.
It feels good to be wrong!
To be fair I have invested in a lot of their “niche gimmicks that will never take off”. I’ve owned the steam link and the OG steam controller (my dad still uses that controller to game, he really likes it). I love the steam deck but none of the handhelds have the right ergonomics for my little hands except the Switch, and so I use mine docked. But even then it’s a game changer not needing a huge gaming rig to play games.
I adore mine. Not the best for GPU-intensive games like Elden Ring or Resident Evil 4 remake… But for essentially everything else it’s just the best.
Minecraft, 90fps Balatro, Slay The Spire, Binding of Isaac and similar… 90fps Dark Souls 1-3 - 90fps!
Very, very happy.
How are you playing DS1 at 60+ fps on your steam deck? I thought the game was limited to 60
Sorry that’s a mistake I made from happily typing ‘90’. You’re quite right, it’s capped at 60.
I only have a switch because of my nephew. It hardly gets any use otherwise. Then i found balantro and now it’s basically a balantro machine. I do wish i had a steam deck instead of a switch.
When I heard of it, I was wondering who that was for and what was even the point. Since I got mine, I barely play on my desktop PC anymore. I really didn’t expect to live it this much.
This is a shared experience.
Every single person in my circle gave the biggest wtf to it and when they finally got it, talk about how they rarely use their gaming PC.
I love this so much. It reminds me of how AMD Threadripper came to be.
Apparently Threadripper was a skunkworks project by some of the engineers at AMD that they worked on in their spare time. They wanted to see if they could basically slap together a bunch of normal CPU dyes into on mega chip with a high speed/bandwidth interposer connecting them together.
It was almost abandoned and they had to fight to get it taken seriously. But it proved to be a viable product, and singlehandedly was responsible for decimating what was left of Intel’s place in the HEDT market so badly, that after several years of failed attempts to keep up, Intel officially announced that they wouldn’t be competing in that space anymore.
It’s such a cool thing when talented and passionate people come together without having to be subject to strict marketability and just try to create something awesome and revolutionary.
The Steam Deck kicked off an entire new market for handheld gaming devices that had real power to play modern PC games. And despite a bunch of competing and copycat products, the Steam Deck is still king.
I love mine, have close to 200 hours on it, which for me is a ton. I’ve barely gamed on my main PC in the last year, it’s just so much more comfortable to play on the couch or in my bed.
It’s just too bad that AMD is also not competing in the HEDT space now, leaving no reasonable options whatsoever
I got one to replace the Xbox that I’ve had hooked up to my tv’s since gen 1… absolutely no regrets.
I have a 14+hr travel day coming up in the next couple months and it’s going to get it’s first work out as a portable, lol.
It really shows, because it’s just a well thought out, no compromises device. I’m still crossing my fingers hoping that they’re getting somewhere with the steam controller 2 prototypes that I’m sure they’re playing with if only for shits and giggles
I remember one of my first thoughts on the Deck was “even if this fails commercially or can’t play any new games, I want it for old games and emulation. Even if it goes nowhere else, it would be worth it for me.”
It ended up being more powerful than I thought it would be. I thought I’d just be playing some retro 2d games and really old 3d games, but it ended up running some new titles better than expected to be able to play them on the Deck.
Last night, I was playing cyberpunk without any problems. That’s pretty insane in my opinion.
Running games at 800p targeting 40fps is a lot more viable than I would have expected just looking at the numbers. It looks great for a display that size and 40fps feels like it’s a lot closer to 60fps than it really is.
I get why people using it as their primary gaming device would want more power but as a secondary device for me it’s stellar.
The way I see it, is because of the controls. You have a much stronger reaction with a mouse than a joystick. Anytime you play with a mouse, the reaction time is expected to be lower because you I dictate where you want to be looking (like in am fps). The mouse acts as a view positioning device. It is not forgiving. A joystick however is a rotation device. It tells how fast you want to be moving around when looking, not where it should be looking. It is much more forgiving because you only dictate the speed of rotation. If you plugged in a mouse in your deck and played it on the deck you would immediately notice the difference I imagine. I think the trackpads do bring some aspects of the mouse to the deck too in that regard.
But yeah, my takeaway is, with a joystick you don’t need that tight of a latency as with a mouse.
I think that perceived smoothness from 40 fps comes from the LCD screen they chose, and using a controller. Docking the deck to a monitor and using a mouse makes it much more noticeable; but running games at 720p makes it much easier to hit 60 fps.
That’s me. Also it was based on Linux, so its not a waste of hardware, because I know a Linux operating system works well with it. I wasn’t even expecting it to play new AAA games developed for the newest console generations.
This is so important, especially as we live in an age where tech being churned out that ends up as paperweight is the norm. Being solidified in the Linux kernel we know this thing will live on for decades until in 2080 they will pull the plug on the x86 architecture and you’ll be one of the 3 people still around to remember it
I don’t think I make it to 2080, but otherwise agreed. :D
Funny thing is, now that I have it I keep finding uses for it. Sure, some of it is “well I’ve got it now so why not?” but I didn’t expect a handheld pc of this configuration to be so handy to have around.
I’ll be real, before the Steam Deck existed, I was toying around with the idea of either building something basically like it, or how to slap a Steam Link into that kind of formfactor (3d printer, breadboard shenanigans, etc.)
Was very pleasantly surprised when Valve announced exactly what I wanted. Have been happy with it ever since.
