That’ll probably be the big news from all this, further global release. I’m not holding my breath for the next iteration until the end of the next console generation (the upcoming "switch 2"generation)

Yet still people will find reason to complain.

80% of my catalog is platinum and gold, 20% I probably wasn’t going to play anyways.

My library is plenty large enough and it’s 80%+ gold verified on protondb, and I’ve found success in running titles that were unverified (but not borked, I’ve never tried any of the dozen or so borked games in my library).

Disgaea 4 runs flawlessly without any modification on my deck, it does take a moment to start, I believe that is when it’s trying to connect to the online servers which I have entirely disabled through the in game options menu.

I won’t attest to anything outside of steam, because I didn’t buy a laptop or a console, I bought a steam deck. And I have more than a thousand games ready to go on it.

Edit to add: not sure where you pulled “universal compatability” from, I never mentioned that at all. Contrary to that statement all of the games I mentioned, and everything I’ve ever tried playing, are titles activated through steam.

Please feel free to ask my any specific questions, I will answer them as unbiasedly as possible.

I jumped on ordering mine working 30 minutes of its announcement, I waited 7 months to get it, and I’ve used it probably 60% of the days since I’ve had it. I still use the laptop some times (especially when my wife has it for some games, and I bought my mom one of her own so she wouldn’t be using mine constantly when she came to visit)

There has been 1 game I’ve tried to play that hasn’t worked, people say it does, but there are 2 versions of the game (square enix, final fantasy 8) and I have the older version, for some reason no control input is sent to it no matter what I do. I’m sure if I bought the new version it would work fine, but I’m done with that company after they bricked my phone copy of ff6 (even though the phone didn’t change at all) and told me “if I want to continue playing you need to buy the new version”. I’m sad they seem to be doing the same thing with all their old games.

That rant out of the way.

I have 1400 games in my steam library, the above is the only one I’ve wanted to play but haven’t been able to get working.

I highly suggest a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard for first person style games (I’m too old to get used to the “gyro control fine aiming”, but the younger people say it works great.) and 4x games.

I play a lot more 2d platformers and rogue-lite games on the deck than I ever did on a PC/laptop. The controls are fantastic and there’s no input lag like I used to have with a wireless control to my PC.

I’m about to buy a 3rd because my household, and the company we bring over, sometimes use mine when I want to be using it.

Some of the games I’ve played on it: red dead redemption 2, Witcher 3, elder scrolls Skyrim, rim world, dead cells, path of exile, Warhammer total war 2, sid Meier’s civ 5 and 6, subnautica, factorio, satisfactory, monster Hunter frostborn wrath, baldurs gate 3.

It’s actually amazingly good at running the ported PS2/4 and xbox360 games, I was amazed to see 5-6 hours predicted battery life while playing dynasty warriors 8 and Disgaea 4.

I was thinking about getting a new gaming laptop to replace my 5 year old 15" dell, but the deck filled that need perfectly, and at a fraction of the price a new computer would’ve cost.

When I originally bought it (pre ordered the 512 gig) I bought a “leather skin” and screen protector, I’m glad that I did, but I think the skin was going overboard.

If you aren’t a gamer I’m not very sure how much desktop function there is, I’ve only done it once or twice, but I was able to YouTube and Amazon through the browser.

If you get one (and I highly recommend it) I suggest getting a kick stand, a Bluetooth mouse and a Bluetooth keyboard.

My next investment is going to be a “dock” and a pair of a.r. glasses so I can charge it and use the glasses as a monitor and lay in bed and game until mold grows over me.

Edit to add: I’ve actually found a couple newer games that developers have decided my laptop is “too out of date” to run, but will run just fine on the deck, so there’s that!

260gtx? I’m old :-(

So is ps4? So is game cube.

It isn’t new and shiny, it isn’t pandemic time.

Bummer, redeemed the key but I’ve still yet to play rocket League, I could use a couple hundred…

I mean… Welcome to 4x! There’s so very much out there. Have you really played no sid Meier’s civilization? That’s just a half step up on the empire building complexity (and a quarter step down on combat, which you don’t have much interest in if I understand correctly.) there are a number of other civilization inspired games that are coming out right now, as well as some older ones that have a different spin on the civ framework (I don’t have a list in front of me). Galactic civilization 3 is another half step deeper into the empire building genre, Stellaris and sins of a solar empire are also rubbing elbows with greatness of space 4x (sins is a very slow rts which might be intriguing to you). Back on earth we go for the much more involved 4x, crusader Kings, Victoria, and Europa universallis, those are entries that will make creative assembly, and their total war series, look like children playing with blocks and a peg board.

