I hate saying anything negative about the Steam Deck at this point because no matter how well articulated a point, you get drowned out by fanatics who refuse to believe anyone would not love every single aspect of it...
But honestly Valve didn't seem to break out of their main patterns for the Steam Deck: It still very much feels like very smart people worked on all the fun parts of solving a very hard problem and did great, but then kind of skimped the boring parts until the last minute.
So the end result is something that the tinkerer in me loves... but the product person in me doesn't see as ever having even had a sliver of a hope of becoming an actual platform.
I was hoping Steam was going to position the Deck as a full blown platform play. Yes some devs have thrown it breadcrumbs with graphics settings and control schemes, and sure Valve is committing working with developers. But what I was hoping for was something extremely polished that would entice other publishers.
Right now Steam Deck feels very much destined to be a quirky computer, not really its own platform. Handheld PCs in general are kind of having a renaissance moment, but no one has made something so compelling that publishers are banging on the doors to get in, and Valve was the only company I could have seen do it.
But honestly Valve didn't seem to break out of their main patterns for the Steam Deck: It still very much feels like very smart people worked on all the fun parts of solving a very hard problem and did great, but then kind of skimped the boring parts until the last minute.
So the end result is something that the tinkerer in me loves... but the product person in me doesn't see as ever having even had a sliver of a hope of becoming an actual platform.
I was hoping Steam was going to position the Deck as a full blown platform play. Yes some devs have thrown it breadcrumbs with graphics settings and control schemes, and sure Valve is committing working with developers. But what I was hoping for was something extremely polished that would entice other publishers.
Right now Steam Deck feels very much destined to be a quirky computer, not really its own platform. Handheld PCs in general are kind of having a renaissance moment, but no one has made something so compelling that publishers are banging on the doors to get in, and Valve was the only company I could have seen do it.