If I'm honest, I don't disagree.
I would love for Steam to have **actual competition. Which is difficult, sure, but you could run a slightly less feature-rich store, take less of a cut, and pass the reduction fully on to consumers and you'd be an easy choice for many gamers.
But that's not what Epic is after. They tried to go hard after the sellers, figuring that if they can corner enough fo the market with exclusives the buyers will have to come. But they underestimated that even their nigh-infinite coffers struggle to keep up with the raw amount of games releasing, and also the unpredictability of the indie market where you can't really know what to buy as an exclusive.
Nevermind that buying one is a good way to make it forgotten.
So yeah, fully agreed. Compared to Epic, I vastly prefer Steam's 30% cut. As the consumer I pay the same anyways, and Steam offers lots of stuff for it like forums, a client that boots before the heat death of the universe, in-house streaming, library sharing, cloud sync that sometimes works.
I loved my switch at the beginning in 2017 but it being nintendcucked ruined it for me. Terrible sales/overpriced games, also I refuse to pay just to have multiplayer and their half assed emulators. Steam deck is a godsend, someday ill work up the courage to eat the 600$ on one or wait until steam deck 2/pro/ultra/the deckening
Getting the 60th Wii u port 3 years into the switches lifespan drove me crazy as well. If you think that you would like the Steam Deck and that you would use it a lot then I would say just go for it. I use mine almost every day to play games and it has to be reaching a similar level of hours used to my switch in much less time.
I don’t understand where the rumors of a steam deck 2 came from, (it may have been something they said just so people wouldn’t dismiss it as something they would abandon) but it just doesn’t make sense for them to come out with a new one. This thing is targeting around a ps4 game level spec and if the ps3 level graphics of the switch are anything to go by the next Nintendo console will probably be similar to the ps4 as well. This is going to be a direct competitor to said future Nintendo console, they just released it early for everyone to beta test it for them. Game consoles have about 6 year lifespans as well so I see this thing being relevant for years to come. They spent a lot of money on this and are selling it at a loss so I bet they want to get as many of them out there as possible. I bet we will see the OS get a general release and other handheld device makers start to release devices with the OS before we see another one from valve.
As far as devs not making games that run well on it I honestly hope that as the userbase gets bigger that we may start to see more games made with the decks performance in mind. It would also be good for the low spec PC gamers in general as well. But there is such a massive backlog of great games on the steam store that I really do recommend you try this thing, you won’t regret it.
Thanks for the reply, I was really tempted since it went for sale during the steam summer sale. My life circumstances are such that I can’t really justify the money on another game box. My switch still works, I have a decent laptop that can play many of my lower-hardware requirement games. I am currently doing off-grid living and that 600$ is better spent on survival necessities and quality of life improvements or just in my bank as emergency fund. If I were a teen again it would be a no-brainer but my time for gaming is less and less. Saying no to the deck this summer sale was one of the hardest and most responsible things i’ve ever done.
Waiting just means the games you want will only get cheaper! I bet they will have more ridiculous sales for the deck as time goes on as well. Good luck and I hope you can get the stuff you want soon. : )