I really like that definition, 1 rocket per minute=mega factory. I was impressed when I was doing 2 per hour (though it was a bit cheesed by having some extra ingredients buffered before the first rocket

It’s worked perfectly for me, 3k logistics bots in my network and rocket launched. I’ve never made a “mega factory” and I don’t use trains, but I’d bet trains work just fine.

Tips for the first timer, BE PATIENT WITH THE FIRST STARTUP AND PATCH, it’ll look non responsive/stuck in updating, but it is working, it might not progress for 5 or 10 minutes, believe me, it’s working. The second one I bought (for a family member) had me nervous (was refurbished) at how long I had to wait at some %'s of patching, but it went through and both work like a charm.

It is very very easy to emulate games, the guides on YouTube work perfectly and explain everything in multiple levels of detail. However it is hard to locate game files placed by steam, especially if you have a lot of games.

Don’t shy away from games that aren’t typically controller friendly, the community control layouts bring many creative and natural feeling solutions to games that you wouldn’t expect to be able to play, on top of that you can fine tune any given layout to make it truly work for your own needs.

The in store “deck compatability” guide is pretty useless, green/verified works 99.9% of the time (unless a recent patch has broken something, and it’s usually corrected very quickly) yellow/playable works 99.9% of the time but usually with “text inputs that require the keyboard overlay”, unverified/untested seems to work about 75% of the time, the only one that Ive put much weight in is “not supported”, usually there’s some overlay window or codex that just won’t work properly, but even then sometimes the games work, don’t rely on the steam window, check out the proton compatability website protondb . Com, it’s a much more extensive and thorough list, and will tell you how to get games working that valve claims the deck cannot handle.

Play aperture desk job at least once, it’s a great fun time, and will teach you a couple things about the deck you might not have expected (conductive joysticks that enable gyro controls),

Take a screen shot (steam button+r1) of the shortcut tips screen , so you can easily reference it whenever you’re trying to remember a chord command (like steam button+r1 for screenshot, or how to bring the overlay keyboard up).

If you have slow Internet and you want to download a ton of games, do it in “desktop” mode, and you can set the screen to turn off after a period of time (in case you’re worried about burn in, which I was at first but I’m much less concerned about now).

Dude, if you think I’ve played Pokemon since red/blue, or I’m fanboying here, I’m glad to be part of your strawman because it’s delusional.

I mean…

I’m glad there are so many Pokemon, and that Pokemon were not unique enough for the most part to be trademarked, but if you think they didn’t lift very heavily from a single source you’re fooling yourself and making flippant accusations of your straw-manned opposition.

Also I’m questioning if it was actually “way better” or just edgier for the memes that games would latch onto and vehemently defend. It seems to have been very successful in the latter even if it wasn’t their intent.

Cheaper and imo much more powerful than the switch. It emulates switch.

I can see supplies extending longer than they thought with their refurbishing program being as popular as it is (they don’t stay in stock very long)

Sounds like a deck is perfect for you, I’d recommend the refurbished 512 led (got one for mom, she’s loving it, and hasn’t had a single problem), or the smallest LCD and a large memory card.

Emulation is a breeze, and it’s a pretty powerful gaming PC in it’s own right. I rarely push it, but I’ve run Witcher 3, which was as good as my 5 year old "gaming"laptop, and baldurs gate 3 runs decently. I’ve seen my buddy run ‘no man’s sky’ at what looked like buttery 60fps, though he didn’t have the overlay turned on. I’d recommend a cheap Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and a kickstand unless you’re going to play it hooked up to the TV, then you’ll need a pass through power cable and usbc-> TV input adapter (HDMI), or the dock that they sell, but I haven’t had reason to try one.

Do you have a steam account already? Do you have a gaming pc of any variety?

I love my deck, but I’m a nearly 20 year steam user. If you have a backlog and no steam account, why would you give yourself more of a backlog? (Although the emulation ability of the deck is fantastic, but again, why did a bigger back log hole?)

Where are you getting 1600p screens that are 9 inches diagonal?

And what hardware are you using that puts 1600p into a 9 inch screen? Sounds a lot like overkill, or bigger numbers for the sake of having bigger numbers.

I’ve never had resolution complaints on my handheld screen. There’s been scaling troubles and other graphics shortcomings, but resolution has never been a problem, how close are you holding the deck to your face?