After years of using being PlayStation only (owning the OG PSOne through to PS5 and both handhelds) I took the plunge last year into PC gaming with the Steam Deck and honestly I did not know how much I was missing out on. Never did I realise how cheap gaming can be on PC through all the ridiculous sales. You also aren’t sacrificing much in terms of performance since you can still play almost all AAA games and on a handheld too! My main attraction to the steam deck was this since I haven’t the time to sit down for long stretches any more and the fact you can easily sleep and wake up the deck and play for 10/20 minutes at a time is perfect. Around the same time I got the deck though I decided to also go for the mid tier PS Plus option since it was on offer for Black Friday. After barely using my PlayStation for the past year I was thinking of downgrading back to the basic tier. Now this time around PlayStation are only offering Black Friday discounts to the same tier or above. I could’ve maybe justified paying £45 for the year but £60 just to play online is not worth it in my opinion and looking at the game prices on the store is ridiculous for new titles now. Once my PS Plus expires I don’t think I’ll be renewing, at least not for the foreseeable future. Honestly I feel Valve treats their customer base way better than Sony. Anybody else have a similar story?
I have many years left on my PS5 for PS Extra via a cheap Turkish account. Sony had blocked buying from Turkish account but luckily I staked up many years taking me to the end of this generation and maybe few years of next gen too. I really like the PS5 ecosystem, the instant loading, dualsene haptics. But I just don’t like the fact they charge for online pay and they bumped the price up drastically for online play. Games also cost a lot more I can’t remember the last time I bought a game fill price. Also don’t like games don’t get patched for powerful hardware as often. So I have decided once my sub expires I will sell my PS5 and never buy a console again. The PC ecosystem is great, will go full gaming rig and handheld PC going forward.
I however am enjoying PS5 to the fullest. I played almost all the game and also all the exclusive till Last of Us 2 in PS4. After which I kinda stopped playing as busy with work. Last year I bought SD and have been playing games on it. It is good for a quick game session between work when taking breaks. I bought a PS5 3 months back and also subscribed to 2 years of Deluxe (premium without streaming) and have been enjoying PS5 Extra games on it since then. It has been totally worth it for me. I do remote session on SD and play old titles and AAA titles I enjoy on PS5. I don’t plan on buying any games on PS5 though as its vey expensive and 2 years is good time for Sony to include it in Extra. May be I will not renew it after 2025 but till then its good to have.
Steam Deck has definitely been helpful as I work on Mac and didn’t wanted to invest on dedicated PC for gaming. Its excellent for what it does. Just that we cannot expect it to play recent titles. I dont mind 30 fps (have been playing in 30 for my life in PS4) and SD small screen, its not bad but smooth gameplay is very essential.
I keep my PS5 around for cheap new releases. In Australia, our physical console games are $80~. While digital versions on both PC and console are $110~.
I sold my PS5 and got a Steam Deck afterwards. Zero regrets. Just be aware there are some caveats though…
- The Steam Deck may struggle on anything but the lowest graphics settings for some newer, more demanding AAA titles designed for current gen. So if there are some PS5 titles you’re particularly fond of, know that you may need to make some sacrifices.
- If you enjoy twitchy multiplayer games (like first-person shooters), you will be at a distinct disadvantage against keyboard and mouse players. Some games do offer aim assist settings when a controller is detected, but it’s not the case all the time.
- Certain anti-cheat software (like a EAC) will prevent you from playing multiplayer, since they’re not Linux compatible. I’d recommend doing a little bit of research by checking games you intend to play on websites like ProtonDB.com.
- Games which heavily rely on third-party launchers (EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, etc.) can become buggy or break from time to time. Again, this is due to Steam Deck using a Linux-based OS and these publishers don’t provide official support for that platform. Valve is usually pretty quick to patch things up though.
- Not all your favorite games will be on Steam. Epic for example has their own storefront and launcher which is needed to play some of their games. There are workarounds to running these games on the Steam Deck (i.e. Heroic Games Launcher). But once you get past the setup process it’s relatively painless.
Hopefully none of this scares you off from giving the device a try. I just thought I’d give a fair warning since a lot of people get the wrong impression that this device is basically a console where everything is plug ‘n’ play and will work perfectly 100% of the time. No, it’s literally just a handheld PC that boots up into Steam’s controller-friendly gaming mode.
It’s seriously not as bad as it sounds though. I have zero experience with Linux and I’m not the best at troubleshooting PC issues. But I can tell you the learning curve for the Steam Deck isn’t steep at all. I’d say 98% of the time it’s just as easy to use as consoles are. And in the rare instance when you do run into a roadblock, there are a ton of helpful guides and resources out there to help along the way.
Anybody else have a similar story?
I guess kinda similar? I have had every Xbox console in my family, and obviously most notably the Series X for myself, but I have found in 6 months or so of owning a Steam Deck, I have played far more on this than I have on my Series X since the launch. I think this handheld has some kinda magic feeling to it. Being able to dock on my TV and game, then take it to bed to do the same with some sleepy-time tea.
I went from a Miyoo Mini to a PS3 I put CFW on. Then to a Switch I jailbroke for CFW. Then sold all of those and got a Steam Deck and I just…am perfectly happy now.
I still feel like Game Pass is the best ‘deal’ in gaming right now, but as far as a console goes, this Steam Deck just holds my heart <3