- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
This article includes sales estimates for different handhelds from market research firm IDC.
They place total handheld PC sales of the Steam Deck, RoG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and MSI Claw at almost 6 million units for the past 3 years. It’s estimated that the Steam Deck makes up between 3.7 to 4 million of those sales, more than all the other major handheld PC manufacturers combined.
You must log in or register to comment.
The Steam Deck arguably created the handheld PC gaming market.
Sure, there were handhelds before, but almost no one gave a shit about them. Gamedevs certainly didn’t.
It wasn’t enough just having the hardware exist, it’s also the massive amount of effort Valve put in to ensure compatibility with a ridiculous number of titles.
The renewed emphasis on controller support in games alone has significant ramifications for the wider community. A lot of players with physical disabilities use input devices that map to controller actions.
Compatibility is one thing and a heck of a important one.
The software and interface is great too. It’s not perfect at all. However, the fact that the power button suspends and resumes my games and I can just select from a menu and stuff. It’s a big deal. Like, I’m a programmer but I get tired at the end of a work day and just want to play some games without fiddling too much sometimes.
“renewed emphasis on controller support”
Eh… I’ve been gaming with a controller on my PC for a very very long time without any issues…
Well if you don’t have any issues, no one else must either…
What I meant is that there hasn’t been more emphasis on controller support since the Deck released, games release on consoles and PC so they already support controllers and games that don’t are just made easier to play with the track pads on the Deck, they’re still just as shit to play on a regular controller.
In your experience, at least?
Not enough people seem to get that the Steam Deck isn’t just a console that runs PC games, it’s also a console that runs mods. The first games I played on mine didn’t stretch its graphical capabilities, they were just games like Stardew and Minecraft that I could have played on the Switch, but only on the Steam Deck could I play them my way.
The only catch there is that installing mods can be tricky depending on the game and method. Steam workshop mods and games with integrated mod support (BG3, DRG, etc) are super easy to install mods for, but the mod installation process for many other games can vary on difficulty.
Hopefully this will all change with with the rise of more official Linux mod loaders like the new Nexus mods app.
Many mods were made way easier with a recent Proton update. Lots of games use DLL overrides to load mods, which required setting launch commands to use through Proton. This is no longer an issue, so any mods that work by doing this will now function perfectly out of the box.
I recently nodded GTA and the mod had specific instructions for Linux, which I was able to simply ignore thanks to this update.
Most games that use the Nexus mod manager can also be nodded manually, but I do agree that having a native launcher is really nice. I’ve already used it with Cyberpunk. Hopefully native Mod Organizer 2 will happen one day!
I still can’t stop salivating what an incredible device it is. I have two!
It’s a full unrestricted linux computer you can dock seamlessly with any usb c hub. Its crazy what you can do with it and the community is so huge already that most of the things you want to do are already done for you.
Made a fan of Valve for life out of me. Bought like 300 games I don’t play already tho so that’s a draw back lol
I still think Valve need to release the SD2 soon before these manufacturers eat their dinner. I know steam will still make money when these manufacturers succeed, but still, a SD2 is a must.
I think as long as PC handheld are winning Valve is more interested in have them ship steam or even better - steamos.
The upgrades from other devices felt very marginal tho it feels like we’re close to where new steamdeck would make sense power wise.
I mean it makes total sense since I’m almost positive that Valve is probably not making any profits from the decks they sell, and their money is from Steam. So, having it on more “mainstream” devices is better for them. Steam deck OLED is actually more powerful than the legion go S from what I’ve seen online so far
Having arch based os become mainstream would be huge for linuc gaming. Steamdeck already is and it just showing how much better linux is for gaming when approached with proper resources.
I was just reading the Verge’s review of legion go s and Bazzite was giving like 10-40% performance improvement over windows - that’s just crazy.
A year and a half ago, I was looking for a handheld gaming device. I narrowed my search down to the SteamDeck and the Switch. In the end, I picked the Switch as I’ve had much more fun and entertainment with the Nintnedo environment vs the PC gaming world. I really, really want to love the SteamDeck and its abilities but it’s just not happening for me yet. Can someone sell me?
I’ve had a Switch since it launched. For the most part, it collected dust - it saw use around certain major game releases and that’s it.
My Steam Deck has completely displaced my high end (well, for 2021) gaming PC - anything that doesn’t run well natively is easily streamed over the network from that PC. I can hang out in the living room watching TV with my partner.
The emulation capabilities have allowed me to conveniently tap back into my entire childhood of gaming, even extending into some titles that I had missed.
The biggest thing has been having access to the entire PC gaming content library. Sales, free Epic games, Amazon Prime Gaming - it’s all there. It’s a far better value proposition than the Switch.
If you only play Mario, Zelda and such, that’s perfectly fine and then a Nintendo’s own console is obviously superior.
3rd party games usually run much better on Steam Deck (not surprisingly because of its much more recent hardware). I bought Team Sonic Racing again on Steam after I had a very bad experience playing the Switch version in split screen multiplayer. It just stutters way to much and on one course it’s IMO unplayable.
